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

by a brown beard was a pale, sickly yellow. His large brown eyes were red-rimmed and blurred with grief or exhaustion, and his hair stood away from his head as if he had spent a lot of time running his hands through it. He had the raw-boned body of a high-school basketball player who hasn’t quite filled out yet. I judged him to be about twenty-five years old.
    “Andrew Baffrey,” he said. I told him I was Maggie Wilson, and we shook hands. He had the knobbiest wrists I had ever seen, or perhaps that impression came from the fact that his sweater sleeves were too short. His palm was clammy, and I could feel a tremor in his fingers. He gestured to a folding chair for me and sat down behind his desk. “Betsy says you want to do a story on Larry. What for?” he asked.
    Accustomed to Betsy’s friendly cooperation, I found the question brusque. Slightly off balance, I launched into my journalism-student story, hoping I sounded confident. The truth was, I had once thought about entering the program for real, so I knew a bit about it. Andrew made no comment, and I felt myself losing conviction under his noncommittal gaze. I finished, lamely, “I want to write about what Larry Hawkins did on his final day, and intersperse that with flashbacks about the history of the
Times.”
    “I see.” He drummed his fingers on the desk, watching them rise and fall. Finally, he looked back at me and said, “What do you want from me?”
    I was getting thoroughly unnerved. “I thought it would add to my article if I knew what stories he was working on at the time of his death. I mean, help me understand his motives and so forth.” I had never before realized how important the nods, smiles, and sympathetic sounds of normal conversation were. The silence was unbearable, so I chattered on. “The stories might provide clues to why he did it, I thought. From what I understand, suicide was very much out of character for him.”
    A jolt of pain crossed Andrew’s face, gone almost before I had seen it, leaving his eyes a little redder than before. “You could say that,” he muttered. He stood up, slipping his fingers in the back pockets of his faded jeans, and wandered back to the window. “What was your name again?”
    “Maggie Wilson. ‘
    He rested one foot on the windowsill and leaned his elbow on his knee. He was wearing a battered-looking pair of running shoes, their faded electric blue the brightest color in the room. “Maggie, I want to know why you’re here,” he said casually.
    This was it. My face was getting hot. “I told you.”
    He shook his head. “I don’t believe you.” He didn’t seem angry, or even particularly interested. “For one thing, I know the guy who runs that program at State. When he sends students over, he always calls me to see if it’s OK. Should I give him a jingle to ask about you?”
    Looking down at Candace’s notebook in my lap, I shook my head. I must look like a whipped puppy. I wished to God I’d never heard of Andrew Baffrey.
    He crossed the room and perched on the corner of his desk in front of me. “Then I want to know what you’re doing,” he said. “Did you come here for some weird kick, or are you snooping around for somebody?”
    Mustering my dignity, I stood up. My nose began to prickle, a bad sign meaning I might cry. “I’ll leave,” I said, making a tentative movement toward the door.
    Without getting up, Andrew caught me by the forearm. “I want to know what you’re doing here,” he repeated, his voice level.
    I was an idiot, a fool, and now I looked like a fool in front of this loathsome, self-righteous apprentice muckraker. I pulled my arm away, searching frantically and vainly for another plausible lie.
    “Surely you must realize how many people would like to know what Larry Hawkins was keeping under his hat,” Andrew said. “Did you think you could walk in and ask and I’d tell you, just like that? How long do you think the
Times
would last if we went around