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

inexcusable.”
    He bent and kissed my cheek. I felt for an instant his warm lips, the tickle of his beard. “Thanks,” he said. I opened the door, and he stepped out. “Make sure you lock it behind me.”
    The reminder was unnecessary. As I slid the chain into its little socket, I heard his feet pounding down the steps. The Volkswagen’s motor started up, then got fainter as he drove away. After that, everything was quiet.

Eleven
    Tired as I was, I had suspected I wouldn’t sleep, and I didn’t. Being grabbed and threatened by a narrow-faced nicotine addict had engendered bodily quivers that wouldn’t subside no matter how many deep-breathing exercises I did. I left lights on in every room, and spent approximately half the night checking the windows and doors and the other half wondering if I should check them again.
    During the time I was lying wide-eyed in bed I had plenty to think about. Larry Hawkins was a blackmailer. As he raged at others for doing favors in return for influence or money, he was playing the game himself. Obviously, Larry had seen his mission as higher than the rules governing petty, fallible mortals. Reading the
Times,
I had recognized his vision of himself as scourge to the powerful, champion of the powerless. In the face of that vision, if it took a little graft to get the job done— well, the job was the important thing.
    Then there was Richard. There were dozens, hundreds, of possible explanations for the disappearance of Larry’s folder, but I didn’t have to worry about those. I had to consider only the single possibility, no matter how small, that Richard had taken it. I asked myself, in the glare of the kitchen at three A.M. as I checked the back door for the fourth time, how I would ever find out if he had.
    Wandering through the house, I thought about my attacker, saw again and again his sharp-nosed, thin-lipped face. I wanted to scream, “How dare you!” like an uppity lady in an outmoded comedy. How dare he touch me, how dare he threaten me? What a strange and unexpected turn my life had taken. None of this could have happened if I’d still been married to Richard. “Don’t attend the Museum Guild again or you’ll be in trouble, Mrs. Longstreet”? Hardly likely.
    At five A.M. I decided this was ridiculous. I doubted my anonymous enemy would show up now, and at this rate lack of sleep would kill me before he got the chance. Leaving all the lights on, I took a pill and barricaded myself in the bedroom, pulling my antique rosewood desk in front of the door. I put my head under the pillow, and in fifteen or twenty minutes I was asleep.
    Later I awoke, startled, thinking I had heard something. The quality of the light in the room told me it was late morning. Surely there hadn’t been a sound. I tried to relax, and for a moment almost succeeded. Then I heard the footsteps. Someone was walking through the house, coming closer and closer. The steps came to my door and stopped. I sat up in bed, rigid with horror, convinced that in a moment he would shoot through the door, or batter it with his shoulder the way they did on television. Expecting cataclysm, I heard the politest of taps and a voice calling, “Mother?”
    Candace. She must have driven up from Stanford. For a confused instant, I thought the man had to be there too, perhaps holding my daughter hostage. But when the imperious “Mother, are you in there?” came, I knew she wasn’t in danger. She had simply unlocked the back door with her key and come in.
    “Just a second,” I called. It was a considerable effort for my fright-weakened muscles to move the desk, but I finally managed it and opened the door to greet Candace, who was wearing the frown she assumed when I had done something to embarrass her.
    “Why are all the lights on?” she asked, walking into the bedroom. Taking in the displaced desk, she said, “You had that in front of your door? Good grief, Mother, what’s going on? Are you hallucinating or