One Coffee With Page 6

  The last studio—Prof. Oscar Nauman, Color and Basic Design, read the card on the door—was different again. Despite the bursts of color blocks and circles tacked to the molding, there was a feeling of order, calm and discipline that had been lacking in the first two studios. Drawing tables stood in neat rows, their precision marred only by their tops being tilted at different angles. Twenty-three of the tables were completely bare; the twenty-fourth was littered with a drift of two-inch paper squares in every conceivable shade of red.

  A young girl whose hands and face carried smudges of the same reds looked up as Sigrid entered the room and gave her an electric smile. “I did it!” she said, dazed triumph in her voice. “I really did it!”

  “Did what?”

  “Went from dark red to light pink in nine equal steps. See?”

  On the table in front of the girl was a white sheet of paper on which were aligned nine of the little squares of red tones. The gradations shaded from almost black to light pink and reminded Sigrid of a paint store’s sample card.

  “Is that so very difficult?” asked Sigrid.

  “Difficult!” the girl hooted. “Boy, it’s plain you never took Oscar Nauman’s color class! What time is it? Five? God! No wonder I’m feeling so empty—I’ve been down here working on this thing since eleven this morning. It’s really a hairy problem,” she explained. “See, the assignment was to go from dark to light, any color, in nine equal steps.”

  Sigrid looked puzzled, so the girl tried again. “Look, I started with this dark red square, right? So dark it’s almost black. Then I put down another square that’s a little more of a clear red, right?”

  Sigrid nodded.

  “Now let’s say I next tried one of these that’s even lighter from further down at the pink end. I’m still going from dark to light, but the difference between this second and third shade is greater than that between the first and second. See? It’s got to step down exactly equal.”

  Again Sigrid nodded. “But it still doesn’t sound very difficult.”

  “Want to try? Be my guest,” said the girl, pushing all the extra little squares toward Sigrid. “I must have mixed a hundred and fifty different shades.”

  Intrigued, Sigrid began lining them up as the girl pasted her own final combination on the white paper.

  “There,” she said after a few moments.

  The girl examined Sigrid’s maiden effort and shook her head kindly. “Not bad for a first time, but the change is too great between your third and fourth, and you’ve only used seven shades. Nine’s the magic number, no more, no less. Seven’s easy and twelve’s a snap. Nine’s the bastard.”

  While the girl cleaned her brushes and put away her tools, Sigrid idly shifted the squares. “I had no idea you could spend a whole semester on just color,” she mused.

  “A semester? You could study it for years,” the girl assured her, “and still not learn half the stuff Professor Nauman knows about it. Which is weird if you think about it. I mean, look in the school catalog. Everybody else has a string of letters after their names—M.F.A.’s, Ph.D.’s. Nauman has nothing. I heard he didn’t even finish high school.”

  “But he’s a good teacher?”

  “The best if you’re serious about learning rock bottom, basic fundamentals. Some of the staff, their stuff’s based on sneaky little tricks of technique, see? So they’re stingy about what they’ll share when they’re teaching. Afraid you’ll steal it. But Nauman’s generous. He’ll give you everything he has because his work’s built on solid truth. If you could imitate it, you wouldn’t want to because you’d know enough to have your own perception of truth, see?”

  “Professor Nauman must be very popular,” Sigrid said, recognizing an enthusiast.

  “Nope! No way. Lots of people hate his guts,” said the girl cheerfully. “Students and staff. He gets impatient with stupidity and laziness, and there’s lots of both floating around. They’re afraid of him. The man’s brilliant, see? And sometimes he forgets the rest of us aren’t and says what’s on his mind without even realizing that he’s cutting everybody to splinters. Hey, you through playing with those?” she finished, ready to sweep the superfluous squares of red tones into a wastebasket.

  “You’re going to throw them away? After all the time you spent making them?”

  “Sure! I’ve got the nine I need. Hey, do you want them? Take them,” she said magnanimously. “They’ll drive you crazy, but it really is a good exercise for training your color sense.”

  “Thank you,” Sigrid said formally. She collected solitaire games, and this one seemed more engrossing than many.

  The girl unearthed a manila envelope, which she filled with the color squares and gave to Sigrid before carefully carrying away her completed project. “I’m going to leave it on Nauman’s desk,” she said proudly. “He didn’t think any of us could do it in less than three days. See you!”

  With a friendly wave of her hand the girl was gone, still unaware that murder had occurred overhead while she wrestled with color.

  Sigrid followed more slowly. If a student’s casual assessment meant anything, it would be a mistake to ignore the possibility that the poisoned coffee might have been meant for Nauman instead of Riley Quinn. Jealousy and resentment could be potent corrosives.

  “Oh, there you are, Lieutenant,” said Detective Tildon from the doorway of the print workshop. With him was the uniformed officer who’d been sent to collect Mike Szabo. An earnest young rookie, he looked somewhat abashed at having to report failure.

  “Sorry, ma’am,” he said, “but they told me Szabo took off as soon as he heard about the murder. Not a word to anybody—just up and went, though he was supposed to work till seven tonight. I did get his home address for Detective Tildon.”

  Tillie touched his clipboard in affirmation that Szabo’s address was officially noted.

  Sigrid inclined her head. “Very good, Officer. Thank you.”

  “You still want someone posted upstairs?” he asked.

  “No, it’s no longer necessary,” Sigrid replied. The rookie nodded and left.

  “Is this going to take very long?” Lemuel Vance complained as Sigrid and Tillie joined him inside the studio. “I’ve got a class meeting here at six, and I haven’t eaten since breakfast.”

  “Class?” asked Sigrid. “I thought all classes were canceled for the rest of the day.”

  “Only for the day people in the department,” he said bitterly. “Administration’s decreed that since the Continuing Ed. students had no contact with Quinn, canceling classes out of respect for his memory would be, quote, meaningless, unquote. They’re ignoring the fact that everyone who teaches at night was Quinn’s colleague.”

  In light of his earlier calm over Quinn’s death Sigrid interpreted his present mood as resentment at not getting a night off, and she directed his attention to the supply closet where the chemicals were housed.

  “If the stuff that killed Riley really did come from here, maybe we’d better cancel my etching class anyhow. Admin. couldn’t object if you told them you don’t want things disturbed,” Vance said hopefully, looking around the small room.

  “That won’t be necessary,” Sigrid said coldly, crushing his plans for an early getaway. “Everything’s been photographed and examined for fingerprints. Tell me, Professor Vance, what is potassium dichromate used for?”

  “You think that’s what Riley got?” Lemuel Vance’s eyes followed hers to the red-mustachioed jar. “It’s for etching aluminum plates. Mostly we use copper or zinc, but I like the kids to know how to do it all. Or at least be familiar with the techniques. Funny,” he said slowly, “I just ordered a fresh batch last month. The first in—hell, must be nearly five years.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yeah. Like I said, we don’t use much aluminum. As you can tell, that jar’s an old one. I just dumped the new stuff in on top. But it was delivered to the office upstairs. I remember Sandy reading off all the warnings out loud. Jesus! Now I remember
Riley saying it sounded like something the cafeteria could use to jazz up the soup!”

  “Who else was there?” Sigrid asked sharply.

  Vance shrugged. “I don’t know. The usual crowd, I suppose.”

  “Ross, Saxer, Leyden?”

  Vance nodded.

  “Harris, Simpson . . . or Szabo?”

  “No. Szabo comes up to talk to Leyden once in a while, but that’s usually in Leyden’s office, not out with the rest of us in Sandy’s office.” Vance’s brow furrowed in deeper concentration. “I don’t remember Bert Simpson. Harris? No—Oscar was right about him not coming up much. Who else? David Wade definitely wasn’t because he always sits on the comer of Sandy’s desk, and that’s where Jake Saxer was leaning to read off the antidote. Not that you’re interested in Wade, I guess, but he’s usually up there every break. Young love in bloom, you know.

  “Oscar was there, too. He told me to be sure and warn the kids again about how dangerous these chemicals can be. As if I don’t read them the riot act every time they touch the knob of this closet door!”

  Remembering his facetious remarks earlier about “an eye here, a hand there,” Sigrid was bemused by his indignation.

  “One final thing, Professor Vance. Hypothetically speaking, how unusual would it look if a teacher or student or any unauthorized person entered this closet?”

  “Hypothetically, not unusual at all if they had the keys,” Vance answered with a resurgence of his former cheerfulness. “Especially during the morning hours. The hall door’s never locked, and this room is usually empty up until noon every day.”

  “But wouldn’t a student think it strange to see a historian, for instance, entering your workshop when you’re not here?”

  Vance laughed outright. “Are you kidding? Ninety-five percent of our students wouldn’t think an elephant in chartreuse tights was strange unless it squirted them in the teeth and whistled three bars of ‘Yankee Doodle.’ You’re talking about kids with eyes that see not, neither do they hear. Or if they do, they won’t admit it. They’ll print a plate with fuzzy lines and swear it looks as crisp as a photo to them. You think you’ve got ’em to the point where they’ll start to observe, and the next thing you know . . . .”

  But Sigrid, recognizing an ancient grievance, signaled to Tillie and quietly withdrew.

  CHAPTER 6

  Of all New York’s native children few were probably less aware of nature’s variety than Lieutenant Sigrid Harald. “A primrose by a river’s brim” was just another flower to that austere young woman. If pushed, she might be able to distinguish gardenias from chrysanthemums; but she was unlikely to speculate about a tiny yellow flower’s cosmic significance unless it turned up clutched in a murder victim’s hand.

  Others might mark the changing seasons by leaf and blade, by bird song or shifting constellations. Sigrid seldom noticed spring until it became too hot for bulky sweaters, tweed suits and fleece-lined boots; she awoke to summer’s passing when she found herself shivering in thin cottons and polyesters. Winter or summer, her clothes were uniformly dark and unadorned, mostly loose-fitting pantsuits chosen for comfort and utility, not style—and certainly not to celebrate the quickening spring days.

  Even a drive through Central Park, as on this evening in mid-April, was merely a way of getting from the East to the West side and was not an occasion to admire Manhattan’s largest parcel of nature. Ever since sending Detective Tilden home to wife and dinner earlier, Sigrid had been preoccupied with the puzzle of how Riley Quinn’s murderer had known he would take the right cup—always assuming, of course, that it had really been meant for Quinn.

  Neither the banks of forsythia and azaleas along the curving road nor the masses of spring bulbs now blooming for the pleasure of jaundiced city eyes made any impression on her. She was unconcerned that the oaks and maples that lined the curbs and nearly met over her car were fully leafed out; was oblivious to the vernal softness in the cool night air as she parked her car almost in front of the dead man’s brownstone just around the corner from Central Park West in the west seventies.

  Six broad shallow steps flanked by pierced stone balustrades led directly up from the sidewalk to a wide door of gleaming varnished oak adorned by a brass knocker and doorknob polished to golden brightness. The front windows seemed to wear their original glass, leaded and beveled, behind a filigree of wrought-iron bars that were both decorative and practical in a city with such a high burglary rate.

  Sigrid knew this type of house well. Her father’s aunts and uncles had owned similar houses in Brooklyn near Prospect Park, and as a small child, she had been taken there for visits. She still remembered the high-ceilinged rooms; the dark parquet floors covered with Turkey red carpets; the peacock feathers in tall vases; and Aunt Kirsten’s long, lace-covered table, spread with an incredible assortment of strange-tasting food. After tea Uncle Lars would take her over to the Prospect Park zoo to feed the polar bears while Anne, her mother, southern born and bred and therefore doubly alien, remained behind with the aunts, bridging conversational chasms with her high, light chatter. Family ties were very important to Anne, who for Sigrid’s sake had kept up with her dead husband’s people.

  The aunts and uncles in their turn had pitied the plain, gawky child Sigrid had been and always included her in family gatherings. Over the years these had gradually dwindled as the oldest generation died out. The connection with her father’s cousins was tenuous by the time Sigrid reached maturity, but she had never forgotten those long ago Sunday afternoons and those tall spacious houses.

  Nowadays such houses were at a premium again, especially in this part of Manhattan. The new owners either restored them to their former elegance, all dark wood and understated antiques, or else gutted the insides, lowered ceilings and created dramatically modern interiors behind the old facades. In any event, there would be a small, exquisite garden in the rear, just large enough for smart cocktail parties on summer evenings and—most important—the cachet of an address near or “on” the park.

  Although she may not have admired the park’s beauty, Sigrid knew there were others who did; who were, in fact, willing to pay exorbitant rents or taxes for houses with a view—even a diagonal one—of Central Park. A shocking waste of money in her opinion, but Riley Quinn’s bank balance must have been comfortable enough. The City University of New York paid its full professors generously, and as a leading expert on modern art, he’d probably done quite well financially with books, articles and outside lecture fees. Moreover, Leyden’s and Vance’s remarks suggested that Quinn had realized rather large sums from the sale of some of the Hungarian’s paintings. Was there a motive in that? Murder to stop the sale of a dead artist’s work?

  Sigrid didn’t actually expect much help from Quinn’s widow. Regretfully she was forced to concede that this did not look like the usual simple uncomplicated “family” murder, so that Mrs. Quinn was not an active suspect. Still her comments might throw a different light on Quinn’s character. Although everyone Sigrid had talked to so far said that Riley Quinn had been sarcastic, pompous and condescending, it was possible that in the privacy of his home he had been a confiding husband, had lain in his wife’s arms and in the quiet darkness spoken of those who had reason to hate him.

  Whenever Sigrid tried to picture living in close communion with someone, imagination failed her. She had read widely, of course, but she had no firsthand knowledge of how married people behaved when alone. Her father was a blurred memory: laughter; being swung up on his shoulders; the smell of his freshly shaven face; standing at the window to wave goodbye to him in his blue uniform—all this she remembered. But she’d been much too young to evaluate his relationship with her mother before he was killed; and Anne had never remarried, so Sigrid had nothing tangible to build on.

  Of all her married cousins, north and south of the Mason-Dixon line, only three or four had made it through to a fifth wedding anniversary. Yes, her career had brought plenty of opportunity to see the mechanics
of marriages in all strata of society, but she realized that police work presented a lopsided—an unrealistically grim—view of life and marriage.

  Whatever the status of Quinn’s marriage, Sigrid wasn’t to hear Mrs. Quinn’s version that night. As she reached for the bell, the heavy oak door suddenly swung open, spilling light across the threshold, and Oscar Nauman’s tall frame filled the doorway.

  Behind him stretched a hallway paneled in gleaming walnut. An intricate Tiffany lamp stood upon a richly carved chest beneath the wainscot of a wide staircase, and muted Oriental rugs softened the marble tiles. In this traditional setting the large canvases that adorned the walls looked like so many garish comic-book illustrations to Sigrid’s untrained eyes, and seemed to strike a jarring note.

  “Come to question the grieving widow?” asked Nauman sardonically when he had recognized her.

  “Yes. Is she in?”

  Nauman leaned against the door frame to consider her question. His face was shadowed, but light gleamed through his white hair and haloed his head in silver.

  “Technically she’s in; metaphysically she’s out,” he said at last.

  “The technical side will be sufficient,” she said coldly and started to pass him.

  She was blocked by a surprisingly strong arm, and his keen blue eyes were amused at her sudden irritation. Sigrid glared back at him, and he dropped his arm to herald her entrance with a sweeping flourish of his tall lean body.

  “Up the stairs and first door to your left,” he called after her. “Don’t say you weren’t warned.”

  Unreasonably annoyed, Sigrid strode up the steps, her back rigid. She was conscious of Nauman’s mocking eyes following her progress. At the top of the landing a concealed spotlight illuminated a small canvas chastely framed by unadorned wooden strips. At first glance it seemed to be nothing but a matte black square; not even a brush stroke disturbed its smooth surface, and its pointlessness fueled her annoyance.