The Complete Mystery Collection

by Michaela Thompson

  “I kept my key.” He looked a trifle shamefaced about it, knowing it hadn’t been a sophisticated thing to do.

  I held out my hand. “Give it to me. I want it right now.”

  “I’ll give it to you. But first I’d like for us to have a chat.” He turned to Andrew with blatant inquiry. Richard had always accomplished a great deal by indirection. He didn’t have to tell Andrew that Andrew was unwelcome. The arrogant tilt of his head, the slant of his body did it for him.

  Andrew didn’t budge, and I had no intention of asking him to leave. I was only beginning to realize how dangerous Richard might be. Still, it was unlikely that he had missed the folder yet, so he didn’t know how much trouble he was in. “This is Andrew Baffrey, a friend of mine,” I said. On impulse, I added, “He’s the editor of the People’s Times.”

  Only someone who knew Richard as well as I would have seen the look of shock and fear that hung for an instant in his eyes. It transformed his face for me as thoroughly as if I had seen it suddenly made livid in the glare of lightning. And I felt not dismay, and certainly not pity, but triumph. At last, I thought, at last I have the upper hand. Then his self-control reasserted itself and he turned to Andrew and said, coldly, “How do you do?”

  Andrew, standing near the door, nodded gravely. Neither offered to shake hands. Richard turned back to me, his eyes freezing. “I want you to tell me what you’re up to, Maggie. I want to know right now.”

  Bubbles of power were eddying through my veins. I felt invulnerable. “I spent a lot of years doing what you wanted me to do, and look where it got me. You can’t exact anything from me any more, Richard. You deliberately gave up that privilege.”

  Richard squared off to face me. “First you come to my office and make an irrational scene about being followed. Then I hear that you’re running around with my enemies, people who want to ruin me. To put it bluntly, I think you’re sick. Furthermore, since what you’re doing directly concerns me, I deserve an explanation.”

  So I was sick. Causing trouble for Richard made me ipso facto unbalanced. “Don’t get self-righteous with me. If you’re so concerned about what you deserve, then I suggest you deserve to spend time in jail.”

  He took a step nearer. I felt only exhilaration. “What the hell are you talking about?”

  In the background I heard Andrew say, “Maggie, wait—” but I couldn’t stop myself. “I’m talking about you, Richard,” I spat out. “You make a pretense of cultivation, but when it comes right down to it you’re a crook. Nothing but a cheap crook.”

  Although it shouldn’t have, the slap surprised me. I was aware only of the impact of the blow at first. Caught off balance, I reeled backward against the liquor cabinet and in an effort to keep from falling swept several crystal cordial glasses to the floor. I heard them shatter at the same time I was aware that Andrew had shouted, “Leave her alone!” and bounded across the room, grabbed Richard, and shoved him away from me.

  Richard turned savagely. I had never seen him so out of control. “And you!” he shouted at Andrew. “What do you mean, stirring up trouble this way!”

  “He didn’t stir anything up! I went to him!” I cried. My face was starting to sting, and I had to blink tears out of my eyes in order to see Richard and Andrew glaring at each other— Richard’s tie crooked, Andrew’s navy blue sweater pulled to one side. This encounter was taking on all the aspects of a barroom brawl. It was almost funny, in a totally horrible way. I tried to suppress the giggles that were rising in my throat. If I began to laugh, I might not be able to stop until they carted me away. Swallowing hard, I said, “Richard, get out. Give me the key and get out.”

  His foray into physical violence had left Richard crestfallen. It was with only a trace of his former arrogance that he said, “We haven’t settled anything yet.”

  “We aren’t going to. Not tonight. Get out.”

  Without another word, Richard detached the house key from his key ring, dropped it on the coffee table, and walked out, straightening his tie as he went. After the door clicked, Andrew and I looked at each other. I was still slumped against the liquor cabinet, my hand against my smarting cheek. “Has he hit you often?” Andrew asked.

  I shook my head, as much to clear it as in denial. “Never.”

  “He’s a real bastard,” he said hotly. “Worse than I thought.”

  “Rotten. He’s absolutely rotten.” Without any warning at all, my face was wet with tears. I bent my head and let them flow. Once they had started, I knew there was nothing I could do to stop them. The terror, the anger, the shocks of discovery I had experienced today were sliding out of my eyes and dripping off my chin onto the pretty silk scarf I had put on to take Candace to brunch so many hours ago.

  “Maggie.” I could feel Andrew’s breath on the top of my head. His warm hand was at the back of my neck, guiding me to rest against him. My cheek rubbed the damp, scratchy wool of his sweater. It was so long since I had been offered any physical comfort that I gave myself up to it as I might’ve submerged myself in a hot bath. Andrew’s hand slid across my shoulders. “It’s all right,” he murmured.

  The tears didn’t stop for a long time. As it became damper, the front of Andrew’s sweater got even scratchier, but the sensation was somehow reassuring. After a few minutes, I put my arms around him. He was so thin. I could have counted the knobs on his backbone. His beard brushed my face when he leaned down to kiss my forehead. Then he kissed my eyes and said, “Salty. You taste like a pretzel.”

  “What outrageous flattery.” I knew for sure that I wanted to go to bed with him. “I never kissed a man with a beard before, except when I was a little girl there was my Great-Uncle Clyde—”

  The story of Great-Uncle Clyde was interrupted. Other things were more urgent, and more diverting. It wasn’t until much later, when I was drifting off to sleep, that I thought about Uncle Clyde again. “He owned an avocado grove,” I said.

  “Who?” Andrew yawned widely and settled down against me.

  “Uncle Clyde. He had a bushy white beard, and he used to give me avocados.”

  “Urh.”

  “So that’s when I decided beards were nice, probably. Don’t you suppose?”

  I didn’t get Andrew’s opinion on the subject, because he was already sound asleep. Very soon afterward, so was I.

  18

  Andrew’s hair, sticking out at wild angles from deep in the pillow, was the first thing I saw when I woke. It looked like a dense thicket in the field of yellow buttercups printed on the pillowcase. I lay listening to his breathing and thinking over the situation.

  What I had done was appalling. I had fallen into bed with a boy twenty years my junior who had sweet-talked me by telling me I tasted like a pretzel. Suppose— I shuddered, but not violently enough to wake Andrew— suppose Candace had chosen this morning to visit, instead of yesterday. The very thought put me in an altered state of consciousness.

  Andrew sighed and burrowed deeper into his pillow. My God. I was twenty years older. I was old enough to be his mother— his actual, biological mother. Maybe I was only nineteen years older, but still. I ran through all the people I knew and pictured their reactions if they could see me now. The reaction of every single one would be the same. Appalled.

  If I had to have a tumble in the hay with a schoolboy, I could’ve at least chosen a clean-shaven one with a nice haircut and some decent clothes. Sure. I could’ve at least chosen a schoolboy version of Richard.

  Andrew’s sweater was wadded on the floor beside the bed. I reached down and touched it. It was still a little damp from last night’s rain and, for all I knew, from my tears. Feeling it under my fingers, I was overwhelmed with tenderness for Andrew. He had been an attentive lover, had acted thrilled and delighted to be with me. The honest truth was that it had been a lot of fun. And even I, Maggie Longstreet, might be entitled to some fun, albeit under irregular circumstances.

  It was appalling, certainly. On the other hand, I probably could have foun
d worse things to do. Perhaps it was an appalling act I could live with. Didn’t Colette write a novel about something like this? And look at Edith Piaf. Didn’t Edith Piaf—

  I felt Andrew nuzzling the back of my neck. “You’re awake early,” I said.

  His breath stirred my hair. “I’m not exactly awake. Only part of me is.”

  Appalling, but here we were. “You young bucks are insatiable.”

  “Our most endearing characteristic.”

  I didn’t have time to think about it right then, but when I did I’d look up that novel by Colette.

  Later, I sat and drank coffee while he scrambled the eggs, standing at the stove wearing only his jeans. The sunlight fell through the window on his tousled hair, picked out the planes of his neck and his pale shoulders. “The secret is a pinch of oregano,” he said.

  “I’ll add it to my recipe file.”

  The eggs were delicious, but we had only half-finished them when the phone rang. Its impolite jangle reminded me of all I had succeeded in forgetting since last night, and I answered with regret.

  The woman’s voice at the other end of the line was cold and businesslike. “Mrs. Longstreet?”

  “Yes?”

  “My name is Jane Malone.”

  An eye-opener, for sure. I mouthed “Jane Malone” to Andrew, and motioned him toward the extension in the study. “Yes?” I said again.

  “I’m with the Basic Development Corporation. I’d like to talk with you. Would it be possible for you to meet me today?”

  I didn’t relish getting together with the owner of that voice. “Fine. Shall I come to your office?”

  “I’m working at home. The Barbary Plaza. Do you know where it is?”

  Know where it is? Did Jane Malone think I could have missed seeing the worst glass-and-concrete eyesore ever to be inflicted on San Francisco’s waterfront? “I’m familiar with it.” We arranged to meet in an hour and hung up.

  “I wonder what she wants,” Andrew mused as we finished our eggs. “Listen”— there was concern in his eyes— “you be especially careful. We already know Jane Malone has a lot at stake here.”

  “I don’t think she’ll have me garotted in the Barbary Plaza. Wonder why she wants to see me there, anyway, instead of in her office.”

  “Keeping it unofficial,” Andrew said. “Listen. About being careful. I’m not kidding.”

  The rain had washed the city and left behind it brilliant sun, a dancing wind, and choppy green waves on the bay. By the time I reached the Barbary Plaza, though, my mood was not as bright as the weather warranted, and I felt considerably less confident than when I’d been boasting cozily in my kitchen.

  All I knew about Jane Malone was that she was dishonest, had an unpleasant voice, and was known as a difficult customer. “I never saw her in the flesh, but she has a reputation as one tough lady,” Andrew had told me before we parted. “She started at Basic as some low-level employee and blasted her way to the top. Nobody ever implies that she screwed her way up, either. From what I hear, she loves making a buck better than anything else. Never been married, or even had a lover, male or female, that anybody knows about.”

  A tough lady with a taste for the good life, I thought, as I walked between the clipped hedges toward the scarlet-uniformed doorman. The Barbary Plaza had nouveau riche written all over it— it was somewhere for rock musicians and drug dealers to stay when they weren’t at their places in Marin, or a haven for filthy rich entrepreneurs in the human-potential business. The security officer in the two-story lobby took my name and called Jane Malone. Waiting for clearance, I gazed through the glass wall at the terraced gardens in back of the building and the glittering bay beyond. It could be, I thought morosely, that Jane Malone had killer Dobermans. Or that a man with a gun would be hiding behind her door.

  In fact, as soon as I rang her bell I heard dogs, but their yapping wouldn’t make anybody’s blood freeze. Chihuahuas, evidently. When she opened the door two of them, one dressed in a pink knitted sweater and one in a blue, barked insanely at my ankles, prompting me to wonder whether the SPCA would mind my kicking them in their bulging sides.

  “Lambie! Gigi! Stop it this minute!” Jane Malone commanded. Then, to me, “Come in, Mrs. Longstreet. They won’t hurt you.”

  I edged into the room, eyeing her curiously. The quintessential tough lady doted on a pair of Chihuahuas? Looking at her, it was hard to believe she ever doted on anything. She was short, stocky, freckled, and she looked as vulnerable as a roll of barbed wire. Her graying reddish hair was short and straight, her broad face devoid of makeup, and her eyes the color of freshly poured concrete. The green pantsuit she wore, while obviously expensive, did nothing to deemphasize the square solidity of her figure.

  “Sit down, Mrs. Longstreet.” Peremptory tone. Still pursued by Lambie and Gigi, I settled gingerly on the edge of a dark rose brocade chair and looked around. The room was almost a parody of “feminine” bad taste. White shag carpet, rose-and-green antique sofa and chairs, crystal chandelier, two Dresden shepherdesses on the mantelpiece. Through an open door, I could see the corner of a bed covered with a pink satin bedspread. Looking at Jane Malone again, I saw masses of inner conflict— the hard-nosed businesswoman versus the chatelaine of a fluffy, extravagant boudoir that she shared with two yapping, spoiled, overfed babies.

  “Coffee?” The silver service was on the table, with its tiny sugar cubes with tongs for serving them and delicate, flower-decorated china cups. I was certainly getting the treatment. I wondered how long I would have to put up with polite mouthings before I found out what she wanted.

  Not long. Jane sipped her coffee once and said, “I understand you attended a meeting of Citizens Against the Golden State Center last night.”

  Privacy was apparently a meaningless concept these days. “That’s right.”

  “I wonder if you realize that your presence at gatherings such as that one is— how shall I put it— a potential source of embarrassment for Basic Development?”

  “I’ve never thought about it.” I had no desire to be anything but brusque with her.

  “Possibly you haven’t.” An excuse for a smile touched her lips. “Let me explain. If you, as the Redevelopment Director’s ex-wife, joined a protest group and became active, and if the media got wind of it— well, you know what the media in this town are like.” Her smile deepened. We were buddies, equal in our superiority to the media. “It would be publicity we neither want nor need. Do you understand?”

  “I suppose so.”

  “The point is this.” Jane’s tone was becoming increasingly mellifluous as mine got more brittle. “I wouldn’t ask you to compromise your convictions. But I do want you to know that we would strongly prefer your not joining the protest.”

  “I see.” She obviously expected a further response, but to hell with her. I sat woodenly, staring at a sentimental nineteenth-century landscape on the opposite wall.

  After a few moments she poured more coffee and said, “Mrs. Longstreet, now that you have time on your hands, have you considered getting a job? Part-time, perhaps? A lot of women are doing that these days.”

  I was surprised at the change of subject. “I suppose I’ve thought about it, but I don’t really have any marketable skills, and jobs are hard to find.”

  “That’s true.” Jane seemed lost in contemplation. Then she brightened. “You know, it’s funny I thought of it. We have something opening up in public relations that you might enjoy. Writing and research. And actually, the money’s quite good for part-time.” She sipped delicately and patted her lips with an embroidered napkin. “If you’re at all interested, I can alert our personnel department.”

  I stared at her. So this was how it was done. This was probably how they bought Richard— during a polite conversation over the coffee cups, with suggestions so delicately put they almost didn’t sound like a bribe at all. Well, I wasn’t Richard, and Jane Malone was waving her fancy job offers at the wrong member of the unemployed
.

  “No, thank you.” I was surprised that I sounded so cool. I stood up. “I have to go now.”

  Jane’s fresh-concrete eyes hardened a little, and she held up a freckled hand. “Wait a moment. If you aren’t interested in the job, fine. But I insist that you stay out of the Golden State Center protest. It will be best for everyone if you do. Best for us, and— I’m trying to make this absolutely clear, Mrs. Longstreet— best for you.”

  Enough was enough. “If that’s a threat, then perhaps I should report you to the police. They might want to know where to look if anything happens to me.”

  “Certainly they might.” Jane glanced at a gilded clock. “That reminds me. I’m having drinks with the commissioner later this afternoon.”

  I wanted to feel my fingers around her squatty neck. “Have a wonderful time. Enjoy it, before something comes along that even your friend the commissioner can’t ignore.”

  Jane was on her feet, too. “You force me to warn you, Mrs. Longstreet—” she began, but I didn’t want to listen to her anymore. I strode to the door and walked out, leaving her to make her threats to Lambie and Gigi.

  I was too mad to be frightened until I reached my car, but once there I began to shake. Jane Malone had a lot of clout, and I had made her angry. And if she and Richard were upset now, wait until he discovered the folder was missing. Then they’d really be running scared.

  In the midst of these disturbing thoughts I remembered my appointment with Joseph Corelli. It was still early. I drove to Columbus Avenue and, for want of a better alternative, parked in a lot. I wasn’t far from Andrew’s apartment. I felt an unexpected rush of longing for him, but I knew he’d be at the Times. North Beach was looking charming, and bohemian, and all the things it could be if you ignored the Broadway sleaze. A couple of blocks down, Luigi’s red and white awning flapped cheerfully. Loath to eat there after Andrew’s tale of the violated restaurant code, I went instead to a health-food bar and ate an avocado-and-sprouts sandwich and drank a yogurt shake. My stomach wasn’t especially pleased with this intrusion swallowed on top of Jane Malone’s threats, and it was with a certain queasiness that I walked down the street to Luigi’s.