Three-Day Town - By Margaret Maron Page 0,83

the honor students and he ignored her so completely that it was both insulting and a constant irritant.”

Amused, Sigrid shook her head. “You got that out of our discussion?”

“The subconscious works in mysterious ways,” he said airily. He poured the last of the wine into his own glass and rose. “I shall go write the chapter now while it’s still perfectly clear in my head.”

Ready to tackle personal matters, Sigrid sat down at the computer in her bedroom. As near as she could figure it, New Zealand was about sixteen hours ahead of New York, which probably meant that it was tomorrow afternoon there. Happily, there was a note from Anne that had been sent only minutes before, which might signal that her mother still had her laptop on. She immediately sent a message: “You there? We need to talk.”

Back came: “We were just on our way out for drinks. Whassup?”

As concisely as possible, Sigrid repeated what Deborah Knott had told her and pressed the send button.

While she waited for a reply, Sigrid looked at her own calendar. The long leave of absence she had taken after Nauman’s death had used up all of the time she had accumulated, but at the moment she had a new balance of thirty-four days.

And Grandmother’s balance? Two months? Three?

By the time she had brushed her teeth and was ready for bed, there was a final message from Anne: “We’ll see about changing our plane reservations first thing tomorrow.”

CHAPTER

23

… the refuse from them makes the streets appear unkempt and uncared for.

—The New New York, 1909

Upon leaving Elliott, Dwight and I decided it would be just as easy, and certainly a lot cheaper and quicker, to walk over to Seventh Avenue and take the subway uptown. Even though it was cold, cold, cold, the wind had died down for the moment and walking was not too unpleasant as long as we held on to each other and avoided the worst of the ice.

The subway was half empty and we immediately found seats, but when we pulled into the Times Square stop several minutes later, Dwight suddenly grabbed my hand.

“C’mon,” he said, and hurried me out of the train and up the steps into the neon exuberance of New York’s theater district.

Most of the theaters are closed on Mondays, but those that were open were just letting out and the streets were thronged with people despite the bitter cold.

Dwight smiled down into my dazzled eyes and waved his hand to encompass the whole display. “I got ’em to turn everything on just for you.”

“Oh, Major Bryant!” I laughed and stood on tiptoes to kiss him. “You shouldn’t have!”

Grinning happily at my country bumpkin delight and pleased with himself for thinking of it, he stationed himself by a light pole right where Seventh and Broadway intersect at West 42nd Street and I leaned into his comfortable bulk to enjoy the blinking lights, the waterfalls of cascading LEDs, the riotous colors, the eye-popping whites. Brilliant blues and pure yellows chased each other up the front of buildings and erupted in a gush of green at the top. Reds and oranges blazed across the electric billboards. Garish razzamatazz brilliance dazzled my eyes and intoxicated my senses. Except for Dwight’s strong arms around me, I would have gone reeling into the street, drunk with the explosion of flashing lights and color. It was Fourth of July fireworks without the bangs, a thousand overly decorated Christmas trees without the carols, and the perfect antidote for the sadness I felt for Sigrid and Mrs. Lattimore.

“I want one of everything for our pond house,” I told him when I had looked my fill.

“Dream on, kid.” He acts appalled by my desire for neon bar signs, and maybe he’s not pretending, but when we do get around to building some sort of screened structure next to the farm pond where we swim and fish in the summertime, I’m determined to wallpaper one side of it with the signs I’ve started collecting.

We found a place where we could sit with a cup of coffee and watch people passing who seemed oblivious to the lights that blazed overhead. Eventually, we threaded our way over to the bus stop and trundled up Broadway to Columbus Circle and on past Lincoln Center, ablaze in its own floodlights.

We got off at our stop, and as we walked up the street to our building, I couldn’t help noticing all the bags of garbage piled along the curb and remembered that