5

SIGRID awoke in a pale gray dawn to the trill of the telephone beside her bed. An incautious movement sent such pain lancing down her arm she could hardly concentrate on Anne's breathless words.

"-and Charlie's simply having kittens! He keeps raving about how his father went completely gaga after fracturing his hip and he's sure El Diego's going to break out in waves of senility just because he twisted an ankle yesterday. Charlie says I have to be on the next plane or he'll send someone else. Now, honey, I can tell him what to do with this assignment, but it's such a plum. I mean, what if El Diego actually gets the Nobel after all these years of being kept out of the running? So if you're really sure you can manage-"

"I can manage," Sigrid reiterated patiently, wishing Anne would just say good-bye and go.

"Okay. Anyhow, Roman's promised to take care of you and the car and I'll send you over some fresh clothes and, Siga, honey,"-Anne's voice dropped into a confidential, all-us-girls-together tone-"why didn't you tell me? We've really got to sit down for a long talk when I get back."

With those alarming words, she clicked off. Sigrid was filled with foreboding. Mother-daughter talks always left her feeling guilty and depressed.

She lay back on the lumpy pillows and tried to imagine what Anne had seen in her apartment that could possibly make her think she had girlish secrets to confide. It certainly couldn't be Roman Tramegra, the man with whom Sigrid shared the roomy garden apartment.

An odd assortment of people wandered in and out of Anne Harald's slapdash life and Roman was one of them. Sigrid first met him when she mistook him for a burglar in Anne's apartment last spring while her mother was on a European assignment. A large, soft, slightly pompous man with thinning hair and a never-ending, monkeylike curiosity. Tramegra had been insulted by her suspicions because he had Anne's invitation to use the apartment until he found a place of his own.

His natural inquisitiveness had gotten the better of him, however, and upon learning that Sigrid was a homicide officer he was entirely captivated. He had always wanted to write a best-selling whodunit and immediately decided she would act as his technical adviser.

Roman Tramegra's age and self-absorption quickly overcame Sigrid's usual awkwardness in making friends. Indeed, the avuncular manner with which he treated her made his presence comfortable enough so that after her apartment building went co-op, she agreed to a trial lease on a larger apartment which Tramegra, through arcane family connections, had located on the lower West Side.

When she returned from Europe, Anne had not approved. If Sigrid wished to share an apartment, her mother had hoped it would be with someone romantically interested. "Where's the future in this?" she scolded when Roman had tactfully retired after dinner to his refurbished maid's quarters beyond the kitchen. "I know you two are supposed to overlap only in the kitchen, but he'll always be in and out if you have visitors. It's worse than a chaperone. It's like living with your grandmother."

"Not really," Sigrid had smiled, scraping the remains of Roman's eggplant parmesan into the garbage disposal. "Grandmother's a good cook."

"You know what I mean," Anne had said darkly.

But Anne was accustomed to Roman's presence now, so what could have set her off this morning? Time enough to worry when Anne returned from South America, Sigrid decided.

With that, she sat up, swung her legs off the bed and was halfway across the room before dizziness overtook her. Sheer willpower got her to the bathroom, where she splashed cold water on her face, but her head was reeling and her legs wobbly before she made it back to bed. Her arm throbbed torturously now and willpower no longer helped.:

Disgusted with herself for being so weak, Sigrid pushed the call button.

The nurse who promptly responded was the same young oriental woman from the early morning hours. "Awake so soon?" she asked cheerfully, then moved to check Sigrid's pulse and temperature. "Your arm, it hurts very much now, yes?"

"Yes," Sigrid admitted.

"You are very silly not to call me sooner," the nurse reproved. "The doctor would not leave the medicine if he did not think you needed it."

Still scolding, she expertly rolled Sigrid over, swabbed her hip with alcohol, and inserted the hypo so deftly that her patient barely felt it.

By eight, breakfast and bath were concluded and the doctor, a man who seemed to have modeled his bedside manner after Genghis Khan or Ivan the Terrible, had retaped her arm, pronounced it satisfactory, and given her some pills to keep the pain in abeyance.

"And take 'em," he'd snarled. "They're nonaddictive, so you don't get any Brownie points for a stiff upper lip."

By eight-thirty, rain was sluicing down her window and she'd begun to give up on whomever her mother had sent out with her clothes. There was no television in the room, but an aide brought in a newspaper which had the Maintenon explosion all over the front page and Sigrid quickly skimmed the scanty details.

The blast had occurred shortly after nine P.M. at the rear of one of the ballrooms where, according to the paper, a cabbage tournament was in progress.

(Irritably and half-subliminally, Sigrid noted that proofreading seemed to be a dying craft.)

Those dead at the scene were Zachary A. Wolferman and John Sutton; in critical condition were T. J. Dixon and Charles Tildon; five others were listed as serious but stable.

No motive for the bombing had been advanced and, except for the usual crazies, no one had claimed credit. Police refused to speculate whether it was politically motivated or inspired by purely personal animosities.

There were side stories on Wolferman's considerable financial holdings and on Sutton as a former SDS activist and contemporary historian. It was reported that Sutton's wife and Wolferman's cousin were among those also present at the tournament. Mrs. Sutton had collapsed upon seeing her husband's body and was currently in seclusion with the two children, ages four and seven.

As the clock ticked toward nine, Sigrid impatiently tossed the paper aside and examined once more the clothes she'd arrived at the hospital in. The jacket was impossibly stiff with her dried blood, but the gray slacks and black print shirt merely looked oil-stained. There was no way she'd be able to hook her bra or put her hair up unaided; still, if she could get someone downstairs to flag her a cab, she could probably make it home without any help from Anne's unreliable courier.

She eased out of the hospital gown and was reaching for her shirt when the door swooshed open and a tall lean man whose thick white hair stood up in angry tufts stopped in her doorway to glare at her with piercing blue eyes.

"What the hell kind of Valkyrie theatricals were you trying to pull last night? Wrestling with knife-bearing madmen! You idiot-you could have been killed."

The exasperated, warring emotions which this man could arouse in her held Sigrid speechless for a moment, then abruptly realizing her nakedness, she pulled a sheet around her thin body.

Her gesture increased his fury, and he slammed her own overnight case down on the hospital bed.

"I'm here to bring you clothes, dammit, not strip you," he snarled. As he turned and stomped out of the room, he flung over his shoulder. "I'll wait at the front entrance. Ten minutes."

And that, Sigrid realized wryly, explained why Anne had gone all chirpy and twittering earlier. Awkwardly getting to her feet, she opened the case and found a knit suit in autumn shades of rust and gold.