The Sourdough Wars

interested in getting the starter—no one would ever suspect.”
    “It won’t work—he’s got a great alibi.”
    “What?”
    “The kid. Sally’s own kid.”
    “Maybe not.” She looked very excited. “It takes an hour to drive from here to Sonoma, right?”
    I nodded.
    “Well, how long is it by bus?”
    “I don’t know. Why?”
    “Because that must be how she sent the kid—and the bus must take at least an hour, probably longer. So, look—here’s what he does: He knows he’s supposed to pick up the kid at, say, four. Does that sound right?”
    I nodded.
    “So he drives to Sonoma, watches Sally put little Bobby on the bus, follows her back to the bakery, stabs her, and drives home in time to pick up the kid. He might have to speed a little, but I doubt it—the bus probably takes an hour and a half.”
    “I don’t like it.”
    “What do you mean, you don’t like it? Are you kidding? It’s perfect. It’s like the
Five Red Herrings
."
    “Oh, the timing’s perfect, all right. And the brilliance of the theory is dazzling. But you don’t know Bob Tosi.”
    “I thought you said he was a jerk.”
    “He’s arrogant, anyway. But he’s sane.”
    “What do you mean? He’s used to getting everything he wants. He’s probably a spoiled brat who’ll do anything to keep it that way.”
    I shook my head. “He’s gotten a lot of things, but they’ve been handed to him. The truth is, he’s had an easy life and he hasn’t had to scratch to get ahead. I don’t think he’s very competitive.” I stood up. “But I’m going to see him, anyway.”
    “How come?”
    “You gave me a great idea. I’m going to find out who Sally’s boyfriend is.”
    The idea I had wasn’t exactly pretty, I’m afraid. Bluntly speaking, it involved the exploitation of a small child. But the point was to catch his mom’s murderer, I told myself. Yes, Rebecca, but that’s the job of the police, my conscience told me.
    That did it. Could I entrust an important job like this to the likes of Martinez and Curry? Certainly not. I looked up Bob Tosi in the phone book.
    He lived in Grosvenor Tower, in my opinion a weird choice for a person with choices. It was a very pricey place, indeed, with saunas and other amenities, but it was as impersonal as a Holiday Inn. The apartments I’d visited there looked as if they were occupied by people in transition—just divorced and about to get engaged. Come to think of it, Bob Tosi might fit that category. He was certainly recently divorced, and from all accounts, including his own, he didn’t seem the sort who gave matrimony a lot of thought before taking it on.
    However, contrary to my expectations, he’d given his apartment a lot of thought. Or at least he’d given thought to his own comfort. Like his office, the place wasn’t “decorated,” but it was full of things that looked used and enjoyed—things like books and records, a chess game on a coffee table, and a few of little Bobby’s toys. On the walls, which had been painted a friendly forest green, hung good paintings like the ones at his office—another Mary Robertson, paintings by other California artists, and a Haitian primitive, a jungle scene that seemed to dominate the room.
    Bobby was sitting on the floor, untangling a kite string that was seriously snarled.
    Bob greeted me—oddly, I thought—with a hug, and invited me in without question. He sat on the floor next to Bobby and started to help him with some of the worst tangles. “This is Miss Schwartz,” he said.
    Bobby looked up: “Hi, Rebecca.”
    I said to Bob, “We met when Chris and I went up to Sonoma.” And then I addressed them both: “How’re you two doing?”
    Bobby didn’t look up at that. “Okay,” he said, in a voice that belied it.
    “We’re having a hard time,” said Bob. “We’re glad to see you.” The look he gave me was almost pleading—he would have been glad to see the Creature from the Black Lagoon, anything to distract him from his son’s grief. I wondered if he had his own grief as well, and he answered the unspoken question: “It’s hard for us without Sally. I didn’t think it would be this hard.”
    “If there’s anything I can do—”
    He waved a hand, cutting me off. “We just have to live through it. We went out and flew Bobby’s kite, and that helped, didn’t it, kid?”
    “I guess so.” Bobby still kept his eyes on the floor. “I just wish I hadn’t come here, that’s all.”
    Bob’s pain