Paper Phoenix: A Mystery of San Francisco in the '70s (A Classic Cozy--with Romance!) (17 page)

I had released Richard, and he tumbled away from me, as light, brittle, and useless as a husk. My ears were filled with a sound like wind, and I listened to it and not to Richard and Andrew, whose lips moved in a pantomime of conversation.

Then Richard held up his hand and the wind-sound in my ears cleared and I heard Richard say, “Wait. I’ve just remembered something.”

“What is it?” Andrew asked.

Richard spoke slowly. “You asked me if I saw anyone at the
Times
that night. Well, I did.”

Andrew raised his eyebrows. “And it’s just come back to you now?”

Richard disregarded Andrew’s unbelieving tone. “When I was driving past the building, looking up to see if the lights were on, somebody came out the door and walked down the street.”

“Did you recognize this person?”

“No. It was dark. And besides”— he chewed his lip for a moment— “whoever it was had on a jacket with a hood. A sheepskin jacket!” He looked at us triumphantly.

“Incredible that you remembered,” Andrew said drily.

“Yes, it is. I guess it’s because I was going over it so minutely in my mind. But that’s the way it happened. I saw a figure in a sheepskin jacket come out of the building and hurry down the street. That’s exactly how it was.”

It was almost a shame. Richard had been carrying things off so well up to now, only to destroy his credibility with an absurd last-minute concoction. It was like watching an expert tightrope walker take an awkward spill. When neither Andrew nor I responded, he said, “I saw somebody in a sheepskin jacket. I did.”

His presence was beginning to oppress me, and I wanted to get away. It seemed that I had been sitting for days in this little room with a plate of cold calamari in front of me, listening to explanations and accusations. The world outside— Giles, the diners who were probably enjoying dinner at Arturo’s, the city of San Francisco, the bay, the hills— seemed like an impossible fantasy created by someone whose world was bounded by a Champagne bucket and a red plush sofa. I stood up. “Let’s go,” I said to Andrew.

“Wait a second,” Richard said. “What are you going to do?”

I took my coat from the rack. “What we always intended to do.”

He was close beside me. “You expect me to stand around with my hat in my hand while you and this kid decide my future?”

“You decided your future. We just got sucked into helping you work it out.”

Andrew was standing next to the door. He opened it for me and followed me. Neither of us said good-bye to Richard. We left him standing next to the table, watching us go.

***

“I could use a burger,” Andrew said on our way out, surely the first time those words had been uttered by a diner leaving Arturo’s.

“Me too.” The wind was chilly. I thought I could smell the ocean. The neon signs on the street shone with exquisite colors.

“Let’s get a couple and go to my place.”

I followed him in my car and waited while he stopped at a modest-looking cafe called Burger Heaven, emerging with a bag that looked much too large for two hamburgers.

I understood why when, with A. J. and me watching, he began unloading its contents on his kitchen table. “They do great fries and onion rings and I couldn’t decide, so I got both,” he said, reaching back into the sack. “Then some guy was eating the fried mushrooms and they looked good too, so—”

“You own stock in deep fryers?”

“It’s pure, all-American grease. Besides, anything we don’t eat A. J. will.” The last items in the bag were two cheeseburgers roughly the size of dinner plates, which were already soaking through their waxed-paper wrappers. I was almost finished with mine when I noticed Andrew smiling at me.

“What is it?”

He grinned more broadly. “It’s funny. The sight of you in your sophisticated black dress and your diamond pin, with your hair put up, sitting here with your elbows on my kitchen table eating a drippy burger and greasy fries.”

“Glad to get them, too.”

He swallowed his last bite and wiped his hands. “It’s a turn-on. The blending of opposites, or something.”

“First time I ever heard of a burger fetish.”

“Another thing.”

“What?”

“Your eyes. They’re exactly the color of A. J.’s.”

Richard, I remembered dimly, had once said apple-green jade. A. J. was under Andrew’s chair, eating a French fry off a piece of waxed paper. When I bent toward him, he peered up at me. After a long look, I said, “That’s a fantastic compliment.”

“Listen— it’s a compliment to him, too.”

He came and stood behind me, nuzzling my ear, his beard feeling like a loofah sponge on my skin. “I sure hope you’ll stay over,” he murmured. “Consider yourself invited.”

“I’d love to.” I nibbled on the last mushroom. “We haven’t even talked about Richard’s story.”

“Oh yeah. Richard.” I felt his breath on my neck when he sighed, then felt him start to pull the pins out of my hair. “I thought he handled himself pretty well, up until the point when he came out with that feeble tale about the mysterious figure in the sheepskin jacket.”

“That’s what I thought, too. Silly of him to blow it all, right there at the end.”

“My impression of Richard is that he’s a damn silly man.”

“Not always. He can be extremely cagey. That’s what makes this so surprising.”

My hair was down now. Andrew’s face was buried in it. “Hey, Maggie,” he said, his voice muffled.

“What?”

“Can we declare a moratorium on Richard until tomorrow morning? I’ve OD’d on him for right now.”

“Let’s do that.” I stood and faced him. “Do you really want me to stay? I don’t have a nightgown. I don’t even have a toothbrush.”

He put his arms around me. “You won’t need a nightgown. And you can use my toothbrush. I’ve got a special expensive one designed by Dr. Somebody. Your gums will never be the same.”

I stayed. And being with Andrew was even better than before. It was almost enough to make me forget the horrors I had experienced and the troubles that were surely on their way.

“We’re agreed, then,” Andrew said over coffee the next morning. “We’ll go to the police as soon as you tell Candace.”

I nodded. The sky was lowering, preparing for more spring rain, and the wind was high. I was through with Richard and ready to be done with him, the Golden State Center, Larry Hawkins, Joseph Corelli, and the fear and frustration they had brought me. I had to talk with Candace, and I wasn’t looking forward to it, but after that it would be time to let someone else sort out the complications we had uncovered, if not unraveled.

I used Andrew’s phone to call Candace. It took two accidental disconnections before I reached her at her dorm. When I said I wanted to drive down for a talk that afternoon, she sounded wary. “Sure, I guess it’s OK, Mother, but what for?”

“I’d rather discuss it when I get there. Will three o’clock be all right?”

“I suppose so.”

Irritated by her dubious tone, I said good-bye and hung up.

“My daughter thinks I’m certifiable,” I said to Andrew. “Do you think your mother is certifiable?”

“No, but she does have her faults. I wish she wouldn’t drive so fast.”

“Tell me”— the question had been running through my mind— “how would you feel if your mother did what I’m doing? Had a— an affair, or whatever, with a much younger man?”

“Actually, once my mother made up her mind to do it, it wouldn’t much matter how I felt,” he said, slipping on his jacket. “She’s hell for having her own way. She ran for the state senate back in Illinois last year and everybody scoffed, but she damn near won.”

“But if she did have that kind of affair, would you think it was undignified and unfitting—”

“I sure would. What’s more, I’d probably cut her allowance and forbid her to use the car.” The phone rang and, grinning, he answered. “Baffrey. Oh, hi, Susanna. You say Maggie’s not home, huh?” He gave me an exaggerated wink. “Yeah, we had a session with Richard last night. But listen”— he glanced at his watch— “I’ll be seeing Maggie, and I’ll tell her to be in touch with you. Maybe she can stop by your place later. Great. See you.”

Turning to me, he said, “Susanna wants to know what went on with Richard last night. I hope you don’t mind if I hand her over to you. I’ve got to get to the
Times
and make sure everything’s moving with the Corelli issue.”

“That’s fine. I’ll call her.” I put on my coat. My black dress, so appropriate last night, looked a bit wilted this morning, but I could change when I got home. I said good-bye to Andrew on the sidewalk, promised to call him later, and headed the car toward my house.

I parked in the driveway. Preoccupied with thoughts of my talk with Candace, I didn’t notice the black Lincoln across the street, or hear its door slam, so I was startled to see a stocky, curly-haired man in a blue jacket approaching and hear him call my name.

He was broad shouldered, with an athletic easiness in his walk. When he got closer I saw that his eyes were the same pure light blue as his jacket. “You Maggie Longstreet?” he said.

“That’s right.”

“You’re supposed to come with me.”

I could never outrun him. He looked as if his days as a high-school fullback weren’t far in the past. “Come with you where?”

“Miss Malone wants to see you.”

“If Miss Malone wants to see me, she can call and set up an appointment.”

“She said you should come with me.” His hand closed under my elbow, and I felt myself moving toward the street.

“All right, I’ll see her,” I said, unnecessarily. “But couldn’t I change clothes first? I need to—”

This one-sided bargaining was cut short by the slamming of the door of the Lincoln after I had been neatly placed in the back seat. My captor got into the driver’s seat, started the motor, and we took off.

I gazed out the smoked-glass window, stunned. The whole episode had happened so fast it was like something I had made up to scare myself. Surely the real me was back at home letting myself in the front door, not purring toward downtown with a strong-arm chauffeur.

There was a pimple on the back of my captor’s neck. “Jane Malone could have called and asked to see me,” I said to it. “There was no need for this— this kidnapping.”

He didn’t answer, and a chill invaded my churning solar plexus. It could be he wasn’t taking me to see Jane Malone at all. Maybe he had instructions to— God, to shoot me or strangle me and wrap me in a plastic garbage bag weighted with concrete blocks and dump me in the bay, and that’s the end of Maggie Longstreet. Richard, all of them would claim I’d gone nuts and disappeared, wandered off or something. One of those unsolved mysteries like Judge Crater or the
Mary Celeste.

Andrew. He wouldn’t believe it. He’d raise a stink, all right. Unless, of course, he was at this very moment in the back seat of a Lincoln himself, on his way to the same fate.

My hand had crept to my throat. My diamond pin was digging into my palm. As I eased up on it a little I thought, I’m not about to get into any garbage bags without a fight.

I needed a weapon. Mentally, I inventoried the contents of the small, dressy purse I was carrying. A lace handkerchief embroidered with a fancy M. Lipstick, compact, comb, keys. A wallet with about twenty dollars and some miscellaneous change in it. I could offer to give him the twenty if he’d let me go. Probably not enough. I didn’t have a nail file, dammit. Not even an emery board.
Not that you could fight him off with an emery board, you fool
.

I had a little gold portable perfume atomizer. Get in position, squirt him right in the eyes with Jolie Madame. I had— that was about all I had.

I wanted to whimper, and pressed my lips shut to avoid it. Wait a minute. I had a diamond pin. A pin that even now was making painful little indentations on the fleshy part of my palm.

With clammy fingers I fiddled with the clasp and unhooked the pin. As it came off, I felt the bar that fastened it. It was long, sturdy, and sharp. Richard had given me the pin for one of our anniversaries, and he never bought flimsy jewelry. I’d rather have had one of those cute little guns with a mother-of-pearl handle, but this would have to do. I concealed it in my hand.

My companion chose this moment to make conversation. He glanced at me in the rearview mirror, leered, and said, “Guess you were out all night, huh? I was waiting nearly an hour.”

I gazed stonily out the window. We were sliding through the financial district. I watched the suicidally inclined bicycle messengers, secretaries out on errands, and stockbrokers coming in late who populated the sidewalks, wondering if any of them would pay attention if I rolled down the window and shrieked. They probably wouldn’t. People who worked in downtown San Francisco were inured to weird behavior, to seeing old women yelling at random passersby, street corner preachers quizzing the indifferent crowd about being saved, down-and-outers haranguing themselves as they inspected the contents of trash cans. Yelling out the window of a Lincoln might type me as a rich weirdo, but only a weirdo, all the same.

At least now I was armed— or pinned. I leaned back to wait for the next development.

“Here we are,” said the driver a minute or two later, and we turned and descended into the parking garage beneath a thirty-story glass box. I didn’t think such a place would be secluded enough for mayhem at this time of day, so maybe he was taking me to Jane Malone after all. I opened my purse and put the pin inside. I’d still have easy access to it if the need arose.

He ushered me out of the car and led me to a small elevator he operated with a key. As we waited, he whistled through his teeth. Then he glanced at me sideways and said, “Have a good time last night?”

I ignored him, and he didn’t make any more remarks before we stepped out of the elevator into a room that was surely the ultimate in corporate opulence. One wall was covered with a huge woven hanging patterned in red and hot pink, and the red was repeated in oversized lacquered vases filled with eucalyptus. A leather sofa and chairs were grouped around a low, clean-lined table with a glass top. The total effect bespoke the guidance of an expensive interior designer with a blank check. After having seen Jane Malone’s apartment, I was convinced that someone besides Jane had chosen the office decorator.