Read Online Past Imperfect (Sigrid Harald) by Margaret Maron - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Margaret Maron
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left her a plate in the refrigerator, but Roman himself did not appear.
Their apartment had been added to the rear of a commercial building that fronted the next street over and it formed a chunky L around the small courtyard. The short arm of the L held the kitchen and what had been the maid’s quarters when the owner, a sister to Roman’s elderly godmother, had lived here between her many marriages. Since Sigrid had no interest in cooking, Roman had taken that part of the house for his own and was honestly convinced that his being there made no difference, that he certainly didn’t impinge on her life.
In truth, after so many years alone, it was a little like finding herself saddled with a combination of bachelor uncle and some sort of large furry pet. He offered unsolicited advice, hot meals which she could accept or ignore without his taking it personally, and an aura of comfort which she rather welcomed but had never created for herself. Although she had been solitary by choice until accident threw them together last summer, it was pleasant to come home and find Roman puttering in the kitchen, experimenting with the herbs and spices he couldn’t resist buying. (His results weren’t always edible but hope sprang eternal in his heart.)
Not tonight though.
She had not told Roman of her birthday, so the door between the kitchen and his rooms was closed. A sliver of light shone from beneath it and Sigrid heard the muted tap of his typewriter. Since Christmas he’d been doggedly trying to write a mystery novel and every morning he had questions about the technicalities of a homicide investigation. Fortunately, he did not ask her opinion of his plot’s plausibility and Sigrid had no intention of giving it even if solicited. She knew quite well the relative fragility of the human body compared to bullets, tempered steel or even blunt instruments wielded with determination; but daggers made of brittle icicles struck her as highly preposterous.
She hung her coat on the halltree, then paused in the living room to pour a glass of cassis, which she took to her bedroom to drink in private celebration of another birthday.
The message light was blinking on the answering machine beside her bed and when she pressed the play button, Oscar Nauman’s warm voice filled the room. Only yesterday she’d dropped him off at the airport, where he’d met Elliott Buntrock, one of the hottest freelance curators in the art world, and caught a plane to the West Coast. Nauman knew that her machine held a sixty-minute tape and he wasn’t a bit self-conscious about speaking as if she were there with him. And not just speaking but fulminating at length about the idiocy of holding the College Art Association’s (or any other association’s, for that matter) winter meeting in Los Angeles so that you had to keep remembering what time it was where sensible people lived and what kind of ersatz city was this anyhow and why the hell had he let Buntrock talk him into going in the first place?
Monologues came easily to Nauman. As chairman of the Art Department at Vanderlyn College, he was used to lecturing dazzled students; and his reputation as one of the leading abstract artists of the postwar years had made him confident and forthright, occasionally even careless, in his sweeping pronouncements.
Sigrid sipped her cassis and smiled. She had heard his opinions of Buntrock before. Elliott Buntrock fancied himself on the cutting edge of the art world and was already looking for a book editor to publish the first volume of his collected writings. As Nauman fumed, she undressed, hung up her clothes and put on a scarlet gown of warm brushed wool.
“—and Buntrock’s got me moderating a panel called ‘Wither Postmodernism?’” His tone dripped scorn on Buntrock’s mild pun. “A bunch of bozos who paint portraits of Mickey Mouse descending a staircase or have things that slither around the floor. That smart-aleck stuff seems so thin to me now.
Their apartment had been added to the rear of a commercial building that fronted the next street over and it formed a chunky L around the small courtyard. The short arm of the L held the kitchen and what had been the maid’s quarters when the owner, a sister to Roman’s elderly godmother, had lived here between her many marriages. Since Sigrid had no interest in cooking, Roman had taken that part of the house for his own and was honestly convinced that his being there made no difference, that he certainly didn’t impinge on her life.
In truth, after so many years alone, it was a little like finding herself saddled with a combination of bachelor uncle and some sort of large furry pet. He offered unsolicited advice, hot meals which she could accept or ignore without his taking it personally, and an aura of comfort which she rather welcomed but had never created for herself. Although she had been solitary by choice until accident threw them together last summer, it was pleasant to come home and find Roman puttering in the kitchen, experimenting with the herbs and spices he couldn’t resist buying. (His results weren’t always edible but hope sprang eternal in his heart.)
Not tonight though.
She had not told Roman of her birthday, so the door between the kitchen and his rooms was closed. A sliver of light shone from beneath it and Sigrid heard the muted tap of his typewriter. Since Christmas he’d been doggedly trying to write a mystery novel and every morning he had questions about the technicalities of a homicide investigation. Fortunately, he did not ask her opinion of his plot’s plausibility and Sigrid had no intention of giving it even if solicited. She knew quite well the relative fragility of the human body compared to bullets, tempered steel or even blunt instruments wielded with determination; but daggers made of brittle icicles struck her as highly preposterous.
She hung her coat on the halltree, then paused in the living room to pour a glass of cassis, which she took to her bedroom to drink in private celebration of another birthday.
The message light was blinking on the answering machine beside her bed and when she pressed the play button, Oscar Nauman’s warm voice filled the room. Only yesterday she’d dropped him off at the airport, where he’d met Elliott Buntrock, one of the hottest freelance curators in the art world, and caught a plane to the West Coast. Nauman knew that her machine held a sixty-minute tape and he wasn’t a bit self-conscious about speaking as if she were there with him. And not just speaking but fulminating at length about the idiocy of holding the College Art Association’s (or any other association’s, for that matter) winter meeting in Los Angeles so that you had to keep remembering what time it was where sensible people lived and what kind of ersatz city was this anyhow and why the hell had he let Buntrock talk him into going in the first place?
Monologues came easily to Nauman. As chairman of the Art Department at Vanderlyn College, he was used to lecturing dazzled students; and his reputation as one of the leading abstract artists of the postwar years had made him confident and forthright, occasionally even careless, in his sweeping pronouncements.
Sigrid sipped her cassis and smiled. She had heard his opinions of Buntrock before. Elliott Buntrock fancied himself on the cutting edge of the art world and was already looking for a book editor to publish the first volume of his collected writings. As Nauman fumed, she undressed, hung up her clothes and put on a scarlet gown of warm brushed wool.
“—and Buntrock’s got me moderating a panel called ‘Wither Postmodernism?’” His tone dripped scorn on Buntrock’s mild pun. “A bunch of bozos who paint portraits of Mickey Mouse descending a staircase or have things that slither around the floor. That smart-aleck stuff seems so thin to me now.
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