Tourist Trap (Rebecca Schwartz #3) (A Rebecca Schwartz Mystery) (The Rebecca Schwartz Series) by Julie Smith Page A

floods of women in jogging shoes and business suits. And traffic? Like a snarl of barbed wire.
    “His nibs would like you to call,” said my properly respectful secretary when I walked in.
    “Surely you don’t mean the mayor; you would have said her nibs.”
    “Very good, Ms. Boss. Maybe you should have been a detective.”
    “Alan. Who wants me to call?”
    “Why, our town’s man of the moment, unless you count Mr. Trapper himself. Mr. Rob Burns of the
Chronicle
actually dialed the humble number of drab, insignificant Rebecca Schwartz.”
    I drew back my right foot, thinking not of a simple toe-in-the-shin, but something along the lines of the moves you see in kung fu films. But then I noticed I was wearing my new red Joan and David shoes (purchased, needless to say, for half the usual $120). If they’d been black or gray, I would have gone ahead with it, but Kruzick wasn’t worth wrecking a pair of red shoes over.
    “Hardly drab,” said Chris, breezing in. “Nice shoes.”
    “Thank you.” I turned back to Kruzick. “I’d like to go on record as saying I don’t care to be insulted first thing in the morning.”
    “Okay, okay. Maybe not drab. Just a shade on the unexciting side.”
    “Thanks a lot.”
    He shrugged. “Hey, boss, you gotta remember—the competition’s a multiple murderer.”
    He had a point. I was certainly a bore compared to the Trapper. I was cross at the notion of having to compete with a psychotic killer; and annoyed with Rob for going overboard on the Trapper stories; and for ignoring me; and for putting me in the position of having to defend him when I didn’t really feel I could support him. And I was annoyed at myself for being ambivalent. Thus, I may not have been in the best of moods when I called him back.
    “Hi, babe,” he said. “How’d you like the stories?”
    “Frankly, I think they’re a bit much.”
    “Rebecca, the guy’s killing people.”
    “Maybe I spoke harshly. I’m sorry, but you asked for my opinion. I find them upsetting.”
    “Upsetting how?”
    “Scary.”
    “The Trapper’s scary.”
    “The stories were needlessly scary. Nightmarish.”
    “You’ve got to remember the guy poisoned eleven people at a restaurant. As it happened, only one person died, but he didn’t care how many he killed. It
is
a nightmare.”
    “I just don’t think the stories are in very good taste, that’s all.”
    “Rebecca, sometimes you are the most amazing sushi-eating, Volvo-driving,
New York Times
-reading, Saks-shopping, foreign-movie-going Yuppie prig. Would it be good taste to report the antics of a maniac who wanted to wipe out every Jew in Germany and damn near did?”
    “It’s not the same thing.”
    “Okay, what’s different about it?”
    “It’s not important to the whole world—it only matters in San Francisco.”
    “Sweetheart, have you noticed that the
Chronicle
is a local San Francisco paper?”
    “Rob, I can’t talk to you when you’re in this mood.”
    “When
I’m
in this mood! Rebecca, do you have any idea how hard I’ve been working lately? How do you think it makes me feel when you of all people don’t support me in my work? Instead, I haven’t talked to you in days, and finally when I do you tell me I’m in bad taste.”
    “It was your choice not to talk to me for days.”
    “I couldn’t, don’t you understand? I literally didn’t have a spare second.”
    “People always find time for what’s important to them.”
    “Listen, it’s no good trying to talk on the phone. Let’s have dinner tonight, okay?”
    “I have a date with someone else.”
    For a moment he didn’t speak. Then he said, “Another man?”
    “Yes.” I wondered why my voice sounded like a croak. “Another man.”
    “I see.”
    I didn’t say anything.
    “How about tomorrow then? Or lunch—today or tomorrow; you name it.”
    “I think maybe we shouldn’t see each other for a while.”
    I didn’t realize I thought that before I said it, but as soon