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

in court.”
    “Oh? What did he see? My opening statement? Perhaps my final summation?”
    “He didn’t say.”
    “What
did
he say?”
    “Said you had great tits.”
    “Oh, hell. I’m tired.” I plopped down on one of my white sofas, hoping Rob would join me. Instead, he went in the kitchen and put on water for coffee. “Listen, I need help.”
    “Mmf.” My eyes were closing.
    “The cops found a wallet in a wastebasket near the edge of the park, and it belonged to the man on the cross. Driver’s license identifies him as Jack Sanchez. A tourist from Gallup, New Mexico.”
    “Tourist! He didn’t live here?” My eyes opened.
    “Tourist: a person who makes a tour. Not a person who lives here.”
    “Miranda made it sound like she lived with him.”
    “Maybe she’s a tourist, too. Sanchez arrived day before yesterday.”
    “She’s not a tourist. She must have lied.”
    “I think we should check her story out. Drink this.” He curled my fingers around the handle of a coffee cup.
    Resigned, I sat up and took a swig. “You think
we
should check her story out. You’ve been a reporter for ten years, right?”
    “Eleven.”
    “And suddenly you need me to help you. Now which of my many talents is suddenly indispensable?”
    “Like I said, you’ve got great tits.”
    “Tits.” I was mystified. “You need something to stare at while you type? A little inspiration, maybe?”
    “I need a date for the Yellow Parrot.”
    I burst out laughing. “Wait till I tell Chris. Intrepid reporter for a metropolitan daily won’t go to a gay bar without an escort. Forget Chris—I’m telling your boss.”
    “I thought you might want to come, that’s all.”
    He looked so hurt I laughed again. “Okay, pussycat. Let me get dressed.”
    He followed me into the bedroom. Emboldened by recent flattery, I pulled off the football jersey in which I’d been napping and gave him a look. But he just looked at his watch: “Come on, kid. I’ve got to make the first edition.”
    I should have known. A reporter on a story is like a teenage boy on a date: after Only One Thing. Except it’s not the same thing. So much for my alleged attributes—some guys will say anything to get what they want.
    But as I dressed, he nuzzled my neck a little. “I shouldn’t have waked you up.”
    “It’s okay.”
    “You wouldn’t have been up all night if it hadn’t been for me.”
    “Really, it’s fine.”
    “And wouldn’t have gotten into a fight, and wouldn’t have found a body, and wouldn’t have ended up spending the morning at the Hall with your least favorite cop.”
    “To tell the truth, the worst part was finding out about Mickey.”
    “You need a little relaxation. How about a mud bath?”
    “I beg your pardon?”
    “Let’s go up to Calistoga and have a mud bath. Or maybe a mineral bath and a massage.”
    “I don’t get it—I thought you were on deadline.”
    “Not now. Next Saturday—we can even spend most of the day there and go wine-tasting on the way back.”
    “Really?” It sounded like the best idea since portable hair dryers. Maybe it would cleanse the psyche as well as the pores.
    “Really. We’ll leave first thing Saturday morning.”
    I gave him another kiss, then slipped on a purple sweater and a pair of black leather pants—if the Yellow Parrot was a leather bar, I wanted to look right.
    It wasn’t, though. It was just a dark, sad-sack sort of place where a few guys were having a few beers. The bartender had short brown hair with one long curl in the back, punk style. It would have been cute on a twenty-year-old; he was forty-odd. “You folks tourists? There’s something I’ve got to tell you about this place…” He looked as if he was trying to find a way to break it gently.
    “We’re from the
Chronicle
,” said Rob, and explained our mission. I hadn’t been sure exactly how he’d do it—whether he’d pretend he was somebody else or what. As well as I knew him, I’d never thought to ask exactly how reporters worked. As it turned out, it was simple—he just laid it all out for the guy: A tourist had been murdered, found nailed to the cross on top of Mount Davidson, and a witness had said he’d been at the Yellow Parrot the night before.
    The reaction was similar to what you’d get if you turned a TV camera on a bunch of kids; people practically jumped up and down trying to get in the act. And we were in luck—the bartender (Jake Nestor—“with an o, not an
e
”) had