One Coffee With (16 page)

From time out of mind all Lattimore females (if one could believe her grandmother) had been captivating fillies who left a trail of broken hearts behind them on their single-minded trek to the altar. All had made brilliant matches to the most eligible bachelors of their seasons, and it was bad taste for Sigrid to remark on the ones that had ended in divorce. After all, what sort of marriage did she expect to make? Such an unfeminine career, police work. Interesting, no doubt, but didn’t one have to guard against becoming coarsened?
Thus, Grandmother Lattimore.

Over the years Sigrid had found it easier to wear clothes of Anne’s choosing for her annual duty visit south than to listen to her Grandmother Lattimore’s complaints that she really wasn’t trying.

Most of the clothes were too bright or too fussy for Sigrid’s taste; but she paused at one that wasn’t completely objectionable: a brushed cotton suit of soft moss green and a cowl-necked silk shell in rich jewel tones of purples and blues. Even Grandmother Lattimore had approved of the way she looked in that one. But the only shoes that went with the outfit were frivolous green sling-back heels, and the matching bag could barely accommodate a wallet and lace handkerchief. There was certainly no room in it for a regulation pistol, badge and note pad.

All of which brought her to her senses with a grim smile. Dithering over clothes as if Oscar Nauman were Rhett Butler and she Scarlett O’Hara instead of a New York cop! As if ugly ducklings really could become swans. What had got into her?

Without pausing to analyze the question, Sigrid flipped back to the shapeless gray pantsuit and dressed with rapid efficiency. Her chin was high, and all her defenses were in place when she emerged from her bedroom.

To find him gone.

Only dirty dishes in her sink, and a note on the counter to
advise
that he’d eaten his breakfast with relish, thank you, and hers was in the oven. She opened the oven door and took out a tender omelet and buttered toast, still warm on a plate.

Toast, yes, she thought, but the eggs are going down the garbage disposal.

Curiosity made her try a bite.

It was delicious.

Bemused, she poured herself another cup of coffee and perched on a step stool to eat the whole thing.
Anchovies on her steak last night.
And now jam with eggs.

To cap it all, the little squares of red that she’d been trying to puzzle out last night lay in perfect alignment on the counter—from the darkest red to the lightest pink in nine even steps.

Damn the man!

C
HAPTER
13

Across town
Andrea Ross was—like Sigrid—deliberating carefully over her choice of clothes but with a difference. Impractical shoes were very much a part of the picture she wanted to create. She was going to stage a deliberate and full-fledged retreat into femininity, and the morning sunlight was an innocent co-conspirator. It promised a spring day warm enough for shoes that were nothing more than delicate straps of braided straw and matched a straw-colored gathered skirt that fluttered softly around her legs. She topped the cotton skirt with a heavily embroidered Mexican peon shirt and studied the total effect in her mirror.

Getting there.

Next she skillfully manipulated a styling wand to transform her sensible short brown hair into a crown of ringlets,
then
made up her eyes to look as wide and appealing as a fawn’s.
A faint touch of blusher to her cheeks and another critical examination of her reflection.

Perfect!

She looked cool and poised enough to deliver scholarly lectures yet soft and womanly. Not helpless exactly but with no hard career edges showing. No single-minded ambitions, either, and certainly no vengeful thoughts.

Must watch the lips though, she decided, knowing that her lips looked too determined in repose, her eyes too shrewd.

Think soft, she told herself.

But her thoughts kept slipping away to the raise a promotion would mean. The grueling debts of her postgraduate years were almost repaid. There was beginning to be enough money for clothes, a decent apartment,
books
. The promotion she had expected—had earned,
damn
it—would have meant enough at last to spend a summer in France.
As a true art lover, not a penny-pinching student.
A summer to lie in fields of red poppies if she wished and drink in the soaring lines of Chartres Cathedral until that abiding thirst for perfection, unsatisfied since childhood, was finally slaked. She wanted to experience at last a direct response to what she saw with no worries of dates, theories or the pressures of a doctoral dissertation to come between
herself
and the art.

She had yearned for such a summer with an almost physical ache, and Riley Quinn had nearly cheated her of it for another few years by passing her over for Jake Saxer. As she remembered the blind fury she’d felt last week when she’d heard that Saxer had been recommended for promotion, Andrea Ross caught sight of her reflection in the mirror and was chilled by its granite grimness.

Think
soft
, she warned herself and tried to remember how innocence smiled.

In the two-family brick house
he owned within walking distance of the university, Professor Albert Simpson’s tea and toast grew cold as he contemplated promotion to deputy chairman. Although he did not possess Riley Quinn’s outside reputation, he was the most senior art historian, and no one questioned his command of his subject.

No one respected it, either, he told himself wryly.

No one except young Wade.
On the other hand, he had no enemies; no one disliked him strongly enough to vote against him, so the balloting should be a mere formality. The younger historians would probably look upon his tenure in the chair as a caretaker regime, soon to be ended by his retirement. It would give them time to square off at each other for a real battle when he stepped down.

The last time that chair had been vacant, they’d offered it to him first; but he’d turned it down, not wanting the encumbrances of administrative duties that would take him away from the classroom and eat into his precious research time. His refusal had opened up a scramble among the other younger historians, and Riley Quinn had emerged victorious—Quinn, who’d begun by using the title to further his extracurricular career; who had never neglected an opportunity to sneer at the man whose stepping aside had made it possible for him to hold that title; and who had over the years finally grown so arrogant that he’d actually commandeered a classroom teacher, Jake Saxer, to be his personal researcher for the latest of those books he churned out.
Catchpenny, simplified popularizations of the passing art scene.
As if what passed for art today needed further simplification!

Professor Simpson added another spoonful of sugar to his tea and sipped meditatively. It was stone-cold now, but that was so usual he barely noticed.

At most he was only four years from retirement, and in all the previous years he’d truly never desired a titled position or rank over his peers; but Quinn had shown an advantage to the title that had not occurred to him before; and now that it was to be offered to him again, he would take it this time. Not that he would abuse it as Riley Quinn had. David Wade had too much character to be used as Quinn had used that fawning toad Saxer. But as a colleague—a collaborator—as the son he’d never had. Somehow he would use his newly acquired power to keep Wade here. At last his book would be finished.

He reached for the telephone and dialed Wade’s number from memory. When there was no answer, he consulted the directory for a different number, then smiled indulgently at the appetites of youth as Sandy Keppler’s lilting voice said, “It’s for you, darling.”

Sandy closed the bathroom door
with an indulgent smile of her own. She’d never seen David so embarrassed before.

And it’s rather sweet when you think about it, she told herself, that he cares enough for your reputation to stammer out some corny explanation about coming over here for breakfast. (“She makes terrific French toast, sir,” she’d heard him say as she was leaving the room.)

As if Professor Simpson, who knew all about the dissipations of classical Rome, would be shocked by
a simple
bedding down before marriage. David was such an innocent about some things.

She brushed her long yellow hair vigorously, touched her lips with pink lipstick and added a hint of blue shadow to her eyelids.

The murmur of David’s voice still sounded, so she rinsed the sink, straightened towels, capped the toothpaste and uncapped his after-shave lotion for a quick whiff of spicy fragrance. So bound up in memories of their most intimate moments was that aroma that she’d once gone weak-kneed when she smelled it on a stranger on a crowded bus.

Tenderly she tucked the little bottle back into the medicine cabinet and went out to rejoin her now pensive lover.

“What did he want?” she asked as she passed him maple syrup and stirred cream into his coffee.

“I’m not really sure,” said David. His eyes were puzzled behind his wire-rimmed glasses. He lifted a forkful of French toast,
then
returned it to his plate. “You know how he always goes off on tangents?”

Sandy nodded.

“He said the apartment on the top floor of his house has an extra bedroom that could be used as a study. He also said his present tenant doesn’t have a lease.”

“He’s offering you an apartment?” she asked, perplexed.

“Us.
You and me.
Cheap.”

“Just how cheap?”
Sandy asked, knowing to a penny how far her salary would stretch. Her mouth dropped when he told her. “That’s practically free, David! And it’s only two blocks from school. No bus or subway fare!” She jumped up and hugged him exuberantly.

“It’s charity,” David said ominously, pulling away.

“No, it isn’t! Don’t you see? It’s worth it to him to have your help organizing that mountain of notes for his book. It would be an equal exchange.
Free rent instead of salary.
Isn’t that what
quid pro quo
means? And best of all, we wouldn’t have to go to Idaho while you’re finishing your dissertation.”

Her voice had hit a strident tone he’d never heard.

“You really don’t want to leave New York, do you?” he asked, frowning as he finally realized that her foot-dragging was more than a comic reluctance to trade city for country.

“Not me darling; it’s you I don’t want to leave the city. Oh, David, I couldn’t bear it if you got stuck in some backwater college! You’re too brilliant for that. New York’s the art center of this country, not Idaho! I’d do anything,” she said, “to help you stay here!”

Strange, thought David, that he’d never before noticed how strongly determined the line of her chin could be, how resolute her eyes. He’d always thought of her as a silky blue kitten, and it made him vaguely uneasy to realize she might have a fiercer nature than he’d suspected.

Tendrils of a pungent aroma
wreathed themselves around Piers Leyden’s nostrils and brought him back to consciousness. Groaning, he sat up on the furry chaise longue. His neck was unbearably stiff, and a dull red pain, beginning at the back of his head, pulsated up through his temples with each small movement he made.

The aroma defined itself: cinnamon. Hot cinnamon buns lavishly smeared with thick sugar
frosting,
drenched in butter and studded with disgusting raisins and—
merde
—was that the smell of bacon mingling with the spice?

His stomach recoiled at the idea of bacon, too.

Thick slabs of Canadian bacon browning in the kitchen below.
Sizzling in grease.
Greasy strips of meat that would be laid on a greasy plate next to a couple of greasy eggs fried sunny-side up and oozing yellow, viscous—

Leyden pushed off from the chaise longue and lurched for Doris Quinn’s red-and-gold bathroom.

When he emerged, whitish green, shaken and weak, he found Doris waiting for him with sympathy, tomato juice and the news that Riley’s sister was on her way down from upstate.

“So you’ll just have to pull yourself together and leave soon, poor sweetie,” she crooned, stroking his neck with cool fingers while he forced himself to drink the juice. Her eyes were clear and unbloodshot, her milky-white
skin translucent. In fact, Leyden thought resentfully, her whole body radiated as much dewy freshness as a field of goddamned daisies.

He built himself a backrest of ruffled pillows on her bed and gingerly eased himself down.

“It isn’t fair,” he grumbled. “You drank twice as much of that Scotch as I did. Why aren’t you hung over, too?”

Her vitality always amazed him. It was one of life’s ironies that she landed in a Manhattan brownstone instead of a Nebraska cornfield.

No, cornfield’s the wrong image, he decided, watching as she brushed her golden curls into a sunny aureole.
She was too decorative and expensive for any farmyard.