today until one o'clock. Nudger phoned her at Stowe High School and asked if she wanted to meet him for lunch. She said sure, at her apartment. Good girl.
Though he was in West County, he was still closer to Claudia's south St. Louis apartment than she was, so he got there first and let himself in with his key.
It was an old, spacious apartment on Wilmington, high- ceilinged and with steam-radiator heat. There was no central air-conditioning. The place was stuffy, with a faint scent of cooking gas mingled with the trapped summer heat. Nudger walked to the window air conditioner in the living room and switched it on. He stood for a moment in its humming, gurgling coolness, turning so the chilled draft dried his shirt where it was stuck to his back. The draperies at the opposite window caught the gentle movement of air and began swaying in slow rhythm like dreamy dance partners.
Claudia had lived in the apartment long enough for it to have taken on a settled appearance. The furniture, some of it new and financed through her job teaching at Stowe School, had adapted to its surroundings and seemed to have grown where it sat on the worn blue carpet. There was a clear glass ashtray with a compressed and bent cigarette butt in it on the coffee table and a stack of outdated newspapers on the floor alongside the sofa. Claudia didn't smoke; Nudger wondered who had snubbed out a cigarette here.
He walked into the kitchen. It was still too warm in there. He got a Budweiser out of the refrigerator, then returned to the cooler living room before popping the tab on the beer can. No need for a glass. He sat in a corner of the sofa where he could feel cool movement of air, found that morning's Post on top of the stack of papers, and checked the front section.
There was a photograph of Scott Scalla grinning while cutting a ribbon in front of a new factory in St. Charles. There was a piece about a county cop who had broken under strain and shot himself and his wife, and next to that a three-column article was advising people how to stay cool in the smothering grip of the present heat wave. There was nothing on Curtis Colt. He was old news and would be until a few days before his execution, when the media would get interested in whether he'd make a last-minute confession or order strawberries and pickles for his final meal. Murderers sure weren't like the rest of us; it was fun and more than a little scary to peek into their minds.
Nudger sighed, sipped beer, and turned to the sports page to read about the Cardinals' fourth straight victory. They'd won last night in extra innings. There was a photograph of Tommy Herr doing his muscular ballet over second base as he pivoted gracefully for the double play. Nudger thought Herr might be even smoother than Scott Scalla.
Claudia opened the door, pivoted neatly herself, and unloaded an armload of books and folders onto the table in the hall.
'Homework,' she said, grinning at Nudger. 'It's a little- known fact that teachers have more homework than their students. All this stuff has to be graded.' She was teaching summer school this year, a heavy schedule.
She looked great, wearing a simple navy-blue dress that set off her long dark hair and brown eyes. Her waist appeared especially slim in the sashed dress; her lean features were perfect except for a narrow nose that some might have found too long but that Nudger thought gave her a noble look and conveyed a subtle but volatile sexiness. Beauty was in the eye of the beholder, and Nudger liked to behold, then to hold.
He waited like a patient cobra until she got near enough, then pulled her down onto his lap and kissed her. She was heavy for her leanness, solid and strong. She returned the kiss, using her tongue.
'There are different kinds of homework,' Nudger pointed out. 'Some on subjects more interesting than the English you teach.'
She climbed off his lap and primly straightened her dress. 'It's the afternoon.'
He glanced at the light streaming through the window and nodded. Afternoon, all right. A sex act might change all that, throw all the time zones out of whack.
'I've got some frozen spaghetti,' she said, switching on the dining room air conditioner so it would blow into the kitchen.
Nudger knew enough to give up. For now. 'That stuff in the little plastic bags you drop into boiling water?'
She didn't answer. He heard her clattering around in the kitchen. A piece of flatware hit the floor, bounced; water ran.
By the time he'd finished his beer and was done reading about the ballgame, she had two plates of spaghetti, some cloverleaf rolls, Parmesan cheese, and two glasses of red wine on the dining room table. Nudger was glad to see there was no garlic bread.
He sat down across from her at the table. 'Did you see the girls this weekend?' The girls were Nora and Joan, her young daughters by her marriage to despicable Ralph Ferris.
Claudia nodded, striking viciously at the spaghetti with her fork. The Ralph effect. He wasn't surprised when she said, 'I saw Ralph, too.'
'How is he?'
'The same. A deceiving bastard.'
Nudger was glad to hear her speak so about Ralph. She used to speak derogatorily about him only infrequently. She'd thought everything that had gone wrong with their marriage, with their children, had been her fault. Ralph had helped her to think that, helped her down into hell. Which was why Ralph was indeed a deceiving bastard.
Nudger sipped wine, smiled. Ralph was also a fool. Claudia was a woman you could talk to, but one who didn't press for answers or explanations. And Nudger seldom delved into her life where she'd made it plain she didn't want him. Such mutual respect and trust was rare in a relationship where there was good sex.
'What do you think of Curtis Colt?' Nudger said.
Claudia swallowed a mouthful of spaghetti, washed it down with Gallo wine. 'The guy who shot that old couple in a supermarket holdup?'
'Liquor store,' Nudger corrected. 'My job is to prove he's innocent.'
'I thought his legal counsel had tried taking care of all that in court, and Colt was found guilty and sentenced to death.'
'That's the way it is, I'm afraid. His fiancee hired me to talk to the witnesses who testified against him, uncover enough doubt to stave off his execution in the electric chair.'
'Which execution is?…'
'Saturday.'
'Sounds as if you're tilting at a windmill. The kind that generates electricity.'
'Cruel analogy, teacher.'
She smiled at him as she buttered a roll. 'Were you looking for encouragement?'
'Nope. Objectivity.'
'That's what you got,' she said. 'Sorry.'
When they were finished eating, he carried the dishes into the kitchen while she loaded the dishwasher. Claudia was very efficient in the kitchen. He noticed the gutted plastic cooking bags in the trash.
'I've got to talk to more of the eyewitnesses when they get home from work,' he said.
'Uh-hm,' she said.
'That means I'll be busy tonight.'
'Ah,' she said, pretending to have just gotten his drift.
She turned the dishwasher on fast load and walked with him into the bedroom. The air conditioner was already humming away in there; she must have switched it on earlier, while she was preparing supper. The wiliness of women. The malleability of afternoons.
The bed was unmade, and the closet door was hanging half open. Nudger kept a change of clothes at Claudia's, and he saw his two ties-one blue-striped, one brown-hanging on the hook in side the door. Only there were three ties on the hook; his two had been joined by a solid-red tie. He remembered the cigarette butt in the living room ashtray.
'Whose tie?' he asked casually. 'A present for me?'
'Tie?' Claudia finished unbuttoning her dress and stepped out of it. 'Oh, that belongs to Biff. He forgot it and I stuck it there.' 'Biff?'
'Biff Archway. He teaches physical education out at Stowe School. He was here last night.'
