Free Paper Phoenix: A Mystery of San Francisco in the '70s (A Classic Cozy--with Romance!) by Michaela Thompson Page A

It sounded like a great story, so I started hanging around the various Luigi’s branches, striking up conversations with the cooks, seeing if I could see any rat feces, or insect remains, stuff like that—”
    “I’ve eaten my last Luigi’s pizza.”
    “I don’t eat there myself, any more,” he agreed. “Anyway, with the help of my friend, I thought I had a dynamite story. I got together an outline and went to Larry, and you know what?”
    “What?”
    “Larry told me, categorically, to forget the whole thing.”
    “Did he give a reason?”
    “Larry didn’t think he owed anybody explanations. He said drop the story, and he expected that to be that. I couldn’t accept it, though. I thought maybe he just needed more proof. In my spare time, I kept hanging out down at the Columbus Avenue Luigi’s. I figured if I could uncover a really flagrant violation, Larry would have to give in. And guess what happened.”
    “Larry came in?”
    “Right. I happened to see him, and he didn’t see me. He was hustling off down the hall to Corelli’s office. I watched him go in, and kept an eye on the door until he came out. When he left, I followed him. Right to the bank. What could be more no-class? I would’ve given Larry credit for a little finesse.”
    I heard crushing disappointment in Andrew’s ironic tone. “Then you started checking the books?”
    “Yeah. Once I knew what I was looking for it was easy. He’d been bleeding Corelli for a couple of years. Not for huge amounts, you understand. A few thousand here and there. Maybe ten or twelve thousand in all.”
    “So you confronted Larry.”
    “Oh, jeez.” Andrew rubbed his eyes. “The thing that sounds stupid and corny is that I looked up to Larry. I really admired the guy and what he was trying to do. That— the way I felt— made it worse. You have to understand I was madder than hell. I had my facts and figures, and I laid it out in front of him. He tried everything. Laughing it off, blustering, insults, telling me I was fired. Through it all, I pushed him to the wall. I didn’t know I had it in me to be so ruthless.”
    He seemed to shrink, even now, from the memory of what he’d done. “It must have been awful,” I said.
    He nodded slowly. “The worst was when he finally broke. He cried. He said he had to have the money to keep the
Times
going. The
Times
was his life and he had to keep publishing, and hitting up Corelli was the only way to do it, because the
Times
always lost money. It was literally the most painful thing I’ve ever been through.”
    I couldn’t think of anything to say. Andrew’s eyes were red now, staring past me. “I didn’t give in,” he said hoarsely. “I thought he should have to live by the rules he set up. I told him I was going to call a guy I knew on one of the dailies and give him the story. Larry’s enemies would’ve had a field day. I wasn’t sure I’d really do it, but I wanted him to believe me, to spend some time stewing, and then I’d decide. The next morning, he was dead.”
    Neither of us spoke. Of course this explained why Andrew had been so avidly interested in the fact that somebody else— Richard— might have been involved in Larry’s death. Andrew got up and stretched, as if trying to ease the tension in his body. Echoing my thought, he said, “When you came in with your story about Richard I was ripe for it. Anything to get the guilt off my own shoulders.”
    I was so tired, so overwhelmingly tired that I wasn’t sure I could even reply. Debilitating fatigue had seeped into me bone-deep as I listened to Andrew’s story. “Let’s don’t talk about it right now. We’ll talk tomorrow,” I said.
    “Right.” Andrew sounded as exhausted as I was. I walked to the door with him. Before I let him out he said, “Listen, Maggie…”
    “Yes?”
    “You understand why I confronted Larry the way I did? It seems excusable to you?”
    “Under the circumstances,
not
confronting him would have been