Paper Phoenix: A Mystery of San Francisco in the '70s (A Classic Cozy--with Romance!) (22 page)

I was saved from sentimental sloppiness by hearing the elevator open. Curious to see who was visiting Richard, I looked around the corner and saw two men walking toward his door. One of them I had never seen before. The other was Inspector Fred Bosworth of the San Francisco Police Department. I watched him ring Richard’s bell. When the door opened, he said, “We’re looking for Richard Longstreet,” and the two men stepped inside.

I leaned against the windowsill, wondering what Bosworth wanted with Richard. Bosworth had been working on the Corelli case. Maybe he wanted to question Richard about Corelli. That must be it.

Yet why would Bosworth show up to question Richard about Corelli tonight? He had had time to see Richard at his office, or to call and make an appointment to stop by. I was sure Richard hadn’t been expecting the police when he talked to me. I longed to listen at the door, but decided against it.

The explanation came to me while I rode down in the elevator. Bosworth wasn’t talking to Richard about Corelli, he was talking about Larry. And why? Because Andrew had gone to the police himself. Andrew was, after all, over twenty-one, if just barely. He didn’t have to hold off because I said so. He had gone, he had accused Richard, and here was Inspector Bos-worth. Ironically, about the time I was assuring Richard he wouldn’t be questioned about Larry’s death, Andrew was arranging that he would. Richard probably thought I had betrayed him, but there was nothing I could do about that now.

I walked to the car and started home. This was no time to be choosy about dinner, so I turned in at the first fast-food outlet I saw, which happened to be purveying fried chicken to go.

The interior of the place was bathed in a pale neon glare that made the strawberry pies in the glass cabinet look as much like plastic as they probably tasted. The ambience wasn’t helped by a radio blaring rock music. There were three people ahead of me— two young men in tight jeans and T-shirts who were whispering to each other and laughing, and a woman with limp gray hair who was carrying a shopping bag containing, as far as I could tell, some articles of clothing and a picture of Jesus.

The two men were having trouble deciding whether to get a regular or a jumbo bucket. I leaned against the counter and closed my eyes, numbed by the noise and glare. The frenetic radio announcer was bawling something about “news time.” No more music for a minute or two, anyway. The woman in front of me ordered a whole strawberry pie and a Coke. The thought made the inside of my mouth feel puffy.

“What would you like, ma’am?” a stringy-haired girl in a paper hat asked me.

“I’ll have—”

“—Corelli, local restaurant owner,” said the radio.

“What?” The girl leaned forward.

I shook my head and made violent shushing motions with my hand.

“— spokesman said that Fresno police are holding Nick Fulton, who has former convictions on robbery and assault charges, for murder. Fulton was apprehended in a Fresno motel late this afternoon. On the weather scene—”

The girl leaned her elbows on the counter, making designs on the Formica with her finger. Obviously, she was prepared to wait through the weather and sports if necessary. My pulses were pounding. Nick Fulton was in custody. The blissful relief I felt made me realize how frightened I had been of him.

On the other hand, if he had been in Fresno this afternoon he couldn’t possibly be the person who’d shot at me.

***

At home in my kitchen, gnawing through globs of greasy fried batter, I tried to collect my thoughts and assess what was going on.

Since Nick Fulton had been arrested, probably the old man Andrew mentioned had been able to identify him. Fulton was the man in the blue car. Richard had said Corelli was causing problems for the Golden State Center. In Jane Malone’s lexicon, that was reason enough for violence— especially if Corelli’s number-two man was amenable to Basic Development’s plans. They had tried everything else— persuasion from Richard and Jane, and coercion. Suddenly I remembered the break-in at the
Times.
Richard had known that Larry was blackmailing Corelli. He had probably told Jane about it. If they could locate Larry’s information, they could have used it against Corelli themselves. The break-in had been an unsuccessful attempt to find the information Susanna had gotten from Larry’s safe-deposit box.

Maybe Fulton knew I had discovered Corelli’s body, and that had given him extra motivation for wanting me out of the way. At first, though, he must have thought he wasn’t in danger. He’d stayed in town until the situation started to heat up. When he finally ran, he made it only as far as Fresno.

I crumpled my cardboard box with its chicken bones and its little Styrofoam cup of runny coleslaw and threw it in the garbage can. I was sure Fulton had killed Corelli on Jane Malone’s orders, or at least with her tacit agreement. Of course it would come out that Fulton worked for her. Jane Malone’s dream was over, Richard’s career was in ruins, Nick Fulton was in jail, Corelli was dead, and Larry— what about Larry?

I wandered into the living room. The little snifter that had held Andrew’s brandy sat on the coffee table. I carried it into the kitchen. I could go back to square one. Maybe Larry committed suicide after all. No. That wouldn’t work. Somebody had shot at me, and that meant somebody was afraid. Suicide wasn’t a reasonable explanation.

My head was buzzing. I went back into the living room and sat on the couch. I had to face the suspicions of Andrew that, below the surface, had been tearing at me all evening. Once I decided to explore my misgivings about him, though, the case became elusive. He could’ve killed Larry and shot at me, I thought, but my mind kept returning to Andrew making me a salami sandwich, or pulling the pins out of my hair, or being with me in bed.

He can’t be innocent just because you want him to be, I reprimanded myself. Did you ever ask him where he was the night of the murder? Of course not. Richard says he saw a figure in a sheepskin jacket leaving the Times. You spent an entire night at Andrew’s place. Did it even occur to you to check in his closet to see if he has a sheepskin jacket? No. You had other things on your mind.

Maybe another drink would help. Another drink, and then bed. Tomorrow everything would be clear, rationality would return, I would put my life in order and lead a clean, healthy, sensible existence to a ripe old age if I didn’t get shot first.

I went to the liquor cabinet and took out the Scotch. As I set it down and reached for a glass, I knew who Larry’s murderer was.

The knowledge immobilized me for some seconds. As I stood with my hand outstretched, I ran through it all in my head. The facts backed up my intuitive flash. Larry Hawkins had been murdered, and I knew who had done it. I let my arm drop. It would probably be best if I didn’t have another drink tonight.

I couldn’t prove it, but I’d be able to soon. I sat at my desk and began to write.

The whole story came to only a page and a half. I folded the scrawled sheets, put them in an envelope, wrote the address. I’d mail it on the way.

Driving through the city, stopping to drop the envelope in a mailbox, I felt, at last, relaxed and competent. It had been only a few days— less than a week— since Larry Hawkins died, but I knew I would never be the same. I could no more return to pills and lamentations now than I could reactivate my membership in the Museum Guild and be a society divorcee instead of a society matron. Which posed a problem. I would have to figure out something to do.

Musings about the future would have to wait, however. I had reached my destination. I parked, crossed the street, and pushed the bell.

No answer. I rang again. I could see a dim light inside.

Stumbling through weeds, I made my way around the side of the house. After scraping my shin climbing over a rickety fence, I was in the backyard. The light I had seen was coming from the kitchen. There was a gap in the kitchen window curtains, and I looked through it and saw Susanna Hawkins shrinking into a corner next to the stove, arms crossed and hands clutching her elbows, her head cocked in a listening attitude.

I called, “Susanna!” and tapped on the window.

She started violently. Her eyes darted to a drawer next to her, and she pulled it open and reached inside. Then she closed it again and buried her face in her empty hands.

“Susanna! It’s Maggie.” Even standing as far away as I was, I saw the shudder that ran through her body. Then she became instantly mobilized, as if I had thrown a switch. She dashed to the window, threw the curtains back, and stared out at me. The bones of her face seemed to stretch her delicate skin, and her eyes were wide. Only her hair retained the appearance of health. It mantled her shoulders, reflecting light from the room behind her.

When she saw me she sank to her knees, resting her forehead on the windowsill. “Let me in!” I called. She got up, looking dazed, and moved toward the back door. When she opened it, I said, “You see, you didn’t kill me after all.”

“I wasn’t trying to,” she whispered.

She stepped back and I walked past her. In a corner Curly eyed me sleepily, his tail thumping the floor. We walked to the living room, where a red wooden child-sized chair was lying on its side. Susanna righted it and sat down in it, knees together and feet spread apart. “I wasn’t trying to kill you,” she said. “I nearly fainted when I saw you fall down.”

“Why were you shooting, then?”

“Oh, you know,” she said almost absentmindedly, as if it no longer mattered. “I wanted to make sure you went to the police about Richard. I was afraid you were wavering.”

“You stole Richard’s gloves?”

“I had to. Once you decided somebody killed Larry, I wanted you to be positive it was Richard. You were on the brink. I left the boys with the neighbors…” She giggled. “Isn’t that funny? To have to worry about getting a baby-sitter so you can go out and steal and shoot at people?” She giggled louder, and I was afraid she would become hysterical, but she stopped with a choked gasp.

“How did you get the gloves?”

“Easy.” Her face started to collapse again, but she mastered it. “I made up a story about an insurance policy and called Richard’s office and found out what kind of car he drives. I hung around his building until he left and followed him. I wasn’t sure what I was going to do. I thought I’d follow him to his place, and maybe there’d be a chance to break in, get something of his— I don’t know. I was wild.” She shook her hair back from her face. “His leaving the car unlocked at Pacific Bakery was sheer luck for me. I grabbed the gloves.”

“Tonight you came and waited at my house.”

“When I got there you weren’t home. I stood in the park. I thought I’d shoot and break a window or something, but you had to be there or it wouldn’t work. I had Richard’s glove in my pocket, and I had Larry’s gun. He kept one here, because he was afraid his enemies would come gunning for him in the middle of the night. I had no idea you’d run into the park. God, you were coming right at me. I shot, but I wasn’t trying to kill you. Not the way I was trying to kill Larry.”

“He was going to leave you.”

“That’s what the note was about. He was going to run out without saying a word, the lousy coward.”

I remembered the cryptic “Sorry to do this to you and the kids.” Not much in the way of a parting message. That afternoon, Andrew had confronted Larry and told him he knew Larry was blackmailing Corelli. Larry must have believed Andrew’s threat to expose him. Rather than face that, he was prepared to desert both the
Times
and his family.

“Why did you go there?”

She clenched her fists on her knees. “I was fed up. Things had been bad for a long time. No, that’s wrong. They were always bad. Larry never cared about anything but that stupid paper. I didn’t count, the kids didn’t count, he screwed everything female that crossed his path. For years, I thought— well, this is how it is. But you can only put up with something for so long. Lately, I got to thinking maybe I didn’t have to take this shit.

“I started bugging him to talk to me. At first, he barely paid attention. When I didn’t shut up, he started promising we’d sit down and thrash the whole thing out. He’d say yes, and then he’d put it off. He’d have to work late, or he wasn’t in the mood. I wouldn’t get mad. I’d just say, ‘Look, Larry, I’m going to have this out with you. When’s it going to be?’ We’d set another time, and it would happen all over again.”

I could hardly breathe, feeling the weight of her frustration. “That night was the last time he promised,” she went on. “I mean, here I was. Looking after the kids all day, zero money, while he went all over town playing big shot. Talking on the phone constantly, surrounded by girls telling him how great he was, while Zeke and Abner and I couldn’t even afford to go to the movies.

“I was thinking, this is it. Decisions have to be made. He said he’d be here by seven-thirty. I got the kids off to bed early and sat down to wait. I wouldn’t allow myself to do anything else. I sat here waiting.

“By eight-thirty, I knew in my gut he wasn’t coming. I could’ve called, but I had done that so many times before, so I said, fuck it, I won’t beg him to come home, but when he gets here he’d better watch out. And I sat and waited.”

The memory seemed to animate her, and she got up and paced the room. “It must have been horrible,” I said.

She turned toward me abruptly. “Horrible. It was horrible. About ten-thirty, I couldn’t stand it any longer. I had reached the limit. So I went after him. I— this shows you the kind of mother I am. I left the kids here alone, asleep. They almost never wake up, you know, but suppose they had? Or what if the house had caught on fire? What a crazy, stupid thing to do!” There was intense anguish in the words. Susanna obviously felt more remorse for leaving her children alone at night than she did for killing Larry.

“But they didn’t wake up, did they?” I was trying to offer comfort, but also to keep her talking.

“The times I’ve thought about how dumb that was.” She sank to the floor and sat there, eyes tightly shut, clenched fist pressed against her mouth.