The Sourdough Wars

in the car with me.”
    “Rebecca, didn’t you see someone with Mr. Thompson?”
    “I did, yes.”
    “And so did I.”
    Thompson looked as if his kid were trying to tell him an heirloom vase had sprouted legs, jumped off the mantel, and busted itself. “I can’t think what you two are talking about. You can ask the highway patrol if you don’t believe me.”

Chapter Sixteen
    That creep Rob left me again—well, he let me buy him lunch and then he left me—something about getting his story written—and I felt strangely at odds. I was unhappy and didn’t want to be alone. I decided to visit my sister.
    Mickey and my ace secretary lived in the Noe Valley—having moved from Berkeley—in one of those very San Francisco apartments with big rooms, high ceilings, and two bathrooms—one for the toilet and one for the tub. Since they’d both started working, they’d replaced some of their Goodwill furniture with new stuff from Macy’s, and the place looked close to presentable. It might stay that way this time—Mickey’s gotten a wicker sofa her cat can’t shred.
    Kruzick answered the door. “No,” he said. “Absolutely not. No floors, no windows, no weekends. Find a Kelly boy.” As usual, I just wasn’t in the mood, but I must have been even less so than usual—even Alan noticed. “Oh, all right,” he said, waving me inside, “I guess I could make you some coffee, since you love it so much when I do.” He shook a finger at me. “But no dictation; not in your lap, anyway.”
    Mickey turned off the vacuum and came running to kiss me. “What a great excuse not to clean house.”
    Alan grabbed a dust rag, which looked strangely alien in his grasp. “I have to do everything around here.”
    Mickey rolled her eyes and went to make the coffee he’d promised.
    While I waited on the new wicker couch, I curled up with Lulu the cat, thinking about Sally. When Mickey got back, I filled her in on the few details of my recent activities that hadn’t been reported in the
Chronicle
.
    “Let’s think,” she said. “Why would anyone want to kill Sally?”
    “Let’s do indeed. Somehow, I just assumed Clayton Thompson had done it until the cops let him go.”
    “Thompson?” Alan stopped pretending to dust and looked around. “That redneck who came to the auction?”
    “He’s no more a redneck than Chris is—he’s just Southern.”
    “He came to the play the other night. With a cute boy.”
    “Aha!” said Mickey. I was kicking myself too hard to answer. Of course Thompson was gay. That was why he’d been staying in the Castro, and why he claimed there’d been no young man in his car, and why he was so nervous the day of the auction. I remembered trying to make small talk with him that day. He’d even acted twitchy when we asked him about sightseeing, and now I knew why—the sights he’d seen were confined to Castro Street. He had a wife and kids and he was Southern, even if he did live in New York—he couldn’t afford to come out of the closet. But he was no doubt making the most of every second in San Francisco, the homosexual capital of the world—or of the West, anyway.
    And of course he’d gone to see
Sleuth
. He knew all about it from reading Rob’s articles on Peter, but they didn’t say Alan was in the play, so he didn’t know he could blow his cover there. Had Peter known him before? It seemed impossible—how could he have?
    Mickey ran a hand through her unaccustomed short curls. The hairdo was as new as the sofa, yet another sign of her urbanization. Her mind returned to the original subject. “Just because the police let him go doesn’t mean he didn’t kill Sally. Maybe he saw you on your way to Sonoma, figured you’d tell the cops he’d been there, and made the phone call so he’d look clean.”
    “Oy.” Why hadn’t I thought of that?
    “Maybe he did it,” she continued, “because he was the burglar and Sally found out about it.”
    “Why else do it?” I said, thinking aloud. “Why would anyone kill Sally? I just don’t get it.”
    “Maybe the murder hasn’t got anything to do with sourdough,” said Mickey. “Maybe her boyfriend did it.”
    “Or maybe Bob Tosi did it—maybe he never got over her leaving him for Peter, which would also argue that he killed Peter and made both crimes look like sourdough murders. Or maybe he did it because he wants custody of the kid.”
    “I like it,” said Mickey. “He’s the only one who hasn’t seemed very