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

What a fool I was, coming here to expose myself to this strange girl’s casual curiosity instead of staying up on Lake Street where I belonged. “I guess that’s right.”
    I caught a shade of pity on her face. “That’s what happened to my landlady.” She waved a hand at the couch. “Sit down for a minute, why don’t you?”
    As I crossed to the couch, the phone rang again and she yelled, “Kit, catch the phones for a while, OK?” I moved some newspapers and sat down.
    “What kind of story did you have in mind?” she asked.
    My plan was to start slowly and back into the big question. “I’d like to do an account of his last day, interspersed with history about the
Times
, stories he covered, things like that. Sort of a montage.” Actually, I thought, the idea wasn’t half bad.
    “His last day, huh?” Betsy leaned back and looked at the ceiling. “That would be two days ago. It was a fairly typical day around here.”
    “It was?” I opened my notebook.
    “Yeah. Which means it was frantic from beginning to end. Let’s see. Larry came in around noon and was his normal self, ranting at everybody. That afternoon was the thing with September Apple.”
    “September Apple?”
    “September Apple is a person. She was really into ecology at one point, so she took that name. Her real name is something like Mary.”
    “She came in that afternoon?”
    “She was always coming in. Larry gave her an assignment. Like everybody else in this town, she wants to be a writer. He finally told her to do something about poetry. Andrew Baffrey had been pushing him to use artsy stuff occasionally. So she worked and worked, and she was around here a lot. This place is the biggest outpatient clinic in San Francisco.” Betsy glanced around as if she wouldn’t be surprised to see outpatients emerging from the walls.
    “Did the story get published?”
    “Are you kidding? That’s what all the shrieking was about. She came in that afternoon, the day after she’d turned it in, and God, what a fight she and Larry had. I mean, the door of his office was closed, but I could hear their voices all the way out here. Finally, she came flying out of there just about hysterical and took off and I haven’t seen her since. You have to understand that wasn’t particularly unusual, though. Larry had that effect on writers.”
    I was scratching away in the notebook, getting it all down. I didn’t want to blow my cover by not looking interested. “They were fighting about the story?”
    “Probably. See”— Betsy leaned forward— “don’t put this in your article, but constructive criticism wasn’t in Larry’s vocabulary. You either wrote it his way or screw you. He was always sure he was one hundred percent right.”
    “Did anything happen after that?”
    “Not much. Larry spent a long time in his office with Andrew Baffrey, the managing editor, that afternoon. They must have been in there three hours, and then Andrew left, and
man.”
Betsy was silent for a moment, thoughtful. “I tell you, Larry came out to get a cup of coffee, and he was shaking like a leaf. It was strange, you know?” The sadness I had missed earlier washed over her face. Her fingers twisted a frizzy tendril of hair.
    “He wasn’t usually the nervous type?” Pretty soon, the intrepid reentry reporter was going to slip in the jackpot question.
    Betsy chuckled mournfully. “How could he run a paper like the
Times
and be nervous, with people threatening to sue him all the time? I feel bad about it now. I saw he was upset. Maybe if I’d said something, it would’ve made a difference, and he wouldn’t…” She sighed. “So. He went back into his office, closed the door, and nobody saw him until his body was found by the garbage men. Is that all you need?”
    The moment had come. “Just one more thing. I was wondering—” I began, just as a flabby blond man appeared in the doorway.
    I heard Betsy mutter “Oh, no” as he walked unsteadily toward her.