The Sourdough Wars

sheepish. “I just went out for a drink.”
    “Alone? Chris, I know you feel bad about Peter, but I really think—”
    She stopped me. “No, not alone. Not a flower of Southern womanhood such as myself.”
    “Well? Who with, then?”
    “Bob Tosi.”

Chapter Thirteen
    The entire Schwartz family, rescuing its black sheep from jail, stared at me from Page One the next morning. You’d think that would have made me cross, and you’d have been right. But the mood passed when it suddenly hit me how lucky it was that Mom wasn’t wearing her mink coat.
    She looked just right in her well-cut black wool underneath the tear-streaked face of a mother whose child has been wronged by the very system she works every day of her life to uphold. As for me, I thought I looked rather brave, and quite nicely surrounded by supporters.
    Quite a good picture, actually, and the second pleasant surprise of the morning. The first occurred when I looked in the mirror and didn’t see a purple plum instead of a cheek on the right half of my face. By some miracle, I had only a minor bruise, which would hardly show at all once I called in reinforcements from the Revlon bottle.
    Rob’s story was accurate, if not complete. It told how he and I had surprised a burglar in the act, but it neglected to mention that we’d whirligigged about the city at 90 MPH for half an hour after that. The average reader could easily have gotten the idea we’d found Larson tied up the very second we scared off the sourdough thief. The story went on to describe that, finding the starter missing (actually, this was the lead paragraph; he just got back to it when it came up in the narrative), Larson drawing his gun, and Rob escaping.
    After that, it quoted the police as saying only that Larson had been booked for assault and illegal use of a firearm and that I’d been booked for assault and resisting arrest.
    Then, if you can believe it, it quoted me. Even though I hadn’t said a single word for publication. “ “I saw Mr. Jones raise the gun to fire,’ said Schwartz, ‘and I tried to stop him. If that’s assault, I’m guilty as hell.’ ”
    Guilty as hell! Not only had Rob caused me to disgrace my family in front of the entire subscription list of the
Chronicle
; now he had me swearing in public as well—I’d never get another client again. I was so busy thinking up brand-new revenges, I hardly even noticed that the telephone had rung and I’d answered.
    “Still mad?” said the voice of Rob Burns. I hung up.
    The phone rang again, but I didn’t answer. I just went into the bathroom and put on the four pounds of make-up it took to make me look respectable. Then I put on a little mascara to divert attention from the combat zone. By that time, I’d say the phone had rung maybe forty times, and it was getting to the fish. I picked it up.
    “Your daily
Chronicle
is dead wrong,” he said.
    “You’re telling
me
, you schmuck!”
    “The starter isn’t missing, after all.”
    “What?”
    “I knew I could get your attention.
Still
mad?”
    “As fifty hatters. State your business, please.”
    “Rebecca, I can’t tell you how sorry I am.”
    I didn’t answer. Not because I was trying to be mean; I just couldn’t think of a thing to say.
    “Okay,” said Rob. “Later, maybe. I just thought you’d want to know the company moved the starter. Fail-Safe, I mean. The manager called from home this morning.”
    “Could you go a little slower, please?”
    “That’s how journalism can backfire on you, see? I mean, we saw with our own four eyes that the starter wasn’t there, so of course there was no need to confirm it. But you know what? We should have realized the burglar couldn’t have gotten it—he was empty-handed, remember?”
    “Rob, could you get to the point?”
    “Well, once the Fail-Safe folks discovered the first starter’d been taken, they naturally checked on the second one, and it was perfectly fine. But plenty of employees and other people knew there was a second warehouse and that’s where it was bound to be. They figured anybody could have found that out, and sure enough, we did, and so did the burglar. So they took the precaution of secretly moving the second starter back to the original vault.”
    “I see.”
    “Listen, could we talk? How about lunch?”
    “Thanks very much for calling.” I hung up. I was glad to know about the starter, but so mad at Rob I had to question his motives for telling me. Maybe he was