Together they sorted through all the statements they'd been given during the past two days and looked for stronger motives. Everything was too nebulous. It meant another morning of digging.
"Just the same, I wonder why Harley Harris didn't say something," Tillie said.
Sigrid reached for the telephone. "Did we ever ask him?"
It was shortly after 10:00 A.M. when they met again to compare notes at the unmarked cruiser parked behind Van Hoeen Hall.
"Why don't we walk down to the river?" asked Tillie, who responded more directly than Sigrid to spring's quickening transformation. "It's another gorgeous day."
Sigrid looked around and for the first time realized that it was a gorgeous day. Once again spring seemed to have arrived while her back was turned. She stepped from the car and followed Tillie down a long brick path, which led to the promenade overlooking the East River.
Short-sleeved students lay on the grass in sheltered nooks close to the buildings, rushing the sunbathing season as they studied or flirted or just enjoyed being outdoors without heavy winter clothes.
Overhead a few small puffs of white cloud had drifted into the April blue sky; forsythia arched golden branches over a nearby water fountain, and a double row of yellow buttercups marched primly along each side of the path. Most of the benches along the path were occupied, but a breeze blowing in across the water kept the river walk itself almost deserted. The ropes of wisteria twined about the overarching trellis let welcome sunshine through now; later in the summer the walkway would be a dark tunnel shaded by thick leaves and sweet with the heavy scent of purple blossoms. As they paced its sunlit length, there was a medieval feel to the promenade, which reminded Sigrid of the reconstructed Cloisters up at Fort Tryon Park.
She leaned against a brick column, one trousered leg propped upon a low stone bench, listening to Tillie's report with only half an ear while she stared moodily across the blue gray river at the ugly piers lining the Brooklyn shore.
Riley Quinn was to be buried tomorrow afternoon. By all accounts he had been a pompous, arrogant man. An opportunistic thief and so petty as to use his own work of scholarship for revenge; yet scholar enough to save a potentially destructive journal because it chronicled the creation of Janos Karoly's masterwork. That was a saving grace; but even if Quinn had died without a single virtue, the responsibility of discovering his murderer would still be hers.
Think of it as a puzzle in logistics, she reminded herself. Or a simple algebraic equation, a solving for x. Try to forget that x equaled a person who might be a hundred times more ethical, more humane, more likable than Riley Quinn. Judgment-thank God-was definitely not her responsibility-only the clear identification of the unknown x. Hold to that.
Traffic out on the East River was light this morning. Gulls wheeled and swooped above an open garbage scow, and in the middle distance a slow-moving police launch passed an even slower tug. Downriver from them a helicopter lifted from a pad at the water's edge, shattering the relative quiet and bringing Sigrid back to the present.
Friday classes in the Art Departments till weren't back on schedule this morning though she and Tillie hadn't interrupted that pace. They had poked around classrooms and offices casually, their questions vague and seemingly unspecific; but between them they had spoken to everyone except Sandy Keppler and Oscar Nauman. David Wade wasn't expected till after eleven, but Tillie had tracked down the graduate student who shared a desk in the Nursery with Wade and had taken that puzzled young woman into an empty classroom for a long talk. His indirect questioning had elicited answers that confirmed Sigrid's earlier hypothesis.
"Does it feel right to you now?" asked Tillie, hoping that Sigrid's intuition would agree with what common sense accepted so completely. He had learned that unraveling the problem was what held the tall, calm-eyed lieutenant's interest. The more complex the better. Wearing a suspect down, hearing the actual confession, amassing evidence for an airtight prosecution-all the details so reassuring to his methodical soul-left her depressed; so he was relieved to see her nod.
"All we need is confirmation from
Professor Nauman," she said, squaring her shoulders decisively as they turned away from the river and headed back to Van Hoeen Hall.
Although a couple of inches shorter, Tillie matched her easy strides. His heart lightened as they moved toward familiar routine. This was one of the easy ones after all; another open-and-shut case.
Just that one tricky bit remaining, he reminded himself as they retraced their steps and merged with a throng of brightly clad students surging into Van Hoeen's side entrance.
In Sandy Keppler's cheerfully shabby plant-filled office Lemuel Vance was amusing Piers Leyden, Andrea Ross and Sandy herself with a description of an administrative assistant's appraisal of Sam Jordan's contribution to the faculty exhibition. The burly printmaker had a mild talent for mimicry, and he minced across the room as if on high-heeled shoes and looked down his nose at the wastebasket, which his supercilious frown transformed into Jordan 's polished-steel sculpture.
"Are you trying to tell me," he asked in an outraged falsetto, "that this represents my world?"
Instantly he became the supercool Sam Jordan: "Hey, mama, you trying to tell me it don't?"
Their laughter died as Lieutenant Sigrid Harald, accompanied by Detective Tildon, entered the office. Her slate-cool eyes seemed to catalog and dismiss, although her tone was pleasant enough as she asked, "Is Professor Nauman in now?"
"He's on the telephone," Sandy said nervously.
At that moment his door banged open, and Nauman appeared, apparently in fine humor. The sight of the tall policewoman brought him up short.
"More questions, Lieutenant?" he asked blandly.
"If you can spare the time, Professor," She had meant to sound professional, but her voice had gone husky, and she felt a warm flush rising into her cheeks. She knew Tillie was staring at her curiously; fortunately Nauman's attention was on the pipe stem he'd finished biting in two.
"Fire away," he told Sigrid, then immediately asked Sandy, "Do we have any adhesive tape?"
Sigrid remained silent as the girl located a small roll in her desk drawer and handed it to him.
"In private, if you don't mind, Professor Nauman." Her voice was cool and under control again. "You needn't leave," she told the teachers who were edging from the office. "I'm sure Detective Tildon has a few more details to discuss with you."
Quite poised now, she preceded Nauman into his office.
Sandy 's blue eyes were wide and worried as the door closed, and she twisted a strand of long blonde hair anxiously while Detective Tildon spread his notes and diagrams on the corner table and invited Vance, Leyden and Andrea Ross to join him in yet another reconstruction of Wednesday morning's events.
The cleaning crew had been quite efficient in removing all traces of Riley Quinn's sickness and death from the office he had shared with Oscar Nauman. Only a whiff of carbolic lingered, and even that was quickly being dissipated by a mild spring breeze, which drifted through the tall open windows and which seemed to bring with it a vaguely herbal scent. It made Nauman think of formal summer gardens with clipped boxwood hedges and patterned walks.
He stood by the windowsill, awkwardly trying to hold his broken pipe stem with one hand while he taped it with the other. He kept his eyes on the pipe as if by avoiding her eyes he could avoid questions of poison and murderers; but when he groped for the scissors in a jar on his desk, the bowl of the pipe slipped through his fingers.