Paper Phoenix: A Mystery of San Francisco in the '70s (A Classic Cozy--with Romance!) (7 page)

I poured more chamomile tea. “After our conversation this morning, did you talk to Richard? Did you mention what I said to anybody at all?”

He looked properly shocked and offended. “Of course not. I gave you my word, didn’t I? Off the record is off the record. Why?”

I told him about the phone call and my subsequent visit to Richard, finishing, “He claims he isn’t having me watched, but if you didn’t tell him I came to the
Times
I can’t think of any other explanation.”

Andrew sat back in his chair, frowning. “I don’t like this.”

“Neither do I. Threatening phone calls are too much for me.”

He swirled the tea in his teacup, staring at it as if he were going to read the stray chamomile blossoms in the bottom. “There’s another possible explanation.”

“What?”

He set the cup down. “Maybe you aren’t the one being watched. Maybe somebody’s watching the
Times
.”

I considered the idea. “Then the person watching the
Times
would have to know me.”

“Know you by sight, anyway. Maybe he’s an avid reader of the society pages.”

I winced, thinking of myself squinting into the flashbulbs at a ribbon-cutting, the first night of a play, a charity ball. “Even if he did know me, why would he warn me to stay away? It doesn’t make sense.”

“No. It doesn’t.” He picked up the cardboard placard and tapped it on the table in a nervous tattoo.

The Indian music playing in the background sounded strange and off-key. The photographs of the beaming guru had begun to look a little sinister. “I wish…” I began, then stopped.

“Wish what?”

“Wish we knew what Larry’s story on Richard was about. That’s the only possible connection in all this.”

Andrew sat slumped in his chair, still toying with the placard. A full stomach. A happy heart. A soaring spirit. I hoped I wasn’t getting indigestion. At last he reached into the pocket of his jeans, brought out a metal key ring with one key attached, and put it on the table. “Let’s go find out,” he said.

It was a small, uninteresting-looking key. “What do you mean?”

“This,” Andrew said, tapping the key with his finger, “is Larry’s key to the cabinet in his office. I just stopped by and picked it up from Susanna. You remember I told you I hadn’t gone through Larry’s private papers? That’s where they are.”

“You think he kept the information on Richard there?”

“It’s there if it’s anywhere. I hadn’t checked it out because— well, mainly because I didn’t have myself together enough to do it. Susanna had the only key. She’s been at the
Times
once since Larry died, but I didn’t get it from her then because I wasn’t there. She got hysterical and Betsy had to drive her home.”

“I remember it well.” I told him about Susanna’s scene and her subsequent apology.

“Poor Susanna. She hasn’t had an easy time.” He picked up the key, tossed it once, caught it. “What do you say? Do we go take a look?”

I heard the voice on the telephone:
Stay away from the
People’s Times.
If you don’t, there could be trouble.
“Sure. Lead on.”

He got up. “I’ll drive, and drop you back here afterward.”

Folded into his Volkswagen, I shivered. The fog was rolling in, and it would be a damp, chilly night. I felt sad, cut off from everything that had been familiar and comfortable about my life. Other people were at home having a drink, eating dinner, watching the evening news. I was rattling through dark streets in a Volkswagen with an inadequate heating system, caught in a dim and threatening world of suicide, anonymous phone calls, locked cabinets. The glaring light from a gas station briefly illuminated Andrew’s face, and it seemed to me the face of the only friend I’d ever had. My nose was prickling. To keep myself from falling apart, I said, “How do you know Larry kept his private papers in the cabinet, if it was always locked? Maybe he kept drugs in there. Or— or pornography, or something.”

“The pornography’s in a filing cabinet in the newsroom, and Larry had a strict rule about no drugs on the premises,” Andrew said. “Larry wasn’t much of a doper, and he didn’t want any dope hassles. In that cabinet he kept one of those dark red accordion-pleated folders. I’ve seen him lock it in there plenty of times. My impression was that it contained names, phone numbers, rough drafts, working notes, Xeroxes of documents, and stuff like that. He never left anything lying around.”

I didn’t reply. A dark red folder stuffed with incriminating documents about Richard.
There could be trouble.

***

The
Times
offices were oppressively quiet. Andrew switched on lights as we entered, and I trailed after him to Larry’s office. Inside, there was a desk with books and papers stacked on either side of a manual typewriter, shelves along one wall. Behind the desk, two large windows. I walked over to them and looked down. No screens. Below, the alley where Larry had died was lost in blackness.

“Let’s see, now.” Andrew’s voice was subdued. The cabinet was built into the bookshelves, and was closed with a padlock. Andrew’s hands shook as he tried to fit the key into it. “Damnit,” he muttered, wiping his hands on his jeans. He tried again, and this time I heard the tiny click as the key turned. He removed the lock and opened the door. “What have we here?” he said, peering inside. He didn’t speak for a moment, then stepped back, an indecipherable look on his face. He waved his hand toward the cabinet.

I leaned forward. The cabinet’s interior was shadowy, but there was no doubt that it was empty.

“That’s it. It isn’t here.” Andrew, sitting in Larry’s desk chair, closed the bottom drawer of the desk.

“I guess not.” I replaced a stack of
Editor and Publisher Year
books.
Nothing was on the shelves behind them but a few dust bunnies and a yellowing couple of pages about minority hiring in the Department of Public Works.

In the half hour since we discovered the folder was gone, we had searched the office wordlessly. The door of the cabinet still stood ajar, like a mouth open in accusation. I sat down in the bottom-sprung armchair meant for Larry’s visitors. “You’re sure nobody has been in here since Larry died?”

“The office hasn’t been locked. Anybody could’ve come in. But nobody would’ve been able to open the cabinet, that much is for sure.”

I cast about for explanations. “Maybe he took the folder home with him. Maybe Susanna has it.”

“She would’ve given it to me. The last thing she cares about is city politics. Besides, it was here the afternoon before he died. He and I had a— a long talk…” Andrew’s voice quavered. He swallowed and went on. “When I came in, it was on his desk. He picked it up and locked it away. I saw him do it.”

“Then somebody was here. Somebody took the folder.”

“Looks like it.” He got up abruptly and walked toward me, seeming activated by nervous energy. “Say Larry took the folder out again, after I left. He’s here late, and he’s sitting here with it, and this person comes in, and they have a fight…” He leaned and took me by the shoulders, his thumbs pressing in almost painfully. “Do you see?”

Taken aback by his imploring tone, I nodded, and he released me. I did see. The folder was gone. It was probable that someone had stolen it the night Larry died. If, as Andrew obviously believed, the folder contained information on Richard, who was more likely to have stolen it than Richard himself?

I felt a tickle of panic. If Richard had stolen the folder, maybe he had pushed Larry out the window, too. Accusing Richard of murder in the abstract was all very well, but this— this could be more truth than I’d bargained for.

“Maggie, we’ve got to find out.” Andrew’s face was fervent, his voice full of conviction. I tried to remember what it was like to be so young, to see everything in the shadowless illumination of certainty. Yet he was right. If Richard had stolen the folder, or done worse things than that, I wanted to know.

Andrew squatted down beside my chair, talking excitedly. “This
proves
that there was something funny about Larry’s death. If we can get a line on whoever took that folder we’ll confront the person, and— God, what a great story!”

“Stop the presses,” I said. “Nothing has been proved. We have a suspicion to follow up, that’s all.”

“You’re right, you’re right.” He patted my arm, placating the elderly wet blanket. “But how about this,” he went on meditatively. “Somebody was here the night Larry died, because the folder’s gone and we know Larry didn’t jump out the window with it under his arm. Would you agree that if we find the folder we’ll be a lot closer to knowing what happened to Larry?”

“Yes.”

“And would you agree that Richard is a logical place to start looking?” Andrew’s voice was light and steady.

Here was my last chance to change my mind. I didn’t. “I agree. Let’s tie the folder and Richard together, if we can.”

A subtle change came over him, as if somewhere in his body a chronic pain had stopped, allowing him to relax. We looked at each other for a long moment before he said, “Good.”

He stood up and started for the door, and I found myself suddenly fretful. “I feel old,” I said. “Too old for missing folders, for tracking things down—”

“That’s crap,” said Andrew cheerfully. “Besides, the word is
mature.
You can never get too mature for anything.”

Mature. I wondered if I could even lay claim to that. I got up and followed him to the door. “Something on the order of a ripe Camembert?”

He turned out the light. “Fine wine. The finest fine wine.”

When Andrew let me out at my car, near the Food as Spiritual Healing Ashram Restaurant, he said, “You’ll get home all right, won’t you? Would you like me to follow you and make sure?”

I was demoralized and unnerved, and would have loved for him to follow me. On the other hand, I felt like being alone to think, and Lake Street was probably far out of his way. “No, thanks. I’ll be OK.” I hoped I was telling the truth.

Driving beneath streetlights surrounded by muzzy, fog-produced haloes, I pondered the question of why I’d married Richard. It wasn’t a new subject, having been my constant preoccupation in recent months. The best explanation I had ever come up with was: It seemed like a good idea at the time. He was an extremely attractive man, and his prospects were excellent. If he had been, even then, ruthless and single-minded in the pursuit of his own ends, why— in some circles that was considered a virtue. I had never wondered what shape my own life would take, once we were married. I had known it would simply take the shape of his.

To hell with Richard. What I wanted more than anything was a brandy and a hot bath. The thought of these consolations aroused a tentative pleasurable anticipation that was uppermost in my mind when I slammed the garage door and, immediately afterward, felt myself being pulled roughly into the shrubbery beside the garage.

My assailant had a strong grip, and the hand he clamped over my mouth smelled strongly of nicotine. He pulled my head back in a way that made my neck feel very vulnerable and walked me a few feet down the bush-sheltered walkway between my garage and the house next door. I tried vainly to turn my head far enough to look at his face, but succeeded only in smelling his nicotine-loaded breath as he said, “I told you to stay away from the
Times
, didn’t I, Mrs. Longstreet?”

He had. The uninflected voice was the same as the one on the phone.

He went on, his moist cigarette breath hot on my neck, “Did you think I was kidding?”

I didn’t know why he kept asking questions. I couldn’t possibly answer or even nod.

“If you don’t pay attention this time, you’re really going to be in trouble.”

I believed him. The way I saw it, I was in quite a bit of trouble already.

I was going to kick backward, try to catch his shins. I berated myself for not wearing my tallest, most dangerous heels instead of the sensible stacked ones I had on. I had already swung my foot forward in preparation when the two of us were illuminated by headlights from a car turning into my driveway. The man’s hands loosened and I pulled free and turned, glimpsing a narrow face shadowed by a hat. Before he darted toward the back of the garage, the park, the million hiding places there, I got the impression of a sharp nose, and thin lips drawn back in a grimace of surprise.

I scrambled in the opposite direction, toward the front of the house, where the headlights of Andrew’s Volkswagen were extinguished just as I rounded the corner babbling incoherently about needing help.

He jumped out of the car. “What’s going on?”

“It was a man…” I stammered, pointing in the direction he had run.

Andrew took off down the path, and I stood, painfully undecided whether I was more terrified to go with him or stay here by myself. I could hear him thrashing around in the bushes. After a few minutes I also heard a car start somewhere down the street. I was willing to bet it was the narrow-faced man getting away scot-free.

Andrew returned, breathless. “No sign of him. What happened?”

I was vibrating all over. “Not till I’ve had some brandy.”

After the first drink I was down to a slow tremor, and able to tell him the story. Sipping my second, I wandered through the house checking doors and windows and assuring myself that nobody else was skulking ready to spring. “You’ve got a security system, I assume?” asked Andrew, tagging along.

“The best money can buy.” I stopped in front of a door. “Wait. I forgot to check in here.” I opened it and peered in.

“The broom closet?”

I studied the vacuum cleaner, the broom, the dustpan, the cans of furniture polish and floor wax. “I’m not taking any chances.”

At last I was satisfied that the house was empty. We returned to the living room. “What led you to show up in the nick of time, anyway?” I asked.

“I felt uneasy, letting you off like that. I found a phone booth and looked up your address, thought I’d stop by and check.”

“Thanks. I’m glad you did.”

He rolled his glass between his hands. “Have you thought about calling the police?”