One Coffee With

by Margaret Maron

  She was followed by her uncle, courtly and dapper in a gray silk suit and dark red tie. J. Duncan Sylvester was completely bald and had small pointed ears and thick white eyebrows, which he used for emphasis. He looked like an intelligent, wizened elf, and he raised one tufted eyebrow in surprise now. Riley’s sister had merely said that a police officer wished to see Doris; she hadn’t specified that the lieutenant was female. The publisher of The Loaded Brush was a thoroughgoing chauvinist where his niece was concerned, and he’d accompanied her to keep some hard-nosed male officer from bullying her. Fleetingly he wondered if he might not be superfluous in this interview.

  A second look at Lieutenant Harald’s cool gray eyes made him decide he should stay after all. Sylvester doted on his niece, but he had no illusions about her mental stature, and this severe-faced young woman looked quite capable of making mincemeat of Doris. He introduced himself, clearly intending to guide the interview.

  Sigrid responded politely, but her fullest attention was on Quinn’s widow.

  If Doris Quinn had shed any tears that morning, no traces of them were visible now. Her leaf green eyes were clear, her skin creamy perfection. She wore an oatmeal-colored dress whose simple cut enhanced her own generous lines and made Sigrid feel stick shaped and ill clothed. She knew, too, that Doris Quinn had sensed her discomfort, for the blonde had visibly relaxed as if she held a secret weapon that made her invulnerable.

  Oh, no, you don’t, thought Sigrid. She was stung into murmuring coldly, “I’m glad to see you’re feeling better this morning, Mrs. Quinn.”

  Unfazed, Doris smiled sweetly. Long ago she had learned that the best defense is no defense at all—polite apologies and no explanations. “I’m sorry I couldn’t speak with you last night, Lieutenant Harald. So inconvenient for you, having to come back twice.”

  “Not at all,” Sigrid said, ashamed of her flash of cattiness now that she had herself back under control.

  Unaware of the undercurrents, Sylvester knitted his thick white eyebrows at her. “How close are you to discovering who did this terrible thing, Lieutenant?”

  “That’s difficult to say, sir. I was hoping Mrs. Quinn might be able to help us.”

  “Me? How?”

  “Were you aware of any conflicts your husband might have been having lately? Did he mention anyone who might have hated him enough to want him dead?”

  “No, of course not,” said Doris, but her eyes sought her uncle’s counsel.

  “Marc Humphries was furious about Riley’s review last month,” Sylvester said after brief concentration, “but I know for a fact that he’s been in Japan since last week. What about Karoly’s nephew?”

  “That funny little Hungarian?” asked Doris. “Riley fussed about him being at the college, but they weren’t actually fighting still. Not lately.”

  Sigrid heard the dubious tone in her voice. “There was someone more recent, wasn’t there?”

  “We-ell. . . . Oh, but I’m sure it didn’t mean anything.”

  Sigrid persisted until Doris finally said, “He and Jake Saxer had a fight the night before last.” She described what she’d overheard between the two men, and Sigrid had the impression that she was repeating words she’d spoken before—though not to her uncle. Sylvester’s keen blue eyes darted attentively back and forth between the two women.

  “Arguments are almost inevitable between collaborators,” he interposed smoothly, “especially when a book is taking its final shape, and one has to be ruthless about what’s included and what must—by the exigencies of space—be omitted. Each tends to play devil’s advocate for every example the other wishes to exclude.”

  Sigrid let that pass undebated. “And you can think of no one else, Mrs. Quinn? Did he ever mention conflicts with students or colleagues?”

  Doris Quinn shook her elegant blond head emphatically, but Sigrid still sensed a holding back. Who was she protecting? Leyden? She started to frame another question, but they were interrupted by Millie Minton, who seemed flustered as she opened the door.

  “There’s a person here who—”

  The person in question was stocky and pugnacious, dark of hair and broad of face, and he elbowed past Mrs. Minton, who still stood in the doorway, nodded to her genially and closed the door, leaving her outside. “Mrs. Quinn?” he asked, looking from Sigrid to Doris.

  Doris nodded, and the young man strode across the study’s Persian rug to hand her an officiallooking document.

  “What’s that?” cried Sylvester.

  “A restraining order barring the sale and/or disposal of any artworks of any kind allegedly belonging to the estate of the late Riley Quinn,” the stranger said cheerfully. His beautifully cut dark green suit and crisp striped tie contrasted with his cocky street-fighter body, and Sigrid caught a hint of smugness in his tone.

  “Allegedly?” she queried.

  The man had merry black eyes that twinkled when they met her gray ones, as if the two of them shared a very rich joke. Sigrid began to suspect they might, and she moved aside as J. Duncan Sylvester beetled his tufted brows angrily and demanded to know who he was, and what he meant by barging into a house of bereavement like this?

  “My name is Stephen Laszlo,” said the stocky stranger, handing Sylvester a card.

  “An attorney? Whom do you represent?”

  “Michael Szabo,” smiled the lawyer, “nephew and rightful heir of Janos Karoly.”

  “Oh, for God’s sake! Is he digging that up again?” Sylvester turned to Doris. “Riley must have had a copy of Karoly’s will here someplace, honey. See if you can find it for Mr.—” He looked at the lawyer’s card distastefully. “Ah, yes, Mr. Laszlo.”

  “Don’t bother,” said Laszlo cheerfully. “I’ve seen it.”

  “And you doubt its authenticity?” Sylvester’s tone was glacial.

  “Certainly not!” said Laszlo, feigning shocked anxiety. “You don’t, either, do you? I must warn you we can bring witnesses who will vouch that it’s in Karoly’s handwriting.”

  It was the proper approach, thought Sigrid appreciatively, watching Sylvester’s face change from anger to caution. “If you accept its legality—” he began.

  “Accept? My client insists upon it,” beamed Laszlo, thoroughly enjoying himself.

  “I don’t understand, Uncle Duncan,” Doris said plaintively. “Riley always said the pictures were his. Aren’t they?”

  “Of course they are!” Sylvester snapped.

  “No, no,” said the lawyer. “On that point we must disagree.”

  Until then all had remained standing. Now Laszlo considerately offered Doris Quinn one of the leather armchairs and seated himself in another, placing his briefcase on the table between them. Sigrid’s lips twitched as he offered to bring a chair for her; she shook her head, preferring to lean against a bookcase where she could watch the comedy unfold. J. Duncan Sylvester, his tufted eyebrows beetling furiously, found himself seated behind Riley Quinn’s desk.

  “You see, Mrs. Quinn,” the young lawyer began confidentially, “we have to ask ourselves why Janos Karoly would leave his entire estate to your husband and completely disinherit his own blood nephew?”

  “He liked Riley,” said Doris. “Riley helped him, and it was Karoly’s way of repaying him.”

  “Now, Doris,” said Sylvester, “that was before you met Riley and—”

  “But he told me all about it,” Doris said indignantly. “Karoly trusted him and wanted him to have the pictures.”

  “‘Karoly trusted him!’” Stephen Laszlo repeated her words as if they were a gift from heaven. He smiled at Sylvester and Sigrid. “I do hope you’ll both remember that if you’re called upon to testify.” He turned back to Mrs. Quinn. “Of course he trusted your husband. It was a noble thing Dr. Quinn did—helping Karoly come to America, giving him a place to live and paint. But why did he come to America at all, Mrs. Quinn? Do you know?”

  Sylvester drummed his fingers on the leather desk top impatiently. “We’ve no ne
ed of history lessons, Mr. Laszlo. You know as well as anyone else that he came because the Communist takeover in Hungary made it unsafe for him to remain there.”

  “You’re quite right, Mr. Sylvester, I do know.” Deliberately Laszlo forced their awareness of the almost imperceptible accent that underlay his own speech. “In 1956 it became unsafe for anyone to mention freedom in Hungary. In speech, in literature and in art. Had he remained, Janos Karoly would have been shot, his paintings burned as decadent trash. It was that way in ’56, ’57, ’58, ’59.”

  The numbers fell like hammer blows, and Sigrid decided he was probably an excellent courtroom lawyer.

  “And it was still so in 1960,” Laszlo continued inexorably, “the year Janos Karoly, knowing he was an old man who could not outlive the Communist regime, made his will and died.”

  “A will that left everything to Riley Quinn,” Sylvester repeated doggedly.

  “Because he trusted Quinn to hold them for his nephew!” Laszlo thundered.

  “Rubbish!”

  In lieu of further argument Stephen Laszlo opened his briefcase and took out several papers.

  He gave one to Doris Quinn and two others to the bald publisher. “I have extras,” he told Sigrid, his black eyes dancing again. “Would you care to see one, Miss—”

  “Lieutenant,” corrected Doris, automatically remembering the duties of a hostess. “This is Lieutenant Harald from the Police Department.”

  “Uh-oh!” said the lawyer. Then he shrugged and gave Sigrid a copy anyhow.

  “Uh-oh, indeed!” said Sylvester grimly. “Where did you get this?”

  “What is it?” cried Doris. “I can’t read it.”

  “Here’s a rough translation, Mrs. Quinn,” he said helpfully, handing her a copy of the second paper he’d given her uncle.

  Sigrid quickly scanned her two sheets. The first was a photocopy of a page from an artist’s notebook, about fourteen inches square. There were small penand-ink sketches on the page, some partially obliterated by a spiky European handwriting. The first half of the page, dated 3 août 1960, was in French and seemed related to problems illustrated by the sketches. The bottom lapsed into a language she didn’t understand but suspected was Hungarian.

  On the second sheet was a translation of the entire page. She skimmed through the part about the drawings—something about a “nexus”—which seemed to have continued into Hungarian as it became more technical about color theory and the mathematics of wave patterns. Abruptly the subject changed from the abstract to the personal:

  . . . today have I written my will, trusting all to R. The hellhounds who ravage my homeland will have nothing of me. When I am dead, my pictures will begin to be worth much. R. has promised to help my nephew escape and come also to this country. When he comes, my paintings will be a rich inheritance for this child of my sister. Blood of my father’s blood. It pains me that I cannot write this in my will, but R. says that to do so would be to endanger my nephew’s chances of ever escaping. That the government here would have to send my pictures there because he is still a citizen of Hungary. O my country! How thy son grieves for thy interconnected hills, nexus of my life . . .!

  The writing returned to technical problems of light and color.

  “Doris,” said Sylvester in an odd voice, “where did Riley keep Karoly’s notebooks?”

  The blond widow looked blank. “Notebooks?”

  “Did he have a safe?”

  Doris shook her head. “Would they be on the bookcase?”

  “Try the file cabinets,” Sigrid suggested, pointing to a drawer that was still slightly open, “but I’d use a pencil if I were you. There might be fingerprints.”

  The drawer included the K section of the alphabet, and it was obvious that at least two inches of material were missing.

  “By thunder, you’re a witness, Lieutenant!” Sylvester cried. “Arrest that man! He and Szabo have stolen the notebooks.”

  Doris Quinn chose that moment to discover the crowbar. “What’s this thing doing here?”

  “Put that down!” her uncle ordered crossly. “It probably has fingerprints, too.”

  “I doubt it,” said Laszlo. “Anybody who’s ever watched a week of American television knows enough to wear gloves.”

  “There, you see? He admits it,” said Sylvester. “They arrive like vultures the minute Riley is dead, use a crowbar to break in, ransack the files, steal the notebooks—”

  “Was the door forced?” Sigrid asked. “I didn’t notice.”

  “It was unlocked when P—” Doris caught herself. “When I opened it this morning,” she amended.

  “It seems to me you aren’t taking this very seriously,” Sylvester told Sigrid.

  “If you think there’s sufficient evidence for arrest;” Sigrid answered, “then you should call your local precinct station. This isn’t my jurisdiction, and I’m not in Burglary.”

  “But there’s the crowbar.” He noticed a metallic labeling tape on the tool and bent his round bald head closer: “‘Property of Vanderlyn College, CUNY.’ That proves it.”

  “What does it prove?” asked Laszlo. “Dr. Quinn could have borrowed it himself.”

  “Well, he sure as hell didn’t lend Szabo those notebooks! How do you explain that?”

  “I don’t,” shrugged the lawyer. “How they entered my client’s possession is not my concern, and unless you can prove culpability,” he added sternly, “I should remind you of the laws of slander. Anyhow, my client no longer has them. They’ve been turned over to the custody of the courts, and there they’ll remain until legal ownership of Janos Karoly’s estate is settled.”

  He nodded to Sigrid, bowed to Doris. “Good day, Lieutenant, Mrs. Quinn. I’ll see myself out, thanks.”

  “What does he mean, Uncle Duncan?” asked Doris when the lawyer had gone. “Karoly’s estate was settled. Riley even sold some of the pictures to pay the inheritance taxes.”

  Sylvester seemed not to have heard her. He was staring at the photocopies Laszlo had given him. “Poor Riley,” he said at last. “I used to wonder why he didn’t publish the notebooks. In spite of everything he was a true historian. He must have known Karoly mixed in damaging personal remarks when he wrote in Hungarian, but New World Nexus was Karoly’s greatest painting, and he couldn’t bring himself to destroy any of the artist’s notes on the creation of such a masterpiece.”

  He picked up the restraining order Stephen Laszlo had brought and looked over at his niece. “We shall have to get you a very good lawyer, my dear.”

  CHAPTER 16

  Sigrid glanced up at the sound of a tap on her half-opened door and smiled a welcome as Tillie poked his head in to see if she were free. Those unconsciously given smiles of genuine liking were so rare that one forgot between times how gravely sweet they were. Not for the first time Tillie paused, wishing Duckett or Lyles could see her smile like that. Maybe then they’d understand why he liked working with her, and why he was one of the few men in the bureau who didn’t consider Lieutenant Harald a sexless automaton.

  “Any success?” she asked.

  He nodded and reported on several unrelated matters that had filled his day before getting around to the Vanderlyn College death. “I finally caught up with Mike Szabo at his boardinghouse this afternoon. He seemed a little nervous when I first identified myself. Said he wouldn’t talk without his lawyer.”

  “I just met that lawyer, and he’s sharper than a stiletto.’

  “Yeah? Oh, well, it didn’t matter because as soon as I asked him about yesterday morning, he loosened up. Didn’t seem to bother him a bit to answer all my questions.”

  “He was probably too relieved to realize that you weren’t interested in his whereabouts last night,” Sigrid said and then told him about the Vanderlyn College crowbar, the stolen notebooks and the restraining order Stephen Laszlo had served on Doris Quinn.

  “So Quinn did rook him out of his inheritance,” Tillie exclaimed. “That’s why Szabo was acting like
the cat that swallowed a bowl of canaries. When his landlady asked him if today was a holiday, he told her that every day was from now on. That he was going to be rich. He wouldn’t say how, but he answered everything else I asked him. He swears no one was in the outer office when he carried in the tray and set it on the bookcase. Unless he’s a better actor than I’d give him credit for, I don’t think it even crossed his mind that we’d accuse him of putting poison in Quinn’s cup. He says he was never in the printing studio and didn’t know it had a storage closet.

  “I stopped in at Buildings and Grounds over at the college. There aren’t any master keys for those special locks, and the girl on the desk says that someone like Mike Szabo—maintenance personnel—just wouldn’t have access to the duplicates.”

  “So we’re left with two down and six to go?” asked Sigrid. “Or is it seven?” She sensed a suppressed satisfaction behind the detective’s cherubic face and was willing to let him work his way around to its source in his own methodical way.

  “Just six. I met David Wade in the cafeteria and casually asked him if he’d been up in the Art Department yesterday during all the excitement.

  “And?”

  “At the library all morning. I checked. He was in the reserve stacks. No mistake. There’s only one entrance into that area, and it’s gimmicked with some sort of magnetic alarm that goes off if anyone tries to sneak a book out. There’s a desk where you have to sign in and out, and the librarian showed me the time sheets: in at 9:40; out at 12:15.”

  “What about the dean of faculties?”

  Now they’d come to it.

  “Your hunch was right,” Tillie beamed. “Nauman’s meeting with the dean wasn’t about anything crucial, and his secretary says she made that clear when she called at such short notice yesterday morning. She seemed surprised to hear that Nauman had a previously scheduled appointment for that same time and wondered why the Keppler girl didn’t suggest another date for Nauman to see the dean.”