"Wait, wait!" Sigrid thumped the table gently. "The Maintenon? John Sutton was at that hotel two days before he died?"

"Right, but it's not what you're thinking. The guy from Brooklyn was mad, but I can't see a linguistics professor going back to Brooklyn, whipping up a bomb, and sneaking back to plant it."

"Forget about the linguistic professor. Just tell me everything about Wednesday, from the moment you and Sutton stepped into the place until you left."

Sigrid procured a note pad while Oscar obediently cast his mind back to Wednesday morning.

"We met in the lobby of the hotel shortly before ten. There were about fifteen of us. We met with a Ms. Baldwin, who looks about twelve but had all the facts and figures. Told us how much it would be with cocktails before and wine during, and the difference in price if we had vichyssoise instead of fruit compote with crème fraîche

– you sure you want to hear all this?"

Sigrid nodded.

"After the menu was settled, we all trooped up to have a look at the rooms available that weekend. The first would have been too crowded, the second was okay. Typical Cool Whip on the walls."

"Cool Whip?"

"Well, Sutton called it whipped cream. I thought it was more like the imitation stuff: you know, huge pictures of wistful dandies in lace pushing swings full of eighteenth-century airheads in an atmosphere of giddy abandon. Gods and goddesses. Lots of frothy pastel colors. The sort of things decorators drag in to go with the gilt and red velvet." His voice became mincing as he spoke into a imaginary telephone. "I need two and a half dozen Fêtes galantes and six billet doux. Cool Whip," he repeated firmly.

"So what happened next?"

"There were guys bustling around, setting up long tables, and Ms. Baldwin asked if anybody played cribbage because this was where some games company was holding its tournament Friday night. Sutton said yes, he was a contestant; and about that time the man who was running the tournament came in with Lucienne Ronay, so Ms. Baldwin introduced him to Sutton-Flit or Flyte or something like that-and presented the famed Madame Ronay to the rest of us. She informed us how honored she was that we'd selected the Maintenon and that was when the jerk from Brooklyn unctuously piped up and said, 'It seems we've also selected a very charming corner of the eighteenth century as well, Madame Ronay. We've been admiring your pictures. Are they the originals they appear to be?'

"And John said, 'Appearances can be deceiving. This one's still wet.'

"And everybody laughed."

Nauman drained his glass. "Then Madame Ronay and what's his name went on about their business and we took another vote on whether all the arrangements were approved and the committee adjourned. That was it."

Sigrid leaned back in her chair with her elbows on the armrests and started to tent her fingertips before her as she usually did when concentrating, but the position was uncomfortable with her taped arm and she had to rest it on the table instead.

"Did you hear any of Sutton's conversation with the man from the games company?" she asked. "Did they seem to know each other?"

"Wasn't much of a conversation. What I heard of it seemed to be the usual-'How are you? Looking forward to Friday night. How many players do you expect?' That sort of thing. But you know," he mused, "it was odd."

"Yes?"

"After he and Lucienne Ronay moved off and all the time Ms. Baldwin was babbling on about how the hotel would arrange the tables for the CUNY dinner, John kept glancing over toward him, like there was something about the guy that puzzled him."

"Did he say what?"

"No. He finally shrugged as if it wasn't important and started trying to be nice to the linguistics jerk from Brooklyn College."

7

AN explosives expert was summing up as Sigrid entered the conference room at headquarters and Captain McKinnon waved her to an empty chair near his while the expert continued.

Judging from the crumpled napkins, soda cans and coffee cups, and the deli smells of pastrami and onions and mustard still redolent in the air, this session had begun with lunch.

Elaine Albee and Jim Lowry were among the dozen officers seated around the long table. Sigrid had worked with the two younger detectives before and had watched with a slightly jaundiced eye the more-than-professional relationship developing between them. Lowry discreetly pantomimed that he'd get Sigrid a cup of coffee if she wished, but she shook her head and turned her attention to the bomb expert.

He had covered a chalk board with diagrams of possible ways the bomb had been wired. Precisely how the detonation had been accomplished appeared open to question, since only slivers of wires, cherry wood, and battery fragments remained after the violence of the explosion.

On the table before her lay one of the cribbage boards which the bomb squad had picked up at the Maintenon. Milled from heavy close grained cherry, it was twelve inches long by four inches wide by three-fourths inch thick, divided lengthwise on top by a curving pattern of two parallel rows of pegging holes. One row for each player, thought Sigrid, recalling the details Tillie had told her about the game. Each row contained one hundred twenty pegging holes so that whichever player pegged a hundred and twenty-one points first would win.

The hardwood must have been difficult to work, but with a fine drill it would have been possible to hollow out quite a nice-sized chamber on the bottom. An hour or so of painstaking effort and the chamber would have become roomy enough to hold a small wad of explosive and some sort of trigger mechanism.

When everything was taped into place, a piece of cardboard was probably cut to cover the hollow and the green felt backing neatly reglued. To the casual eye there would have been nothing to distinguish that cribbage board from the one Sigrid was holding.

"No traces of radio or clock components," the bomb expert was saying, "so we don't think it was detonated by remote control or timer switches. Witnesses say play had begun about twenty minutes before the blast, so it was probably a switch that closed a simple circuit from batteries to the explosive itself. It takes about twenty minutes to play a game-in fact, some of the contestants were already beginning their second-so the switch probably involved a game-marking peg. Pull it up and zing went the springs of his heart. Or, just as easy, push it into the hole that stood for the first win and he turns out all his lights."

"Any ideas about who?" McKinnon's face was grim.

The expert shrugged. "Anybody who wants to spend an hour with a couple of technical encyclopedias could pick up the theory. And any bright ten-year-old could make the stuff with the right chemicals.

"One thing, though," he added. "Whoever did it has probably done it before. There's a certain finesse here. This bomb wasn't meant to kill more than the one or two people in direct contact with this particular cribbage board. I don't care how many nuts call in and claim to have struck a blow for the freedom of caged canaries or death to all cribbage players-"

"A private kill?" nodded McKinnon. "I wondered why the Feds weren't busting down our doors."

"He could just as easily have blown up the whole ballroom if he'd wanted to," the expert hedged.

"And you think he's done it before?" asked Elaine Albee, a fragile-looking blonde who'd made detective last year after bringing in three Central Park muggers single-handedly.

"Look, people, this stuff packs a hell of a wallop. More than an amateur realizes, so amateurs always wind up with overkill. This guy used just enough to do the job.

I don't say he's a professional killer, but I do say he's experienced."