Tourist Trap (Rebecca Schwartz #3) (A Rebecca Schwartz Mystery) (The Rebecca Schwartz Series)

please?”
    Dad spoke: “Your Honor, I think everyone gets the idea.” Mild laughter—release of tension. Good old Dad.
    “No further questions, Your Honor.”
    On cross-examination, Dad tried to reestablish my good name in the minds of the jurors by having me tell about climbing the ladder, trying to find out if the man was dead: “What did you plan to do if he wasn’t?”
    “I didn’t know. I just thought I ought to do something.”
    “And what in fact did you do?”
    “I’m afraid I fell off the ladder.” Laughter in the courtroom.
    “How did you happen to fall off? Did something startle you?”
    “Yes. A woman’s voice said, ‘Hold it right there.’”
    “‘Hold it right there.’ Was she a police officer?”
    “She said she was making a citizen’s arrest. She had her hand in her pocket, as if she had a gun.”
    “And what did you do?”
    “I held out my hand for the gun and said, ‘Let’s talk it over.’”
    “Did she give you the gun?”
    “No. She hit my hand with it—without taking it out of her pocket.”
    “And what did you do then?” Dad asked this question because we didn’t want Liz asking it—it would look better if I admitted voluntarily that I’d hit Miranda.
    I said: “I fought her for it.”
    “You fought her for it?”
    He sounded absolutely amazed.
    “Yes.”
    “Well! You
look
properly brought up.” The courtroom broke up. Dad knew he’d get reprimanded, but he’d scored big with the jury. I was more or less respectable once again, and had a funny father who joked with me in public. As for Dad, he was the cutest thing since Sam Ervin, and every juror who’d resisted his charm so far was now deeply in love. It wouldn’t win the case, but it couldn’t hurt.
    The judge, naturally, was fuming. After restoring order, he said, “Mr. Schwartz, I’ll ask you please to remember that this is a murder trial in a court of law and not a forum for stand-up comedy.”
    “I apologize, Your Honor.”
    It would have been great to leave them laughing, but we still had to get Miranda out in the open. Rob hadn’t ever been able to write a word about her, but he could if her story came out in the trial. Then maybe someone who knew her would see the story and phone us. It was a big if—I was horribly afraid she was dead—but we had to try. It wouldn’t hurt to establish an element of mystery in the case as well, to send the jurors’ imaginations in directions of reasonable doubt. “Who won the fight?”
    “No one. The Reverend Ovid Robinson, who was scheduled to give the sermon, turned up and broke it up.”
    “Well, I’m sure you
would
have won.”
    Dad was really pushing it. Again, the judge gaveled for order. “Mr. Schwartz, my patience is not on trial here. Please confine your paternal feelings to your home.” He said that, but his face was all twisted up from trying not to smile. “Did the woman tell you her name?”
    “She told Mr. Burns—Rob.”
    “And did you hear her?”
    “Yes. They talked for several minutes. She said she’d been with a man—apparently her boyfriend. She hid in his car, and he drove to the Yellow Parrot, a bar on Castro Street. He went in, but she remained in the car, drinking. Then she fell asleep. When she woke up, she was still in the car, but it was parked near Mount Davidson. She heard noise and came up the hill. She tried to arrest me because she thought I’d killed the man on the cross.”
    “And what did she say her name was?”
    “She said it was Miranda Warning.”
    “No further questions,” said Dad, and left them laughing, after all.
    Liz came back strong on redirect. In chambers, she’d fought to keep out the testimony about Miranda, but the judge felt it was relevant. Naturally, she was going to belittle the tiny seeds of doubt we hoped we were sowing.
    “What happened to Ms.—uh—Warning?”
    “She ran away before the police came.”
    “Why didn’t you try to stop her?”
    Dad objected in his world-weary voice.
    “Very well. I’ll rephrase the question. Did you try to stop her?”
    “Of course. I chased her until Inspector Martinez threatened to blow my head off.” Score one for me.
    “I beg your pardon?”
    “When the police came, Inspector Martinez couldn’t see what was going on. He yelled, ‘Freeze, or I’ll blow your head off.’”
    “And you froze.”
    “Yes. But Miranda—Miss Warning—got away.”
    “Tell me something about Miranda Warning. What did she look like?”
    I could have