One Coffee With (23 page)

“You
know that and
I
know that and so does the artist,” Tramegra agreed cheerfully, “but critics cry foul every time. They say it’s not the same, and anyhow—”

He had taken a swallow from the coffee cup and now broke off to stare at it distastefully. Then his brow cleared.
“How
silly
of me!
I’ve taken your cup by mistake. How on
earth
can you drink it without sugar?”

He brought her another cup and pointedly pushed it over to her side of the coffee table. The swallow had been so bitter that he added another spoonful of sugar to his already sweetened cup. As he stirred the dark liquid and rattled on—he had switched subjects again and was now onto Tibetan tea flavored with rancid yak butter—Sigrid felt a faint flicker of conjecture.
A flicker that steadily brightened into radiant certainty.

Gratified by the expression on her thin face, Roman Tramegra expanded on Montezuma’s addiction to cocoa. A fascinating subject, he decided. Perhaps he should write an article on it.

C
HAPTER
18

A
s Sigrid crossed the squadroom
the next morning, she was appalled to hear laughter spilling from her small office and to see a large group of men clustered around the open doorway. With a jolt she remembered the interview. Useless to envisage all the outfits she might have chosen from the Carolina side of her closet. Today’s navy suit might be a twin of yesterday’s gray one—just as shapeless and selected with just as little thought.

She was annoyed at having to waste goad time on such a frivolous thing as this interview. How the hell could she phrase words about her “conflicts” as a woman in a traditional male preserve when her mind was running happily on completing a case against Riley Quinn’s murderer?

Lower-ranking detectives stepped aside and melted back to their desks upon becoming aware of her presence, and Sigrid’s head was high as she took possession of her office.

“I’m glad to see you’ve been taken care of, Miss Fielden,” she said pleasantly, noting the ministrations of her fellow officers.

They had brought the young woman coffee, doughnuts and the morning papers; and now they were offering themselves as substitute subjects to interview.

“Ms.
Fielden,” said the editor a little breathily, “but do call me Iris.”

From her past experience Sigrid was quite prepared for a glamorous editor; but most of the interviewers she had met had achieved some balance between the feminine and the businesslike. Ms. Fielden, however, kept her businesslike qualities—whatever they might be—well concealed.

She had curls, long eyelashes, and many rings on her pink-tipped fingers; and she so completely filled a pink ruffled shirt that the distracted Duckett seemed unable to tear himself away from Sigrid’s office. That Ms. notwithstanding, Iris Fielden looked about as militant a feminist as the average Las Vegas chorine, and her manner matched her appearance.

And true to Sigrid’s foreboding, the lady gushed.

Still, as Captain McKinnon had pointed out the day before, this was not her first interview. Efficiently she removed Duckett and the rest from her office, closed the door, then faced Fielden’s tape recorder calmly. Whenever the questions strayed from the professional to the personal, she couched her answers in vague generalities that would apply to almost any working woman and firmly steered the conversation back to the job itself. In the end the young editor was so inundated with facts, figures and stacks of police-department publicity pamphlets that she numbly asked, “What was the name of that sergeant who works in— Burglary, was it?”

“Missing Persons,” Sigrid answered guilelessly.

“Sergeant Louella Dickerson.
Mrs.
Dickerson.” Without the slightest twinge of conscience Sigrid offered Dickerson up on a sacrificial platter, even tucking in a candied apple to enhance the dish: “I’ve heard that her husband’s extremely proud of her, but that he worries about her all the time.”

It was sufficient. Appreciatively Ms. Iris Fielden jotted down directions and telephone numbers, then departed, making her way across the squad room to the accompaniment of even more appreciative whistles.

Even Detective Tildon, entering the office as she left, looked bemused until he felt Sigrid’s sardonic stare. He flushed, his cherubic face embarrassed. Despite twelve years on the force Tillie still believed that a happily married man shouldn’t be looking.

“I wonder if Marian would like a blouse like that?” he said, then flushed again.

Sigrid had met Tillie’s wife once: a pleasant-faced birdlike redhead whose chest was even flatter than her own. She rather doubted that Marian Tildon would do justice to a pink ruffled blouse and repressively reminded Tillie of the tasks at hand.

Without going into the details about Roman Tramegra and the previous evening, Sigrid outlined her new theory of how Riley Quinn’s killer had made certain he and not Nauman would get the poisoned cup.

Tillie nodded enthusiastically when she’d finished. “That sure takes care of the how,” he said, “but why?”

Together they sorted through all the statements they’d been given during the past two days and looked for stronger motives. Everything was too nebulous. It meant another morning of digging.

“Just the same, I wonder why Harley Harris didn’t say something,” Tillie said.

Sigrid reached for the telephone. “Did we ever ask him?”

I
t was shortly after
10:00
a
.
m
. when they met again to compare notes at the unmarked cruiser parked behind Van Hoeen Hall.

“Why don’t we walk down to the river?” asked Tillie, who responded more directly than Sigrid to spring’s quickening transformation. “It’s another gorgeous day.”

Sigrid looked around and for the first time realized that it was a gorgeous day. Once again spring seemed to have arrived while her back was turned. She stepped from the car and followed Tillie down a long brick path, which led to the promenade overlooking the East River.

Short-sleeved students lay on the grass in sheltered nooks close to the buildings, rushing the sunbathing season as they studied or flirted or just enjoyed being outdoors without heavy winter clothes. Overhead a few small puffs of white cloud had drifted into the April blue sky; forsythia arched golden branches over a nearby water fountain, and a double row of yellow buttercups marched primly along each side of the path. Most of the benches along the path were occupied, but a breeze blowing in across the water kept the river walk itself almost deserted. The ropes of wisteria twined about the overarching trellis let welcome sunshine through now; later in the summer the walkway would be a dark tunnel shaded by thick leaves and sweet with the heavy scent of purple blossoms. As they paced its sunlit length, there was a medieval feel to the promenade, which reminded Sigrid of the reconstructed Cloisters up at Fort Tryon Park.

She leaned against a brick column, one trousered leg propped upon a low stone bench, listening to Tillie’s report with only half an ear while she stared moodily across the blue gray river at the ugly piers lining the Brooklyn shore.

Riley Quinn was to be buried tomorrow afternoon. By all accounts he had been a pompous, arrogant man.
An opportunistic thief and so petty as to use his own work of scholarship for revenge; yet scholar enough to save a potentially destructive journal because it chronicled the creation of Janos Karoly’s masterwork.
That was a saving grace; but even if Quinn had died without a single virtue, the responsibility of discovering his murderer would still be hers.

Think of it as a puzzle in logistics, she reminded herself. Or a simple algebraic equation, a solving for
x.
Try to forget that x equaled a person who might be a hundred times more ethical, more humane,
more
likable than Riley Quinn. Judgment—thank God—was definitely not her responsibility—only the clear identification of the unknown
x.
Hold to that.

Traffic out on the East River was light this morning. Gulls wheeled and swooped above an open garbage scow, and in the middle distance a slowmoving police launch passed an even slower tug. Downriver from them a helicopter lifted from a pad at the water’s edge, shattering the relative quiet and bringing Sigrid back to the present.

Friday classes in the Art Department were still not back on schedule this morning even though she and Tillie had not interrupted the pace. They had poked around classrooms and offices casually, their questions vague and seemingly unspecific; but between them they had spoken to everyone except Sandy Keppler and Oscar Nauman. David Wade wasn’t expected till after eleven, but Tillie had tracked down the graduate student who shared a desk in the nursery with Wade and had taken that puzzled young woman into an empty classroom for a long talk. His indirect questioning had elicited answers that confirmed Sigrid’s earlier hypothesis.

“Does it feel right to you now?” asked Tillie, hoping that Sigrid’s intuition would agree with what common sense accepted so completely. He had learned that unraveling the problem was what held the tall, calm-eyed lieutenant’s interest.
The more complex, the better.
Wearing a suspect down, hearing the actual confession, amassing evidence for an airtight prosecution—all the details so reassuring to his methodical soul—left her depressed; so he was relieved to see her nod.

“All we need is confirmation from Professor Nauman,” she said, squaring her shoulders decisively as they turned away from the river and headed back to Van Hoeen Hall.

Although a couple of inches shorter, Tillie matched her easy strides. His heart lightened as they moved toward familiar routine. This was one of the easy ones after all; another open-and-shut case.

Just that one tricky bit remaining, he reminded himself as they retraced their steps and merged with a throng of brightly clad students surging into Van Hoeen’s side entrance.

I
n Sandy Keppler’s
cheerfully shabby plant-filled office Lemuel Vance was amusing Piers Leyden, Andrea Ross and Sandy herself with a description of an administrative assistant’s appraisal of Sam Jordan’s contribution to the faculty exhibition. The burly printmaker had a mild talent for mimicry, and he minced across the room as if on high-heeled shoes and looked down his nose at the wastebasket which his supercilious frown transformed into Jordan’s polished-steel sculpture.

“Are you trying to tell me,” he asked in an outraged falsetto, “that this represents
my
world?”

Instantly he became the supercool Sam Jordan:

“Hey, mama, you trying to tell me it don’t?”

Their laughter died as Lieutenant Sigrid Harald, accompanied by Detective Tildon, entered the office. Her slate-cool eyes seemed to catalog and dismiss, although her tone was pleasant enough as she asked, “Is Professor Nauman in now?”

“He’s on the telephone, “Sandy said nervously. At that moment his door banged open, and Nauman appeared, apparently in fine humor. The sight of the tall policewoman brought him up short.

“More questions, Lieutenant?” he asked blandly.

“If you can spare the time, Professor.”
She had meant to sound professional, but her voice had gone husky, and she felt a warm flush rising to her cheeks. She knew Tillie was staring at her curiously; fortunately Nauman’s attention was on the pipe stem he’d finished biting in two.

“Fire away,” he told Sigrid, then immediately asked Sandy, “Do we have any adhesive tape?”

Sigrid remained silent as the girl located a small roll in her desk drawer and handed it to him.

“In private, if you don’t mind, Professor Nauman.” Her voice was cool and under control again. “You needn’t leave,” she told the teachers who were edging from the office. “I’m sure Detective Tilden has a few more details to discuss with you.”

Quite poised now, she preceded Nauman into his office.

Sandy’s blue eyes were wide and worried as the door closed, and she twisted a strand of long blond hair anxiously while Detective Tildon spread his notes and diagrams on the corner table and invited Vance, Leyden and Andrea Ross to join him in yet another reconstruction of Wednesday morning’s events.

T
he cleaning crew
had been quite efficient in removing all traces of Riley Quinn’s sickness and death from the office he had shared with Oscar Nauman. Only a whiff of carbolic lingered, and even that was quickly being dissipated by a mild spring breeze, which drifted through the tall open windows and which seemed to bring with it a vaguely herbal scent. It made Nauman think of formal summer gardens with clipped boxwood hedges and patterned walks.

He stood by the windowsill, awkwardly trying to hold his broken pipe stem with one hand while he taped it with the other. He kept his eyes on the pipe as if by avoiding her eyes he could avoid questions of poison and murderers; but when he groped for the scissors in a jar on his desk, the bowl of the pipe slipped through his fingers.

“Oh, for heaven’s sake!”
Sigrid snapped irritably, annoyed by what seemed like cavalier treatment of her in his continued attention to mending a pipe. She laid her notebook down and bent to pick up the pipe, and as she straightened, she caught the lost look on his face, and her tone gentled. “You hold it and I’ll tape,” she said.