A part of her brain cataloged the variance. The other part was still too drugged by sleep to care or analyze.
She yawned, turned over in the king-size bed, and abruptly caught her breath at what lay outside.
Oscar Nauman’s house sprawled along the edge of a steep, thickly wooded hillside. With no near neighbors on that side, he had replaced his bedroom wall with sheets of clear glass so that nothing blocked her view of a tree-filled ravine that had transformed itself into a Currier and Ives print.
Yesterday’s heavy gray sky was clear blue now and last night’s thin flakes must have thickened sometime during the early morning hours because snow capped each twig and limb, softened the craggy rocks, and shone with such dazzling purity that sunlight was reflected inside to intensify Nauman’s paintings and light up the room from unfamiliar angles.
A thoroughly urban creature, Lieutenant Sigrid Harald, NYPD, knew almost nothing about nature in the raw and, on the whole, rather mistrusted unpaved lanes and trackless forests. She cared little for wildflowers or for knowing the identity of birds hopping mindlessly around in treetops. An occasional National Geographic special on Channel 13 was her nearest link to wild animals.
Moreover, snow was usually an annoyance, dirty slushy stuff that got inside her boots or lay too long in messy heaps and, by alternately melting and refreezing, made city sidewalks treacherous for walking.
But to gaze out for the first time in years upon a virgin snowfall unsullied by any footsteps filled her with unexpected wonder.
She pushed herself upright in bed with Nauman’s down comforter wrapped around her bare shoulders and watched a small black-capped bird try to perch on an ice-crusted twig just outside the window. It misjudged the ice’s slickness and seemed startled when its feet slid out from under its first attempt at perching; but it recovered, settled onto the twig, and hunched into its gray feathers much as Sigrid hunched into the bedcovers.
Her breath puffed in visible little clouds and she felt a momentary twinge of solidarity with the bird. If it was cold in here, what must it be out there? And how did birds keep their unfeathered feet from freezing anyhow?
On the end wall opposite the bed, the stone hearth was black and lifeless. Nauman liked to sleep in an unheated room and last night’s fire had already burned down to glowing embers before they fell asleep. She shivered and sank a bit deeper into the covers.
No sign of Nauman, of course. He was an early riser and had probably been up for hours.
According to the clock on the mantel, it was a quarter past eleven. Were she in her own apartment, Sigrid would have stretched contentedly and gone back to sleep. A weekend’s greatest luxury was her freedom to drift in and out of sleep for several hours and she seldom rose before noon.
Nauman’s Connecticut retreat offered better incentives to rise; nevertheless, it took all the willpower she could muster to leave the warm bed and snatch up jeans and sweater.
Happily, the man’s Spartan attitude toward cold bedrooms did not extend to his bath. The tiled floor felt pleasantly warm to her bare feet and the hot water was a benediction.
She showered, toweled the mirror free of fog, then ran a comb through her dark hair and pushed it into shape with her hands. Until October, her hair had been long and she’d worn it pulled straight back and pinned into a tight bun at the nape of her neck. Now ragged bangs swept over her strong forehead and the back was clipped short.
Smoothing moisturizer over her face, she hesitated over the other small bottles and tubes in her toiletry bag. Cosmetics were something else new in her life, and even though she enjoyed the sexual sizzle they sent through her body, she still lacked expertise with the intricacies of technique.
She would never be very pleased with her reflection- her face was too thin, her cheeks had never dimpled, her mouth was too wide-but she was starting to be satisfied with her eyes and the way her new bangs softened the former austerity. Cutting her hair seemed to have cut away some inhibitions as well, made her less reserved and awkward.
At least with Nauman.
Suddenly impatient to find him, she smudged on eye shadow and lip gloss and quickly dressed.
An aroma of coffee hung in the air and she followed it out to the kitchen, but that utilitarian room was empty save for the tantalizing smell of onions, herbs and well-browned chicken now rising from the oven. Nauman cooked as instinctively as he painted and had evidently felt creative this morning. Sigrid poured herself a cup of strong dark liquid, pulled the plug on the coffee maker, and backtracked through the house to the end wing formed by the studio and its decks.
The lyrical intensity of a Martinu symphony was muffled by the double glass doors that led to Nauman’s studio.
Essentially a huge sun porch, it was lined on both long walls with French windows that led to wide decks on either side. A high ceiling followed the pitch of the roof, accommodating two ten-foot easels; and with the snow outside today, the room was awash in brilliant natural light.
At the far end of the studio, beyond the thrift-shop assortment of tables and cabinets that held his painting supplies, was a huge stone fireplace flanked by floor-to-ceiling bookcases. Oscar Nauman sat in one of the comfortable chairs pulled up before the blazing log fire and Sigrid paused to watch him relight his pipe.
He was half a head taller than she and a generation older, with a lean hard body, piercing blue eyes, and thick silver hair that had finished turning white before he was thirty. They had sparred for six months, been lovers for six weeks, yet Sigrid was still unsure of her feelings for him- how much was sexual, how much emotional, and whether the two added up to that irrational state called love.
By nature and by training, she was cool and analytical, but Oscar Nauman was the one element in her life that she consciously refused to analyze. Clearly he was too old, too quixotic, too opinionated, too self-centered. Why was she not heeding the logic of this?
Then Nauman’s head came up, he smiled in her direction, and Sigrid’s heart turned over. She smiled back and started to open the door before abruptly realizing that he was not alone, that his smile had been for a red-haired woman who now walked into Sigrid’s view holding one of Nauman’s pictures. Specific words were indistinct but her voice held a musical lilt.
With the snow reflecting so much dazzling sunlight into the studio, Sigrid knew she would not be seen if she retreated back down the shadowed hall and read the morning paper till the woman was gone. Two months ago, she might have done just that. She was still self-conscious with Nauman when around others but she was trying to overcome it. So she told herself that she lingered here only because she was uncertain if the woman had come for business or if her Sunday morning visit were purely social. Perhaps this was something neighbors did in the country?
There was only one way to find out.
Steadying the coffee cup in her left hand, she opened one of the glass doors. The others looked up as she entered.
This time, Nauman’s smile was for her. “Come and meet Francesca,” he said.
The visitor wore brown corduroy knickers crammed inside knee-length high-heeled brown boots and a loose pullover knitted in tones of russet and amber. Windswept auburn hair tangled itself around her fair face and her classic features appeared almost flawless as she put down the painting she’d been inspecting and came to Sigrid with her hand outstretched.
“I’m Francesca Leeds, and I’m so pleased to meet you at last,” she said with a smile in her warm Irish voice. “Oscar’s told me all about you.”
“Has he?” Sigrid mumbled.
“Have I?” asked Nauman, frowning at a picture Lady Francesca had unearthed from earlier years.
“Well, somebody did, acushla. If not you, perhaps Hester Kohn or Doris Quinn.” She turned back to Sigrid. “Anyhow, I know you’re a police officer in the city. A detective, right?”