One Coffee With

8

MADIGAN'S was another relic of New York 's bygone days, a sort of unofficial memorial to a lustier, roughneck age. Located in a seamy section near the docks south of Fourteenth Street, the tavern had outlasted wars, depressions, recessions, Prohibition and several attempts at urban renewal. Its original customers had been sailors, draymen and Irish stevedores working on the piers; and for the first eighty years of its existence only one female had ever been served there: Madame Ernestine Schumann-Heink.

The famous opera star had just disembarked from the ship that had returned her to America for another season at the Metropolitan when the horse drawing her carriage went lame practically on Madigan's threshold. It was late fall with a chill rain falling. His chivalry appealed to, Francis Madigan (son of 'Daddy' Madigan, the founder) had reluctantly offered his tavern as a waiting room for her party while another horse was being fetched.

There were dark looks upon her entrance; two or three old-timers standing at the long mahogany bar had muttered into their ale about 'petticoat patronage' and • with ostentatious rudeness had given her r their backs. But the great contralto was then at the height of her powers and had accurately sized up her 'house'-child's play to a woman who would still be able to sing in Das Rheingold when she was sixty-four.

She began with the few Celtic lullabies at her disposal and, when those were exhausted, switched to the sweetest German songs in her repertoire. The language barrier evaporated-sentimentality has never needed translation-and soon the most hardbitten stevedores were weeping into their glasses. (Empty glasses, one might add, since no one had wanted to break the spell to order.) For over an hour the majestic Schumann-Heink held them in the palm of her queenly hand until at last she expressed fatigue and impatience at the nonarrival of a fresh horse; whereupon a dozen strong men hitched themselves to her carriage and pulled it through the rain all the way to her hotel on Seventh Avenue.

"Shure and she was a foine lady," said the pragmatic Francis Madigan, tallying up the evening's lost revenues, "but women do be taking a man's mind off his drinking."

Succeeding owners, even those not of Irish descent, had echoed his sentiments, and Madigan's was one of the last male bastions to fall beneath the feminist assault. Not that women came there very often once their point was made. Madigan's was not quaint, picturesque nor cozy. In point of fact, it was quite hopelessly shabby, for there had been few concessions to modernity. Women were, by law, tolerated; but they were not encouraged with any plastic niceties.

No wine, beer or liquor was served. Dark stout and porter foamed down the sides of chunky glass mugs, and food arrived on chipped brown earthenware, while the wide oak tables and benches were so dingy with age and indifferent cleaning that the sawdust on the floor looked fresh by comparison. The air was thick with stale malt fumes and greasy smoke, and Sigrid

Harald peered through it dubiously.

"I can see at least a dozen violations of the health code from right here. God knows what the kitchen must look like."

"A policewoman shouldn't quibble about minor dangers," said Nauman. "I thought you wanted the best steak in town."

"Not if it comes with a side order of ptomaine," she said tartly.

Their waiter had a poor grasp of English, but he flashed a gold-toothed smile, eager to please. "You no worry about that, senora. We no have it-just plain lettuce for the ensalada."

Sigrid laughed, and a certain familiar curve of her lips pricked the artist's memory.

"Harald," he said reflectively when the waiter had taken their order and gone. "Are you by any chance related to a photojournalist, Anne Harald?"

"My mother," Sigrid said, and her lips tightened defensively as she waited for the inevitable, disparaging comparisons. Anne Harald was known for her vivacious beauty, and casual acquaintances found it difficult to think of this tall, plain young woman as her daughter.

Instead Nauman said only, "She took some pictures of my work for a Life article years ago. Good camera work."

"Were you in that series?" Sigrid asked, surprised. Then she realized her gaucherie. "I'm sorry. Of course, you would have been. That was the whole point of the piece, wasn't it? Profiles of leading American artists. I was away at school when my mother was working on it, so I'm afraid I don't remember any of the details."

"You might want to look it up since Riley Quinn wrote the accompanying text. Your mother writes most of her own stuff now, doesn't she? Haven't seen her in years, but wasn't she nominated for a Pulitzer not too long ago?"

Sigrid nodded. "For a story on how Vietnamese refugees are assimilating into this culture. She keeps an apartment here, but she doesn't use it much. She's all over the world these days, taking pictures about issues with more social significance."

"Meaning that art has none?" Nauman asked, amused.

"Well, does it?"

"Very little," he admitted wryly. "But not for any reasons you might give."

"Probably not. Of course, I don't know very much about art, but-"

"Oh, Lord! You're not going to say it?" he groaned.

"-but I know what I like," she finished firmly.

"She said it!" Nauman mourned to the waiter, who'd just arrived with their steaks.

The waiter beamed uncomprehendingly and deftly distributed their dinner dishes. As promised, the salad had no romaine lettuce, just wilted iceberg under an indifferent bottled dressing; but the baked potatoes had crisp jackets and had been split open to receive huge dollops of butter, while the man-sized steaks still sizzled, and small streams of deep red juices trickled from several fork pricks.

Sigrid suddenly remembered that she hadn't eaten since early morning, and when Nauman insisted that she try an anchovy, she was too hungry to resist. With that first taste of a steak grilled to absolute perfection she instantly forgave the greasy table and smoky air, the food-specked menus and crazed earthenware dishes. And the salty anchovies were such a delicious complement to red meat that she might even have forgiven Nauman's condescension had he not tactlessly brought it up again.

"Very well. Lieutenant, what kind of art do you like?"

"Pictures of people."

"Norman Rockwell?" he jeered.

"No." She speared another anchovy.

Nauman studied her intently, feeling slightly annoyed. Taken separately, the features of the young woman across the table were excellent: strong facial bones, clear skin, extraordinary gray eyes, dark hair that tried to escape from its braided knot, and a wide mouth shaped for generous laughter. Yet collectively her features might as well have added up to total gracelessness for all the use she put them to.

Despite his fame Oscar Nauman was not an arrogant man; still without realizing it, he had become spoiled. He was used to having women make an effort to amuse him. As his reputation had grown in the past thirty years, so had the number of women who sought him out. He was cynical enough to know why many came-the would-be artists, the bored faculty wives, the semi-intellectual sophisticates, all drawn like moths to the flame of his public recognition-but he had attracted women before he became well known, and an innocent pride in his own masculinity made him think he knew why the ones he chose had stayed.

Nor had his relations with every female been purely physical. Among his closest friends were many women whose minds he respected, who could hold their own in fierce intellectual debate. But even with these, there had been an initial period in which they had probed and tested each other, an exchanged awareness of sexuality. Sublimated, yes, but quite definitely there.

With Sigrid Harald he felt none of these subtle nuances, and it piqued him. She seemed as sexless as a young boy. For a brief moment he wondered if he were getting too old; then his subconscious pride discarded that hypothesis and flicked onto other reasons. Could she be frigid? A lesbian? Or had she been too early or too bitterly rejected? Was her prickly facade merely a thick shell covering a romantic nature? He rather favored that last theory and thought it might be interesting to prove.

"Renaissance portraits, right?" (In his experience most closet romantics loved the Renaissance.) "Botticelli, Raphael, Michelangelo?"

"Some of them," she admitted. "But my favorites-do you know those pen-and-ink heads by Dürer? And Holbein? And especially those drawings by Lucas Cranach?"

"The Goths?" Nauman was astounded. His memory conjured up those north-European masters of the late Middle Ages, the sober and pure linear quality of their work. He had thought to furnish this odd young woman's mind with romanticism, gorgeous costumes and rich colors; but she had outreached him, stripped away all nonessentials and retreated to the uncluttered simplicity and elegance of late Gothic line and form.

"I told you I don't know much about art," Sigrid said tightly as he broke into delighted laughter.

"I'm not laughing at you but at myself. For jumping to unwarranted conclusions." If she could respond to the austere directness of these drawings… There seemed to be more to this unusual policewoman than he'd suspected.

He put on his most charming air and tried to draw her out, but his laughter had offended. She ate neatly but swiftly with the air of one who'd had to leave more than one meal unfinished.

Nettled, Nauman concentrated on his own steak. "I might have known you wouldn't like anything created in this century," he said crossly.

"Actually you're wrong." The steak had been surprisingly good, the ale refreshing, and now that Nauman had quit trying to be charming, Sigrid felt more at ease. "I saw a small black and brown painting at the Quinn house just tonight. On the top landing. Do you know it?"

"Are you putting me on?" he asked suspiciously.

"Why? Isn't it any good, either?" Enlightenment dawned in her gray eyes. "Oh. Is it yours?"

He nodded. "I did that thirty years ago, but it was damn good. You've just made it impossible for me to attack your taste."

"Excellent. Perhaps now we can quit pretending this is a social occasion and get down to work."

She pushed aside the dishes and opened her ubiquitous notebook. "You must have known Professor Quinn as well as anyone. Who'd want him dead? Leyden?"

"Because of that tableau you saw with Doris Quinn?"

"They did seem… intimate."

Nauman smiled at the chasteness of the term. "If Piers Leyden wanted Riley Quinn dead, it wouldn't be because of Doris. She was just extra protection."

"Against what?"

"Against what Quinn was likely to say about Leyden in his latest book." Nauman toyed with his mug, creating patterns of wet, interlocking circles on the wooden tabletop as he chose his words carefully.

"Riley was a bastard," he said slowly, "but he knew a hell of a lot about art trends since the war, and he didn't hesitate to make value judgments. If he said your work had merit, you'd stop having trouble getting a gallery to show it. If he said it was good, you'd start selling occasionally. And if he called it of lasting value, you'd sell things regularly, and people would come around to your studio begging you to accept their commissions."

"There's been so much crap floating around these past few years-pop, op, slop-that collectors with more money than confidence in their own taste depend on someone like Riley. It's similar to what Bernard Berenson did for Renaissance art. It's all very well to buy a trendy piece of art because it amuses you; but if a Riley Quinn approves, then it becomes a good investment, too."

"Like having someone tell you Picasso's going to be Picasso before he actually becomes Picasso, and the prices go up," Sigrid said thoughtfully. "And Quinn didn't consider Professor Leyden a Picasso?"

"You do have a talent for understatement," Nauman smiled. "Leyden's a good draftsman, and he knows more about anatomy and the way muscles work than most doctors, but he doesn't have much taste.

"Ordinarily that wouldn't matter," he added cynically.

"His things are probably better than many of Riley's pets, but Quinn and Leyden have always clashed-one oft hose natural antipathies-and Quinn was planning to put him down for all time in his new book. I suppose Leyden thought that bedding Doris would take the edge off Quinn's attack, make everyone think Riley Quinn was letting personalities influence his judgement. Which he was, of course, but not because of Doris."

"How will Quinn's death affect the book?"

Nauman's eyes narrowed, and his speech became telegraphic as his mind zipped through possibilities. "Final draft… on the other hand… intestate… and Saxer's hungry enough, God knows."

He sipped his ale moodily, and Sigrid struggled to catch up with him. Final draft-well, that was clear enough: the book was finished but not yet at the publishers. If Quinn hadn't left a will, that would make Doris Quinn his literary executor, too.

"So if there are things Piers Leyden wants changed, Mrs. Quinn can force Jake Saxer to rewrite those parts now?"

"That's what I said!" Nauman snapped.

Sigrid's eyebrows lifted. She saw this reaction frequently when decent people involved in an investigation suddenly realized that a person they knew had committed murder, and that they were being asked to help hunt that person down-to trap him, knowing that the guilty one might be a friend or colleague. With that initial awareness came anger, a reluctance to betray anyone and a shrinking away in distaste.

His reaction made Nauman seem human and vulnerable; and for the first time since meeting him, Sigrid was conscious of the man's age. He had such a forceful personality that she hadn't noticed it before. His white hair was not just the famous Nauman trademark; the lines in his face did not denote character only. They were milestones from days and months of living that added up to years. With an unexpected feeling of regret she realized that he was old-that his first recognized masterpiece must have been painted years before she'd even been born.

There were brown age marks on the backs of his hands. But even as she saw them she noted the vigorous body, saw that the fingers that steadied his pipe were sensate and strong; and when he laid his pipe aside and impatiently raked his thick white hair with those fingers, it seemed absurd to think of him as anything but ageless, no matter what the calendars said.

"So you think one of us poisoned Riley Quinn?" he asked, referring to the group detained earlier that day. "One of those six?"

"Eight if you count Harley Harris and Mike Szabo. I'm still not sure how Quinn's death would benefit Szabo, but from what Professor Ross and Miss Keppler say, he did have opportunity."

"Mike has a hot temper," Nauman objected. "Poisoning would be too deliberate for him."

Sigrid reserved judgment and asked, "If Janos Karoly was an important artist, why is his nephew working as a janitor?"

"Important artists come from all classes of society, Lieutenant, and they seldom make much money till after they're dead," Nauman said bitterly. "Then it's the entrepreneurs and promoters like Riley who cash in on their works. Do you know Karoly's paintings?"

Sigrid shook her head. "No. I think

I've heard the name, but you were right when you guessed that twentieth-century art doesn't much interest me."

Perversely he was pleased that she didn't apologize or make a pretense of excepting his work. He had always preferred indifference over the empty flattery of someone who hadn't the least understanding of what he was striving for. Open hostility would be even better because anger implied that the viewer took the work seriously enough to feel challenged by Nauman's assumptions.

Their waiter returned to clear the table, and by this time Sigrid was so used to the tavern's scruffy ambience that it didn't outrage her to see him use one corner of his dirty apron to wipe it dry before setting down the tray of coffee utensils.

Nauman stirred sugar into his cup, drew on his pipe and leaned back in the heavy oak chair. He hoped he wasn't getting pedantic. That was the danger when one was so innately a teacher; it was so hard not to lecture. Especially when one's audience was as receptive as this policewoman seemed to be.

"Janos Karoly," he said slowly, "was probably Riley Quinn's one foray into altruism. It turned out so profitably that it's always puzzled me that he never tried it again. Unless Mike Szabo's right, and it wasn't honest altruism.

"It all started after the war," He paused and looked at Sigrid's face. Only around her eyes and at the corners of her mouth were there faint beginnings of age lines. "The Second World War," he clarified carefully. "There had been a few abstract exhibitions before the war, but abstract expressionism didn't arrive until '46 and '47. Paris was still the international art center of the world, and everyone went there. The great, the near great and the merely hopeful-Soulages, Hartung, Poliakoff, Appel-and not just artists but critics and historians. Riley, too, clutching his discharge papers from the Stars and Stripes and looking for firsthand data for his postgraduate studies."

"Stars and Stripes was a military newspaper, wasn't it?"

"Right. He'd been one of the feature writers on the staff. That was before I met him, but we were all the same-lusty young cockerels playing King of the Mountain on the art heaps of Paris. Janos Karoly was there, and one of the more established artists. A fairly respected practitioner of tachism, though not really in the master ranks"

"What's tachism?" she asked.

"Literally it means spot painting. Refers to the way an artist puts paint on a canvas. Someone more calligraphic might brush on wide slashes and bands of color. A tachist adds spot to spot or wedge to wedge and-"

"I thought that was called impressionism," Sigrid objected. "Like what's his name? Seurat?"

"Seurat used very small pellets of color, and his pictures were all quite representational. Something like newspaper pictures built up of black dots. The tachists were abstract, and in the purest examples their pictures became loosely structured clusters and patches of color. They downplayed line to concentrate on color and texture.

"That's the way Karoly was painting when Riley first met him. It was all very competent, but nothing to set your blood on fire. Still he was almost sixty then, and he'd knocked around Europe long enough to have known everyone-Braque, Picasso, Matisse, Kandinsky, and the Bauhaus people-and Riley was impressed. What Karoly thought of Riley… well, he had an acid tongue, but Riley's French was limited, and his Hungarian nonexistent, so Karoly's choicest remarks went over his head. Things were never as bad in Paris as they were in other European capitals, but there were still shortages and rationing, and the black market was expensive. With his American dollars and his American military connections Riley could wangle extra amenities. Karoly allowed him to bring food and wine and coal and sit in his studio and listen to him reminisce about art and artists. I suppose it was mutually beneficial."

"At last, though, Riley came back to finish his dissertation, and Karoly decided he was an old man who should die in his native land, although I believe Hungary was the one European country he'd assiduously avoided for the previous forty-five years. Nobody heard from him after that. If they thought of him at all, it was probably to assume that he was dead. Then came the Hungarian Revolution.

Were you old enough to remember that?"

"I remember," Sigrid said, ignoring his allusion to age. "Tanks and people running in the streets."

"How Janos Karoly got mixed up in the political mess, no one could ever understand. He didn't even know himself-maybe they thought his paintings were too decadent, who can say? His name wound up on a proscribed list, but somehow he got out of the country and into Italy, and the first person he ran into was Riley Quinn, who was in Rome appraising some things for the Klaustadt Gallery when Karoly wandered in with a roll of canvases under his arm. Riley took one look and immediately talked him into applying for an American visa. He arranged the flight and found him a studio."

"He could still paint? He must have been nearly seventy by then," said Sigrid, who'd been keeping track of the dates.

Nauman nodded. "I remember how he seemed older than God when I saw him then." There was wry self-mockery in his smile. "Somehow seventy doesn't sound as old as it used to."

A burst of heavy male laughter arose from a far table. The bar at the front of the deep room was well lined now with serious drinkers-longshoremen, mechanics and three crewmen from a German liner that had docked that morning. The tavern had grown warm enough to make Sigrid take off her shapeless gray jacket. Underneath was a chastely tailored white silk shirt. Man-styled with buttons down the front, pointed collar tips and close-fitting cuffs at the thin wrists, it had survived a day of city grime and polluted air to remain pristinely white. As she leaned forward to pull the jacket sleeves free, the white material stretched tautly over small, high breasts, briefly outlining the lace tracery of her bra beneath.

And wasn't that interesting, thought Nauman fleetingly. All tailored and buttoned up on the outside, lace lingerie beneath. It was enough to make him revive his theory of repressed romanticism.

"If Karoly's work was only conventionally good, why would Professor Quinn go to so much trouble?" Sigrid asked. "He must have met lots of well-known artists by that time."

"You're catching on to Riley's character."

Nauman approved. "You're right; he'd learned a lot since postwar Paris, and he no longer sat at any artist's feet. But Karoly was exceptional. Everyone thought he'd done all he was capable of. Very few artists go on breaking new ground in their old age, but Karoly was a maverick. When he got back to Hungary, he was very isolated from the artistic community, and somehow in his solitude he discovered a whole new wellspring of creativity within himself and completely transcended tachism. Oh, he still used the basic techniques, but he'd tightened his structure. The subjects were mostly still lifes-fruits and flowers and luminous bowls and vases. Incredible handling of color and shape. The National Gallery has six of those paintings, and they almost justify a trip to Washington. Riley did his damnedest to discourage him, but Karoly insisted on giving them to the government in gratitude for his sanctuary. Also by way of thumbing his nose at the Communist regime in Hungary." There was jaundiced cynicism in Nauman's tone.

"So far as I know-and I only saw him once or twice that last year-he never questioned why Riley would go to so much trouble and expense for him. He didn't read English, so he had no idea how strong a reputation Riley was building as an astute critic and authority. Karoly was just as arrogant and scornful as he'd been in Paris. Thought Riley was a toad but a useful toad; that he was still a star-struck admirer whose only function was to furnish food, shelter and painting materials so the master could get on with his work. It was the old biter-bit thing, but justified somehow because he was still discovering new frontiers when he died. If the Whitney weren't closed, I'd haul you over right now to see the painting that was on his easel when he died-New World Nexus, where unexpected representational elements begin to show up."

Nauman's coffee had grown cold, but he drank it anyhow, lost in a memory Sigrid didn't disturb. At last he sighed and picked up the thread again.

"Karoly had been here about four years when he suddenly dropped dead of a heart attack, and Riley produced a holographic will. In French, of course, but properly notarized and witnessed. Reduced to its simplest elements, it said he was leaving everything to Riley Quinn to do with as Quinn saw fit. There was one curious phrase: he wrote that he knew Quinn would do all that was 'juste et humain' with his paintings. There were no relatives here to contest the will, so it was probated without a hitch.

"Since then Janos Karoly's reputation has got bigger every year. Riley had a genius for fanning the flames just enough. He donated three paintings to the Museum of Modern Art on condition that at least one be displayed at all times, or the gift would be revoked. That was to keep them in the public eye. Then he'd lend three or four to an exhibition here to see that they were mentioned in an important article there. He was chary about selling them, but whenever he let one go, it always brought the full asking price.

"The one thing he didn't do was let anyone touch Karoly's notebooks. Shortly after Karoly's death he'd started translating them for publication-he read French very fluently-but he complained to me once that every time Karoly seemed to be getting to the heart of a problem, he'd switch to Hungarian. Naturally I suggested getting someone to translate those passages, but he mumbled some excuse, and that was the last time he ever mentioned the notebooks willingly. He'd always change the subject if they came up."

"Where does Mike Szabo come in?" Sigrid asked as he paused to refill his coffee cup and hers from the thick earthenware pot on their table.

"That started about a year and a half ago. The Klaustadt Gallery owned a couple of Karoly's paintings, which they'd bought from Riley, and they wanted to do a retrospective. Riley made the mistake of agreeing. The show was stunning. No other word for it. It was the first time that many of Karoly's later paintings had been seen together, and they captivated the public's fancy. Inevitable, I suppose. The colors were so entrancing, and they were representational enough to be understood by most people, including the sector that usually professes itself indifferent to art."

Sigrid ignored the barb.

"The exhibition attracted wide coverage-from all the art journals and even from newsmagazines and television. Somebody vstarted calling Karoly the 'Hungarian Picasso', which showed an abysmal ignorance of both artists; but it stuck. About a week after that, Mike Szabo turned up at the Klaustadt and demanded to know who had stolen his uncle's paintings. Created quite a scene." Nauman grinned, recalling accounts of that laborer's eruption into Klaustadt's elegant premises, how in three or four broken languages he had called them all thieves and swindlers loudly, indignantly and at great length.

"They bundled him into a back room and sent for Riley in a hurry. Riley accused him of being an impostor at first, but he had papers and letters that proved he was definitely the only son of Janos Karoly's only sister. She'd been much younger than Karoly, and they hadn't seen each other in years; but when he fled Hungary, he'd smuggled a letter back to her, which promised that he wouldn't forget her or her son. Szabo found it among her papers after her death in '67 and immediately scurried off to Italy, but he couldn't find anyone who'd ever heard of Janos Karoly. I gather he wasn't particularly disappointed. Art in the abstract doesn't seem to appeal to him too much. He'd drifted around Europe for awhile and finally wound up in Pittsburgh in the early seventies, living on the fringes of the Hungarian community there, working odd jobs and making just enough to get by. Nobody in that crowd gave a damn about art, either; but once the news media started giving so much space to their 'Hungarian Picasso', someone mentioned it in Szabo's presence, and it sank in.

"Legally he didn't have a leg to stand on, but Quinn tried to stop it quickly and gave him five thousand dollars outright."

"Plus a one-way ticket back to Pittsburgh?" Sigrid asked dryly.

Nauman shook his head. "Riley was more thorough than that. The ticket was for Budapest with the promise of another five thousand when he arrived."

"I'm surprised Szabo didn't take it. Ten thousand must have seemed like a lot of money to an odd-jobber."

"Oh, he was tempted," Nauman conceded, "but Piers Leyden deflected him and helped him resist. Leyden was at the Klaustadt the next day, heard the whole story and saw an irresistible chance tot weak Riley's nose. He told Szabo that Riley wouldn't have given him a dime if he didn't have a guilty conscience, and that ten thousand was a pittance compared to the true worth of his uncle's paintings. Szabo was only too willing to believe it; but what could he do?"

" Leyden was no doubt full of suggestions," Sigrid said. She had taken the neo-realist's measure.

"Dozens," Nauman agreed. "For openers he advised Szabo to take the first five thousand and cash in the plane ticket. Then he got Szabo a job raking leaves and shifting furniture with Buildings and Grounds. Szabo hired a lawyer, but Karoly's will was too explicit-'everything to Riley Quinn' in black and white."

"Couldn't the lawyer make anything out of that 'juste et humain' phrase?"

"Too nebulous."

Sigrid set down her coffee mug and said reflectively, "Szabo must have been a constant embarrassment to Professor Quinn. If it were Leyden who'd been poisoned, I know who my chief suspect would be."

"Don't be too sure," Nauman said lightly.

" Leyden 's addicted to practical jokes, and Riley wasn't his only victim."

Returning to her original point, Sigrid said, "You say Szabo was too emotional to poison Quinn, but what if it were something unplanned, a spur-of-the-moment yielding to temptation when he found himself alone with Quinn's coffee?"

"When was he alone with it? There were still three other cups on that tray-mine, Sandy's and Vance's. And potassium dichromate's not something you walk around with in your pocket, is it?"

"The grounds people must have duplicates of all the keys, and he'd certainly have access to them," Sigrid pointed out reasonably, "but I suppose he couldn't have known the coffee routine any better than Harley Harris did."

"No, it couldn't have been Harris, either," said Nauman.

Was there regret in his tone, wondered Sigrid.

"Nor Sandy."

"Why not?" she asked coldly. "Are pretty little blond secretaries automatically exempt?"

A flicker of amusement touched Nauman's lips as he noted her acerbic tone. "No motive. She and young Wade are getting married sometime this summer; going off to Idaho in September. She liked Simpson better than Riley, but I can't see her killing Riley so his job could be a going-away present for Bert Simpson. If he even wants it. He's turned the deputy chairmanship down once before, you know."

Something niggled in the corner of his mind.

"What is it?" she asked alertly.

Nauman shook his head. "It's gone now."

"Something to do with Simpson or Sandy Keppler? Or what about David Wade? Could Quinn have hurt him in any way? Maybe written a nasty letter of recommendation?"

Again Nauman shook his head but less decisively. "No, Riley actually wrote a very flattering letter. Or rather, he told Sandy what to say and then signed it. Riley did run the art history side of the department, and theoretically David Wade was answerable to him; but in practice they had almost nothing to do with each other. As long as the young lecturers taught their classes competently, Riley left them alone. And Simpson, not Riley, was Wade's dissertation advisor, so there'd be no conflict in that area."

Again something niggled just below the surface of his consciousness, but this time Nauman ignored it and signaled for their bill.

"It's so idiotic and pointless," he said with returning anger. "Sandy, Vance and Harris gain absolutely nothing with Riley dead. Saxer may get his name on the book as coauthor; Leyden will get a better mention in the book; Andrea Ross'll be promoted; and Bert Simpson will probably be the new deputy chairman. Is any of that worth killing for?"

"Earlier today a boy knifed a doctor for enough drugs to feed his habit for two days," said Sigrid dryly. "Was that worth killing for?"

"A doped-up hophead's different!" On his feet now, Nauman towered over her. He slapped a bill down on the table to cover the check. "These are my colleagues. They had no real reason to want Riley dead."

"You're convinced there's no strong motive for Quinn's death?" Sigrid asked with answering heat. "Fine! Makes no difference to me. My job doesn't change. Only, if you believe that, then you've got to believe there's an even stronger motive for your death. That poison was deliberately set there for one of you. Personally, if it were me, I'd hope the poisoner had already got the one he wanted!"

Nauman glared at her, then turned and stalked from the tavern.

The gold-toothed waiter hurried over and helped Sigrid into her jacket with rough courtesy. "Buenas noches, senora, y muchas gracias" he beamed as she added another bill to Nauman's for a tip, then crossed the sawdust floor at a serene pace. There was dead silence as she passed the bar. Most of the men had been unaware of her presence until then. She saw no reason to hurry. This was not a well-frequented section of town at night; Nauman would be waiting on the sidewalk.

Instead she stepped outside just in time to see a cab pull away from the curb. The rearview window framed a halo of silver hair. Clinically Sigrid noted a small prick of regret that their evening had ended like this. How odd!