She located the old Life article on her first try, pulled it out and started to close the drawer when another folder nearer the front caught her eye.
It was labeled simply “Leif”, and it was not very thick. Inside were a couple of letters addressed to Miss Anne Lattimore in her father’s masculine scrawl, a birth certificate, diplomas, a driver’s license, a medal and its accompanying posthumous citation, some police-department forms dealing with death benefits and a handful of pictures.
Sigrid had seen most of the pictures before but not in several years. She had difficulty locating her father in a group-graduation pose, one skinhead rookie out of a whole class of uniformed lookalikes. There was a formal studio portrait—how very young he looked—and a close-up of herself at six months, sitting on his lap, wearing his patrolman’s hat and gnawing on the handle of his service pistol.
In the last picture he was as she could just barely remember him: laughing directly into the camera, his fair hair slicked back, tall and handsome and utterly self-assured. A man’s hand rested on his shoulder, and a closer look revealed that someone had been cropped from the picture. Odd. Idly she wondered who it was, and why he’d been cut way. Along the right border was a date and in her mother’s hasty script the words: “First day in plain clothes.”
Two months before he’d been gunned down.
It was disorienting to look at the date and suddenly realize that she was now older than he had been. Somehow one never expects to grow older than one’s parents. It upset life’s natural order. Then she remembered the time when she was still in uniform and had been sent to tell an elderly mother that her son had been killed in a car wreck that evening. The old woman had just stared at her numbly, shaking her head over and over in mute denial that finally came out in soft bewildered cries, “But he isn’t old enough. He’s not old enough to die.”
Sigrid knew it must feel much more unnatural to outlive a child than a parent; nevertheless, she gave a final uneasy glance at her father’s unlined face before replacing the folder and closing the drawer. The Life article she kept out to take back to her own apartment, where she could relax finally with a bourbon and cola, her one southern mannerism.
As she moved through the apartment switching off lights, Sigrid was suddenly alerted to a furtive noise at the front door. Adrenaline flowing, but without panic, she quickly doused the remaining lights and positioned herself behind it. Another soft click and it opened slowly. Light from the hallway spilled in along with a case of some sort. A figure followed, someone who carried a small penlight that flashed along the floor and walls and hesitated on the Anne-figure hat rack.
Moving to catch him off balance, Sigrid yanked the door all the way back.
“That’s far enough!” she told the dark figure silhouetted in the bright doorway. “Hands on the wall mister, feet spread. Now!”
The penlight jerked across her face, touched on the gun she held in her right hand. There was a sharp intake of breath, then the penlight wavered and slipped to the floor from limp fingers. The man himself followed close behind, crumpling softly, almost noiselessly.
Sigrid had never had anyone faint on her before. Bemused, she switched on the lights again, pulled the man all the way across the threshold, then closed the door and turned to examine her catch.
Male Caucasian she thought, automatically falling into official-report jargon. Age? Early forties? Hair (what there was of it) a sandy brown, almost no gray. Long on the sides and probably usually brushed forward to augment a hairline that had receded to the dome of his head. Eyes closed now, of course. Well nourished but not actually fat. He was dressed rather like someone out for a day of elephant hunting in the Serengeti: wide-brimmed canvas hat, rumpled khaki safari suit, open-necked shirt and leopard-print silk scarf. Instead of boots he wore fawn-colored suede shoes with thick crepe soles.
Since he wasn’t actually carrying an elephant gun, Sigrid put her own .38 away and slipped her hand inside his breast pocket. She came out with a wallet, an airline folder and a passport. Passport and wallet indicated that the man was Roman Tramegra, age forty-two. According to the ticket stubs in his Alitalia folder, his flight had arrived at Kennedy International an hour or so earlier; but the whole trip had originated with a flight from Sardinia.
Which came very near to explaining everything. Her mother was at last report in Italy on assignment for Eyewitness. The newsmagazine planned to devote a fall issue to the state of worldwide violence and terrorism, and Anne and two other freelance journalists were gathering background material and local color on how kidnapping had become almost a cottage industry in Italy.
Another of Anne’s displaced persons, and she had just terrified him into fainting.
Ever since Sigrid could remember, an odd assortment of characters had wandered in and out of her mother’s life. Anne attracted them the way some people attract stray dogs and cats; and just as an animal lover always manages to find good homes for his waifs, Anne was equally successful at finding homes or jobs or sanctuary of some sort for her strays. Sigrid wondered what category Roman Tramegra would fall into.
She rolled him onto a small Turkestan rug and dragged it across the vinyl-tile floor to a couch in the living room. There she shoved aside a couple of Anne’s geopolitical maps, hoisted him onto the couch and slid cushions under his feet. Returning from the bathroom with a cold cloth for his forehead, she found him blinking heavy-lidded blue eyes in her direction.
“Oh, good, you’re awake,” she said. “Can I get you something? Coffee, tea or bourbon?”
“Don’t bother. You’ve done quite enough already,” he said coldly, sitting up and adjusting the leopard-print scarf at the neck of his shirt. His voice was unexpectedly deep, a bit pompous and with more than a touch of affronted dignity.
“Look,” Sigrid told him, “I do apologize for what happened. My mother didn’t tell me she was lending the apartment, and I thought you’d picked the lock. I’m sorry.”
He smoothed the long piece of side hair carefully into place across the top of his head. “She said you were a policewoman, so I quite understand your reaction. Please don’t give it another thought. My fault for not ringing the doorbell first. Still it never occurred to me that anyone was inside. Anne said the place was here going idle, and I thought—” He took a deep breath and gave her an abashed smile, which made him look more human. “I’m simply chattering, aren’t I? I always talk too much when I’ve been upset. Reaction, I expect. You mentioned tea. I do hope it’s souchong.”
Sigrid shook her head. “Lipton.”
“Loose?” he asked clutching at straws.
“Sorry, only tea bags, I’m afraid,” Sigrid said gravely, privately amused rather than insulted by the man’s air of having landed among savages.
There was a brief internal struggle, then he shrugged his shoulders in a what-more-can-one expect gesture of resignation. “Tea bags will be fine.”
As Sigrid started for the kitchen, he exclaimed, “How careless of me! I almost forgot I have a letter for you.” He fumbled in his breast pocket. “Gone! My wallet—”
“There on the coffee table,” she said; and as he drew himself up, she said defensively, “For all I knew, you could have been a thief.”
“And you thought I might have been carrying my own Wanted Poster, Miss Harald?” he said icily. Then in another of his abrupt about-faces, he asked curiously, “Do they?”
Sigrid was caught off guard. “Do they what?”
“Thieves. Do they ever carry clippings of their exploits? You know: ‘Tiffany’s robbed of half a million in diamonds during daring morning theft.’ Things of that nature.” He had found the letter m his wallet and handed it to her as he waited for her answer.
“I really don’t know,” she said nonplussed. “I suppose it’s possible, but I’ve never heard of it. I’ve never worked Burglary, though.”
“I may do a detective novel. I’m a writer, you see,” he confided, padding down the hall behind her as she heade
d for the kitchen. “I could have the criminal keep a scrapbook with newspaper clippings of all his nefarious deeds, and after he was caught, there would be a marvelous denouement with my detective realizing that he hadn’t known half the crimes my gangster had committed. He’d be simply flabbergasted!”
Tramegra beamed at her. “You’ll probably find me a complete nuisance before I’ve finished, Miss Harald, but I warn you I’m going to pick your brain for technical details. They’re very important in a book. Attention to detail is what separates the careful writer from the hack, you know.”
His accent was an amalgam of cinema British, Boston Yankee and American Midwest, and he was still burbling as Sigrid pointed him in the direction of the bathroom to freshen up.
In the kitchen she filled the kettle, unearthed a seldom used teapot, rinsed out the dust and put in two tea bags, their tagged strings dangling over the edge. As she waited for the water to boil, she read Anne’s letter:
Cagliari, April 12
Siga, dear,
Sorry not to have written before. Italy’s got weird. The kidnappings would be funny if none of them were violent. Can you believe that a carabiniere’s wife was held for $110 last week? None of us go anywhere alone, and we dress and look like retired schoolteachers without a soul in the world to pay even a $10 ransom.
Sigrid paused for a moment to imagine what her mother’s idea of a retired schoolteacher would be. She doubted Anne could make herself look that dowdy.
But I’ll write you all about it another time because this is supposed to be introducing Roman Tramegra. I’ve told him he can use my place while I’m gone. That’ll save you having to come over. Be nice to him. He’s had a very difficult time lately—someone rooked him of his money, and he doesn’t want to talk about it. Not that you would ask, I know, but you do have a way of looking at people until they feel so guilty that they start babbling too much.
There, you see? You’ve even got me doing it long-distance.
Anyhow, Romey’s a dear, sweet man. And he does need a place to stay while he researches his novel—something to do with a man who falls in love with a holographic image or something like that. (He seemed to think I’d know how holograms work just because I’m a photographer. When I don’t even know how a reflex camera works!)
See you sometime next month. Shall I bring you a sheepskin rug?
Love,
Mother
The kettle whistled stridently. Sigrid filled the teapot, added sugar and a jar of nondairy creamer to the mug and spoon already on the tray and carried it into the living room.
Tramegra had exchanged his jacket and scarf for a dark brown cardigan. Again Sigrid noted a softness about him, though he could not be called fat. An impression of fragile bones beneath a covering of soft flesh. Then she remembered a large, soft Persian cat her southern grandmother had owned—that was what Roman Tramegra reminded her of—a large, soft, pampered cat, amiable, but always with a slight reserve of dignity behind the amiability.
He moved aside a bowl of dead flowers and gathered up a handful of odds and ends to clear a space on the coffee table for the tray Sigrid carried.
“Ah, tea,” he exclaimed. “How welcome it is! And you mustn’t apologize for the imitation cream. No one could produce fresh milk on such short notice.” Still there was an involuntary lift of his eyebrow when he noticed the mug instead of a china cup and saucer, as if she really might make apology for that lapse. Manners triumphed, however, and he said, “Aren’t you joining me?”
“Sorry,” she said, glancing at her watch. It was after eleven. “This has been a long day. The guest room’s second on the left there; I think mother keeps its linens in the bottom bureau drawer.”
They both looked around the big messy living area. Sigrid supposed she should make some sort of effort, but she was too tired. Instead she gathered up her jacket, purse and the Life folder. “If you can’t find anything, just root around,” she advised him. “And if you need me, I’m in the phone book.”
“Oh, I’m sure I’ll manage,” he said pouring his tea. “All this really needs is a good vacuuming.” He looked again at the clutter—at the heaps of newspapers and magazines piled beside couches and chairs and under tables, at the moldy coffee mugs, ashtrays and stray pieces of feminine apparel.
“Or maybe a shovel,” Sigrid heard him amend as she let herself out.
CHAPTER 11
From infancy Sigrid had known puzzled looks from her mother’s friends. Sooner or later would be murmured the inevitable, “She certainly doesn’t take after you or Leif, does she?”
The comparisons didn’t hurt less for being voiced in soft southern accents as Sigrid discovered the Christmas Anne was delayed by an assignment in the Philippines. Grandmother Lattimore had come up from North Carolina to keep Sigrid company when she came home from boarding school, thirteen years old and at her very gawkiest.
Mrs. Lattimore had raised three feminine belles, and she was at a loss with this Yankee granddaughter. She had brought Sigrid a Christmas dress of red velvet and white lace, but even she immediately saw how inappropriate such a dress would be on a child all arms and legs. Sigrid was already two inches taller than her grandmother. Her hair was dark like Anne’s, but its absolute straightness came from Leif, and it was so silky fine that it frizzed when Mrs. Lattimore tried to curl it.
“You’ve got a lot of things about you like your mama and daddy, honey,” the woman had sighed, “only you just went and put them together differently. Well, I guess it doesn’t really matter. They say you’re going to be real intelligent. That’s nice.” Her voice had been dubious; then more briskly she’d added, “You’re still not grown up yet, and if you cultivate a pleasant personality, why you’ll do just fine! Look at your Cousin Lunette—plain as an old board fence, and she was the most popular girl of her year. Eight marriage proposals before she was twenty, and she had those squinchy little eyes from the Howard side of her family. At least yours are nice and wide, honey. All you need to do is learn to use them.”
Anne had always talked about the “marvelous planes” of her face; but after Grandmother Lattimore’s blunt assessment Sigrid had gone into the bathroom, locked the door and studied herself feature by feature, angrily brushing away the tears that welled up in her clear gray eyes. Coldly she noted that her face wasn’t actually repulsive, and that grandmother was right. Her eyes probably were her best feature. They would have to suffice.
Since then Sigrid had stopped looking in mirrors except to be sure everything hung together decently. Once and for all on that thirteenth Christmas she had decided—and accepted the fact—that she was homely and ungraceful, and it had never occurred to her that she might have changed. Or that there were standards of beauty other than her grandmother’s stereotype.
She had no idea how stunning she could look when alone in the evenings, her dark hair loose, and robed in one of the exotic djellabas or caftans that Anne kept sending from all over the world. Tonight’s was a deep wine red with sleeves and hem widely banded by rich embroidery interspersed with crystal beads and tiny mirrors no larger than a thumbnail.
When it arrived last Christmas Sigrid had sighed at her mother’s frivolous taste, and she’d scowled at her reflection upon trying it on—peacock feathers on a crow, she’d thought—but by now habit and familiarity had made it as unremarkable as gray flannel. Only gray flannel didn’t complement her skin as did the robe. She was a barbaric splash of color as she curled up on her white linen couch to read the old Life article, and the lamplight did interesting things to the hollows of her cheeks and eyes as she concentrated on the magazine.
The article on modern American artists had been her mother’s first important assignment with a major magazine, and her success with it had led to other plums. Perhaps anyone could have photo graphed the artworks as cleanly, but the Anne Harald touch lay in the way her camera caught each artist’s personality and philosophy more openly than usual as the subjects responded to the woman behind the le
ns.
Seven lesser luminaries shared one double spread, but Oscar Nauman had been one of five artists who had double pages to themselves. There he was in what Sigrid now recognized as a characteristic pose: his lean frame carelessly sprawled in a chair, but both hands gesturing in an inward curve as he strove to make his point. One could almost feel the energy and intensity contained in that gesture.
The straightforward captions beneath each picture served mainly to identify the subject; but in the accompanying four-page essay Riley Quinn’s prose was lucid and his positions were well-argued. Sigrid had never been able to get past what she regarded as the paradoxes and put-ons of modern art, but Quinn’s style was vivid and easy to follow. Although aggressively opinionated, he had made his points confidently and logically and had marshaled excellent concrete examples to back up his statements.
One would need a strong ego and an even stronger grounding in modernism to refute him or beat him in his own area, and Sigrid began to understand how an artist might fear for his reputation if Riley Quinn turned thumbs down on his work.
As Quinn had planned to do to Piers Leyden? With relish, if one could believe all accounts.
One small dose of innocent-looking orange crystals, and Leyden could subvert Quinn’s book and take possession of Quinn’s beautiful wife.
One Coffee With Page 11