One Coffee With by Margaret Maron Page B

of their work. He had thought to furnish this odd young woman’s mind with romanticism, gorgeous costumes and rich colors; but she had outreached him stripped away all nonessentials and retreated to the uncluttered simplicity and elegance of late Gothic line and form.
    “I told you I don’t know much about art,” Sigrid said tightly as he broke into delighted laughter.
    “I’m not laughing at you but at myself. For jumping to unwarranted conclusions.” If she could respond to the austere directness of these drawings . . . . There seemed to be more to this unusual policewoman than he’d suspected.
    He put on his most charming air and tried to draw her out but his laughter had offended. She ate neatly but swiftly with the air of one who’d had to leave more than one meal unfinished.
    Nettled, Nauman concentrated on his own steak.
    “I might have known you wouldn’t like anything created in this century, ” he said crossly.
    “Actually you’re wrong.” The steak had been surprisingly good, the ale refreshing, and now that Nauman had quit trying to be charming, Sigrid felt more at ease. “I saw a small black and brown painting at the Quinn house just tonight. On the top landing. Do you know it?”
    “Are you putting me on?” he asked suspiciously.
    “Why? Isn’t it any good, either?” Enlightenment dawned in her gray eyes. “Oh. Is it yours?”
    He nodded. “I did that thirty years ago, but it was damn good. You’ve just made it impossible for me to attack your taste.”
    “Excellent. Perhaps now we can quit pretending this is a social occasion and get down to work.”
    She pushed aside the dishes and opened her ubiquitous notebook. “You must have known Professor Quinn as well as anyone. Who’d want him dead? Leyden?”
    “Because of that tableau you saw with Doris Quinn?”
    “They did seem . . . intimate.”
    Nauman smiled at the chasteness of the term. “If Piers Leyden wanted Riley Quinn dead, it wouldn’t be because of Doris. She was just extra protection.”
    “Against what?”
    “Against what Quinn was likely to say about Leyden in his latest book.” Nauman toyed with his mug, creating patterns of wet, interlocking circles on the wooden tabletop as he chose his words carefully.
    “Riley was a bastard,” he said slowly, “but he knew a hell of a lot about art trends since the war, and he didn’t hesitate to make value judgments. If he said your work had merit, you’d stop having trouble getting a gallery to show it. If he said it was good, you’d start selling occasionally. And if he called it of lasting value, you’d sell things regularly, and people would come around to your studio begging you to accept their commissions.
    “There’s been so much crap floating around these past few years—pop, op, slop—that collectors with more money than confidence in their own taste depend on someone like Riley. It’s similar to what Bernard Berenson did for Renaissance art. It’s all very well to buy a trendy piece of art because it amuses you; but if a Riley Quinn approves, then it becomes a good investment, too.”
    “Like having someone tell you Picasso’s going to be Picasso before he actually becomes Picasso, and the prices go up,” Sigrid said thoughtfully. “And Quinn didn’t consider Professor Leyden a Picasso?”
    “You do have a talent for understatement,” Nauman smiled. “Leyden’s a good draftsman, and he knows more about anatomy and the way muscles work than most doctors, but he doesn’t have much taste.
    “Ordinarily that wouldn’t matter,” he added cynically. “His things are probably better than many of Riley’s pets, but Quinn and Leyden have always clashed—one of those natural antipathies—and Quinn was planning to put him down for all time in his new book. I suppose Leyden thought that bedding Doris would take the edge off Quinn’s attack, make everyone think Riley Quinn was letting personalities influence his judgment. Which he was, of course, but