One Coffee With by Margaret Maron Page A

entire night with her head and arms so constricted by that slip, Sigrid reflected, Mrs. Quinn was going to wake up awfully stiff and sore—that is, assuming she didn’t suffocate during the night. Deftly she extricated the rest of Doris from the slip and was rewarded by another snore and an overpowering aroma of liquor, mingled with expensive perfume.
    With the slip removed from her head, Doris Quinn was unveiled as a well-tended forty, who probably waged a daily battle with calories, but whose slight plumpness had doubtless helped keep her soft white skin so smooth and unwrinkled. Her tousled tresses were unnaturally blond but too expertly managed to show anything so crass as dark roots. Altogether a small and cuddly, pampered, indulged and thoroughly sexual woman. The kind that always made Sigrid feel gawky even though scornful of so much feminine artifice.
    Irritably she turned down the covers and rolled Doris Quinn under, tucked her in, then firmly closed the rosebud mouth. She glanced over at Piers Leyden, comatose on the furry chaise, shrugged and switched off all but one of the ruffled lamps before tiptoeing to the door. A final and distinctly unfeminine snore goaded her into banging the door shut behind her.
    On the landing she paused again to glare at that offensive black painting. What on earth had impelled Quinn (and after seeing his wife’s taste in bedroom furnishings, she was sure it was Quinn) to give wall space to something so meaningless? And not just wall space. He must have paid an electrician quite a bit to custom wire that concealed spotlight high in the ceiling.
    But even as she frowned at the picture, she became aware of hidden depths beneath its smooth surface. The longer she stared, the more there was to see. Instead of being one shade of matte black, the painting was actually a harmonious blend of transparent blacks and browns; and each subtle tonal difference assumed a different geometric form, the shapes seeming to float in a dark void, shifting and realigning to form a rich angular pattern.
    She looked away, and the canvas resumed its blank surface. She concentrated, and again veiled complexities revealed themselves. Sigrid was obscurely pleased by its elusive beauty and came downstairs in a much better humor than when she’d gone up.
    Her crossness returned, though, when she stepped out into the cool spring evening and found Oscar Nauman lounging against her car, a cold pipe clenched between his teeth.
    “I thought you’d gone.”
    “How the hell could I go?” His crossness matched hers. “One of your damned cohorts towed my car away again.”
    “And there are no taxis?” she inquired sweetly.
    “Be my guest,” he offered, sourly gesturing toward the busy avenue.
    Feeling vastly superior, Sigrid walked the few steps to the corner, stepped to the curb edge beneath a streetlight and signaled an oncoming cab. It ignored her. As did the next two. The following four were either occupied or displayed off-duty signs.
    Annoyed, she took out the brass whistle she carried in her shoulder bag and blew several sharp blasts. The only response this elicited was from an excited little Scottish terrier out for an evening stroll along the avenue, which jerked the leash free from its master’s hand and bounded down the sidewalk to dance around Sigrid’s feet and jump up at her knees.
    “Oh, dear! Oh, I’m so sorry!” apologized the owner, a plump little man in a tweed jacket with leather patches at the elbows, who bustled up to collect the bouncing animal. “Heel, Mischief! Heel, I say! It’s the whistle, you see,” he told Sigrid in a clipped English accent. “She blows it— sit , Miss! My daughter, I mean. It’s her signal— sit you naughty dog—when it’s time for a romp. For the dog I mean. Come along, Mischief. No, that’s not Sally. That’s a strange lady.”
    The man moved away, still admonishing his dog; and Nauman, his sense of humor restored, broke into rich deep laughter.