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

face-to-face conversation?”
    “There aren’t any bars in my neighborhood.”
    “Too bad for you. I live next door to one. Where do you live, anyway?”
    “Presidio Heights. Lake Street. Next to the park.”
    He laughed. “Anybody tries to put a bar in that neighborhood, the Planning Commission goes into special session to quash the idea. But never mind, here’s another suggestion. I have to stop by Susanna Hawkins’s, and then I was going to have an early dinner. Why don’t you meet me and we’ll grab a bite together?”
    It would beat a frozen spinach souffle. “Fine. Where?”
    “Have you ever been to the Food as Spiritual Healing Ashram Restaurant?”
    “The what?”
    “I thought not. You’ll love it. It’s run by Sufis, or Hare Krishnas, or some sect like that. The best thing about them is they give you lots of food cheap. It’s vegetarian. You don’t mind vegetarian, do you?”
    I didn’t mind vegetarian. The restaurant, a tiny hole in the wall near the intersection of Market and Castro streets, had a couple of fresh daisies on every table. Eating my way through a huge plateful of eggplant curry and brown rice that had been served by a shaven-headed Food as Spiritual Healing devotee, I was almost inclined to agree with the printed cardboard placard on the table: A FULL STOMACH; A HAPPY HEART; A SOARING SPIRIT . Certainly the ashram’s guru, whose blown-up photograph adorned all four walls, seemed to have eaten himself into a blissful state of benignity and tubbiness. “So what happened?” asked Andrew.
    I poured more chamomile tea. “After our conversation this morning, did you talk to Richard? Did you mention what I said to anybody at all?”
    He looked properly shocked and offended. “Of course not. I gave you my word, didn’t I? Off the record is off the record. Why?”
    I told him about the phone call and my subsequent visit to Richard, finishing, “He claims he isn’t having me watched, but if you didn’t tell him I came to the
Times
I can’t think of any other explanation.”
    Andrew sat back in his chair, frowning. “I don’t like this.”
    “Neither do I. Threatening phone calls are too much for me.”
    He swirled the tea in his teacup, staring at it as if he were going to read the stray chamomile blossoms in the bottom. “There’s another possible explanation.”
    “What?”
    He set the cup down. “Maybe you aren’t the one being watched. Maybe somebody’s watching the
Times
.”
    I considered the idea. “Then the person watching the
Times
would have to know me.”
    “Know you by sight, anyway. Maybe he’s an avid reader of the society pages.”
    I winced, thinking of myself squinting into the flashbulbs at a ribbon-cutting, the first night of a play, a charity ball. “Even if he did know me, why would he warn me to stay away? It doesn’t make sense.”
    “No. It doesn’t.” He picked up the cardboard placard and tapped it on the table in a nervous tattoo.
    The Indian music playing in the background sounded strange and off-key. The photographs of the beaming guru had begun to look a little sinister. “I wish…” I began, then stopped.
    “Wish what?”
    “Wish we knew what Larry’s story on Richard was about. That’s the only possible connection in all this.”
    Andrew sat slumped in his chair, still toying with the placard. A full stomach. A happy heart. A soaring spirit. I hoped I wasn’t getting indigestion. At last he reached into the pocket of his jeans, brought out a metal key ring with one key attached, and put it on the table. “Let’s go find out,” he said.
    It was a small, uninteresting-looking key. “What do you mean?”
    “This,” Andrew said, tapping the key with his finger, “is Larry’s key to the cabinet in his office. I just stopped by and picked it up from Susanna. You remember I told you I hadn’t gone through Larry’s private papers? That’s where they are.”
    “You think he kept the information on Richard there?”
    “It’s