The Sourdough Wars

bastard!”
    “When he found out about the control, he bribed someone to tell him where it was and he tried to steal it too. However, the control had been moved back to the vault where the original starter was kept. Sally went unwittingly to the right place and got it.”
    “But how could it help her? She was already baking the best bread in northern California—she couldn’t just mix it in like Tony Tosi did, for good luck or something. She thought she needed it for its publicity value. And she couldn’t have that if it was stolen.”
    “She held it for ransom.” I stopped to watch her reaction. But she didn’t react. She just sat there, politely waiting for the professor to finish her lecture. So I finished. “She got you to agree to meet her on Friday, after she’d put her kid on the bus for San Francisco. You went to her bakery and she tried to extort an agreement to go into business with her.”
    “That’s ridiculous. Why would I agree to such a thing? All I had to do was call the police.”
    “Oh, I think you tried. But she ripped the phone out. Then she gave you a little demonstration—using lighter fluid and a ball of bread dough—to show you what she’d do to the starter if you left the bakery. She’d have plenty of time because the police would have to get a warrant to search for the starter. She’d simply burn it up before you got back.”
    “This is too ridiculous. All I had to do was agree and—”
    I finished for her: “And later say you’d been pressured into it and sue. But you didn’t think of it then. You picked up a bread knife and killed her with it.”
    Anita didn’t miss a beat. “Prove it.”
    I brought out the little piece of paper I’d typed up before Chris and I had left the office that afternoon. It said
For Immediate Release
at the top, and the date was February 14, the day Sally was killed. The text announced the partnership of Anita Ashton and Sally Devereaux in the Plaza Bakery of Sonoma.
    “Rob got this in the mail this morning. She was a woman who took precautions.”
    The tense shoulders sagged. Anita’s eyes and mouth and cheek muscles all came suddenly under the spell of the law of gravity. If I ever saw defeat, I saw it in that face.
    “I need another drink,” she said, and walked to her desk to get the decanter. With one hand she picked it up, and with the other she opened the drawer of her desk. It came out with a gun.

Chapter Twenty
    “This is why I forgot I lent Sally my gun. You see, I have two. Now give me the paper.”
    “It won’t matter if I do. Rob has a copy.”
    “Give it to me.”
    “What are you going to do? Shoot us here in your study? How are you going to explain that?”
    “Just give me the paper.”
    “Tell me something first, Anita. Was I right?”
    Her eyes darted back and forth between Chris and me. “Did you two record this?”
    “No. We didn’t even think of it.” Which shows how smart we were.
    “Open your purses and empty them.”
    I looked at Chris. She shrugged, picked up her purse, and upended it. I did the same. No recorders spilled out.
    “Okay,” said Anita. “I killed her. It doesn’t matter if I tell you, because you aren’t going to be repeating it. And I’ll tell you something else. I’m sorry about it. Yes, she stole my starter, and yes, she tried to threaten me into going into her damned partnership. But, like you said, I identified with her. We were ‘friends’ if people like us—ambitious people, people to whom achievement is the most important thing in the world —ever really have any friends. I didn’t feel close to her, but I identified with her. I knew what she was like. Because I’m like that.”
    I was so bowled over by this unexpected display of self-knowledge that I almost forgot our predicament. She’d gotten one thing wrong, though: I would have described Anita and Sally as people to whom the way other people saw them was what it was all about. She kept talking. “Sally killed Peter, and I killed Sally. Because we both wanted sourdough fame. Crazy, isn’t it?” She laughed. “It might be crazy, but that doesn’t stop me from wanting it. I’ve known for a long time what I am. Some people say I’m driven. You know how my ex-husband put it? He said I was driven by evil chauffeurs.” She laughed again. When we didn’t, she said, “I thought it was rather good. So I’m driven by evil chauffeurs. It’s just the way I am, that’s all. Maybe I could go get my head shrunk