One Coffee With by Margaret Maron Page B

“That’s a strange lady, that is,” he repeated in a burlesqued cockney accent.
    Wryly Sigrid pocketed the whistle. She walked back down to her car, unlocked it and said, “Get in, and I’ll give you a lift downtown. I need to talk to you anyhow.”
    “Only on condition that we stop for dinner first. I haven’t had mine yet, and you probably wouldn’t be so bitchy if you’ d had yours.” He climbed in beside her, and she was aware of a clean smell of turpentine and mellow tobacco. A not unpleasant combination.
    “I’m not a health-food, wheat-germ addict,” she warned nastily, turning the ignition key.
    “Neither am I, ” he answered serenely. “I had in mind a thick and bloody steak.”
    C HAPTER 7
    As twilight fell the spring evening was infused with a pervasive moistness somewhat between a heavy dew and a thin fog. It haloed streetlights and gave the air a soft texture that would make country-reared, transplanted city dwellers remember seedtime and spring rains. Restless with vague yearnings for new-turned earth, they would drift home from work tomorrow instead of rushing along in their usual blind fashion. Their eyes would see what they had previously ignored: flats of petunias, marigolds, candy tuft and salvia displayed for sale in front of a dozen different stores. And many a New Yorker, suddenly and unaccountably homesick for the green fields of Kentucky, Ohio or Minnesota, would stop and buy as many tender seedlings as his bit of earth—be it only a single narrow window box—could accommodate. “You can take the boy out of the country . . .” they would tell each other sheepishly as they exchanged advice on potting soils and tomato varieties.
    There was no gateway into Central Park opposite the street Quinn’s brownstone stood on, only tall iron railings. Behind the railings, in the deepest shadows where the illumination of one mist-blurred streetlight barely met the next, stood a man. He was concealed from casual notice by the thickly overgrown bushes, which pushed tender twigs through the rails in front of him. From his camouflaged position he had a clear view across the wide avenue and down the side street to the third house from the corner—Quinn’s house—from which a trickle of people had been coming and going since he arrived late that afternoon.
    He had watched Sigrid Harald’s attempt to whistle down a cab for Professor Nauman; and when they had finally driven away, he was fairly certain no one remained in the house except Riley Quinn’s widow. Nevertheless, he patiently waited another half hour to be sure, then made his way through the dew-wet bushes to the nearest park exit half a block away and from there to Quinn’s front door. At last, abandoning all signs of his previous stealth, he marched boldly up the broad stone steps.
    Distracted by finding Nauman still there when she emerged earlier, Sigrid had not noticed that the latch was off, so the knob turned smoothly under the intruder’s gloved hand, and he didn’t need the crowbar he carried concealed in his jacket sleeve.
    He slipped inside and closed the door even more quietly than he’d opened it. No one challenged his entry. No sound reached him at all, in fact, apart from the muted traffic noises from outside. He felt he could handle Mrs. Quinn, but it was simpler if the point didn’t arise.
    Lamps had been left lighted throughout the house. The intruder glanced disdainfully at the paintings that had looked like cartoons to Sigrid, scrutinized their signatures, then passed down the entry hall into a spacious living room stale with the odors of cigarette butts and a spilled bottle of Scotch. Someone had made a stab at tidying up, had gathered dirty ashtrays and emptied cocktail glasses onto a large wood tray that had been left on an open liquor cabinet. There were still ice cubes in the silver ice bucket and open bottles of every persuasion stood about.
    Everywhere he turned, there were more drawings and paintings. He