in his bed. It had taken him a long time to get his breath back as he lay stunned among the mangroves and the fleeing birds, and now he was unpleasantly aware of the weight of his lungs; they heaved in his chest like sacs of lukewarm gelatin. His arms ached, his leg muscles twitched in their loose wrappers of empty skin. His wife sat next to him and stroked his dry and feverish forehead.
'Damn drunk drivers,' she muttered.
Augie briefly closed his eyes, swallowed, opened them again. 'Nina,' he said. She waited for him to continue, and as she waited she glanced toward the window. As on the evening Augie had come back to her, the thin curtain was blanched by moonlight and billowed softly on an unfelt breeze. He took her hand. 'Nina, listen. I don't think it was a drunk. And I don't think it was an accident.'
The former widow pushed out breath as though to speak but found she had no words. Augie paused, then with great effort lifted himself onto his elbows.
'I didn't want to say anything,' he went on. 'I wasn't sure. I didn't want to scare you. But ever since Fred, that tart, now this business with the auction…' He looked at Nina's face, her wide-set slate-gray eyes, and understood that no more needed saying. 'You knew?'
'I suspected. I didn't want you to worry. Manny Rucker said-'
'Aren't doctors fabulous?' Augie interrupted. 'They prescribe no stress and think life is gonna obey their orders.'
He managed a parched smile that his wife could not return.
'I went to the police the day Fred died,' she said. The words, long overdue, spilled out now. 'They thought I was crazy. They told me to call the ASPCA. Maybe now they'll believe-'
'Believe what? That someone tried to run me over with a turquoise convertible? Half the cars in town are turquoise convertibles. Rented and identical.'
'At least they'll know you're in danger.'
Augie tossed his head on the pillow. 'So what will they do? Put a patrolman at the door? Keep me under house arrest for my own protection? For how long? There's only so much-'
'Augie,' said Nina, and there was a letting-go in her voice, a half-groan like muted thunder very far away. 'I've been so afraid. I've been so afraid for so long now.'
She leaned against him and he held her. The only comfort he could offer was the attempt at comfort, and in giving it he could almost forget that he was terrified as well. But then another thought occurred to him. He pictured Reuben, odd, shy, swishy Reuben, streaking across the path of the speeding car, his own young body perhaps three feet from its fender as it throttled toward them. 'And Reuben? Reuben knew?'
'He knows,' said Nina. 'I had to tell him.'
Augie slowly shook his heavy head. 'Reuben is amazing.'
Joe Mulvane was a man who knew how to fill a doorway. His broad shoulders in their out-of-place suit jacket nearly brushed against both sides of the frame, his thick thighs prevented any light from slicing in between his legs, and his mordant posture made it clear that he did not appreciate being called with a paranoid tale at 8 a.m. on a Sunday morning and asked to pay a mercy visit.
Nina Silver greeted him, looking prim, composed, not obviously hysterical. She led him in and offered him coffee, which mollified him somewhat. He leaned against the kitchen counter as she poured him a mug. He jerked a thumb toward the living-room walls. 'These your husband's paintings?'
Nina nodded, then braced herself. People always felt obliged to make some comment. It was a nuisance.
'They're big,' said Mulvane.
'Yes,' said Nina Silver. She handed him his coffee, led him through the living room and out the French doors to the pool.
Augie was sitting there, an untouched slice of melon and a plate of mango muffins set in front of him. His color was bad, a yellowish gray, and his skin hurt, his body throbbed like a headache all over. 'Darling,' said his wife, 'this is Sergeant Joe Mulvane.'
The painter didn't rise, just held out a hand. 'Hi,
Joe,' he said. 'Augie.' He said it with the same sort of utterly disarming informality that had allowed him to sit on Nina Alonzo's office desk the first time they had met. People should rest when their feet were tired. They should call each other by easy names. Why not? Mulvane seemed to understand. He slipped off his jacket and took a chair without waiting to be offered one. He drank his coffee.
'Have a muffin, Joe,' said Augie, offering the plate. 'I'm not hungry.'
Mulvane, a Bostonian, knew from muffins, although they didn't have mango way up there. He broke off a piece and appraised its texture.
'Joe, listen,' Augie went on. 'I'm sure my wife was right to call you, but I can't help feeling we're wasting your time. There's so little to go on. I didn't see the driver or if he was alone. I didn't see a license plate. Neither did Reuben.'
Mulvane swallowed a piece of muffin, looked quickly for a napkin, then discreetly licked his fingers. 'But both of you-you and Reuben, I mean-are sure it was intentional?'
'The guy sneaked within thirty yards of me and floored it.'
'And it was one of those turquoise ragtops?' the detective asked.
'Spanking clean,' said Augie.
'That's a renter,' said Mulvane. He blinked his sandy eyelashes, looked around the Silvers' yard. The swimming pool and plantings reminded him how perilously enviable the well-to-do Key West life could be. 'And you're not aware of any enemies?'
Augie shook his head.
The detective thought back to his first conversation with Nina. 'But you have a lotta friends,' he said.
Augie looked down, his color went a shade more sallow, his deep blue lighthouse eyes went dim. 'Yes,' he said, 'I do. And in some crazy way, that's what bothers me more than anything. That it could be a friend.'
Mulvane dove into his coffee. He was a homicide cop; hurt feelings did not come very near the top of his list of human tragedies. Yet there was something in Augie's pain that got to him. An intimate betrayal was itself a kind of murder. 'Well, let's not assume-'
Nina cut him off, following her own insistent train of thought. 'What else could it be? The paintings. The prices.'
The artist recoiled at the words but could not deny them. Murder, after all, generally came with a motive.
The cop had a piece of muffin in his hand and realized suddenly that he had lost his appetite. He put it back on the plate. 'Maybe you should call the auction off,' he suggested.
'Impossible,' Augie said. He wore a look Nina was not sure she had ever seen in him before, a look not exactly of helplessness but of sour despairing. 'There's this huge machinery already cranked up. Sotheby's. Advertising. Sellers. Buyers. My agent.'
'Agent?' said Mulvane. 'What's he do?'
'She,' said Augie. 'Shows the work. Publicizes. Coordinates.'
'Takes a cut?'
'Of course.'
'She's in New York, this agent?'
'Based there,' Augie said. 'She was here a couple of days ago.'
Seemingly from nowhere Mulvane produced a small and crumpled notebook and a cheap and capless pen. 'What's her name?'
Augie squirmed in the heightening sun as though he himself had suddenly come under suspicion. 'Joe, really-'
'Claire Steiger,' Nina said. 'S-t-e-i-g-e-r. She was here with her husband, Christopher Cunningham. Goes by Kip. They were staying at the Flagler House.'
'Did they rent a car?' the detective asked, the butt of his pen against his freckled lower lip.
Nina looked at Augie. Augie shrugged. Neither had noticed how their visitors arrived.
'When did they leave town?'
