A sound from the front of the room took a second to penetrate her hazy brain, and a second longer to be processed.
It was the sound of her door being opened. And it was accompanied by Stacy"s voice. "Claudia? You home? I came to visit my cold cuts. You"ll never guess what- Ark!"
The door slammed shut again.
Claudia stared up at Ethan. And began, helplessly, to giggle at the expression on his face. "Oh," she gasped, "oh, my. You"ve never met Stacy, have you?"
"I still haven"t," he snapped. There was an embarra.s.sed flush high on his cheekbones. He sat up and reached for his jeans and underwear, muttering, "Cold cuts. She wants to visit her cold cuts." He paused to fix Claudia with an accusing stare. "And this person has a key to your apartment?"
That sent her into whoops. "I"m sorry. I shouldn"t laugh. If it had been anyone except Stacy ... she couldn"t have seen much, Ethan, she was gone so fast. But, oh, if you could have seen the look on your face!"
His grin was small and reluctant, but there. "I guess it could have been worse. Does anyone else have a key they"re likely to use? Like, say, your mother or father?"
"Now, that would not be funny." Absently Claudia reached for the dangling ends of her bra and fastened it, then looked around for her panties.
They were decorating the Tiffany floor lamp. She retrieved them and stood to pull them on. "Stacy lives across the hall. She"s my best friend, so of course she has a key. Though normally she doesn"t use it to visit her c-cold cuts." A giggle snuck out, but she restrained herself. "Her refrigerator went out yesterday, you see. She came over last night-"
Last night. "Oh, G.o.d," Claudia moaned, closing her eyes. "Neil."
"The boyfriend." Ethan"s lip curled. He jammed one foot into the leg of his jeans. "I guess you had another attack of amnesia. Pretty convenient memory you have."
She flushed, guilty and mortified. "Don"t you sneer at me."
"You going to tell your lover about us?"
"I- Neil isn"t-oh, if you"re going to be hateful you can just leave!"
"Fine." He yanked up the zipper on his jeans. "Great." He grabbed his trench coat off the floor, shrugged it on and took a step toward the door. Then stopped and heaved a great sigh. "No, it isn"t fine."
He turned back to her. "I forgot about the boyfriend, too. About everything except having you. The thing is..." He grimaced and scrubbed his hair back, making it even more of a mess. "I don"t poach on another man"s territory. And I sure as h.e.l.l don"t share."
Claudia felt like a pinball machine-lights flashing, emotions bouncing around all over the place. "We aren"t lovers, and I am not territory."
"The h.e.l.l we aren"t!" He crossed to her in two swift strides, seized her face in both hands and kissed her. He made a thorough job of it, and when he raised his head her insides were jumbled worse than before.
"Tell me again we aren"t lovers," he demanded.
Claudia drifted back, blinking. "Um ... I meant that Neil and I aren"t lovers."
"Oh." A grin broke out on his face. "That"s all right, then. You"ll tell him you can"t see him anymore. Because right now, you and I definitely are lovers."
Her heart gave a little skip. "At the moment, you mean. Temporarily."
"Yes." His voice softened and his eyes looked worried. "I"m not looking for anything long-term, Claudia. I should have said so before."
"You didn"t have a chance, did you? I swept you off your feet."
"So you did." His smile returned. ""Practically perfect in every way", that"s you. Who would have thought I"d have a hot affair with Mary Poppins?"
"Mary Poppins?" she exclaimed indignantly.
"Sure. She was always fixing things for other people, too." He dropped a kiss on her nose. "If you hurry, you can still get that shower before you have to go to your meeting."
"And maybe your car is still downstairs. Though I doubt it."
"Maybe," he said cheerfully. He was humming Tchaikovsky"s 1812 Overture as he closed her door behind him.
It took Claudia"s pinballing brain a moment to catch up with the significance of that. The Overture was a triumphant paean to Napoleon"s defeat at Waterloo. Just who, she wondered, did Ethan think had triumphed today-and who had met their Waterloo?
She fell back on the couch, laughing.
Ethan beat the wrecker to his car by mere moments. The truck had been stuck in traffic, he learned.
Once in a while, fate smiled. For the rest of the afternoon he found himself smiling back. Humming at odd moments. Even the lack of progress in the case didn"t have the power to depress his spirits. Boots"s tip turned out to be worthless, though it took Ethan all afternoon to confirm that the Norblusky his stoolie told him about wasn"t the Norblusky Ethan needed to find. He couldn"t get worked up about the wasted time, though. For someone who"d done something he"d been convinced would be a major mistake, he sure felt good.
Late that afternoon he looked up his uncle Thomas. Aunt Adele directed him to the detached garage out back, which didn"t surprise him. The main reason Thomas Mallory had retired was so he could devote more time to his hobby. Ethan could hear motors whirring before he reached the side door of the garage. He opened it, and there stood his uncle in the middle of his kingdom.
Four tables covered with miniature roads, cars, trees and buildings encircled him. A little locomotive was huffing up the papier-mache hill at the far end, burping tiny puffs of smoke from its miniature smokestack. Ethan grinned. "You"ve been changing things around again. The feed-store"s new, isn"t it?"
"Got it last week." Thomas adjusted the speed of the locomotive and it slowed to a halt. He was a tall, narrow man, slightly stooped, with wispy gray hair beneath a red baseball cap. His reading gla.s.ses always looked in danger of slipping off the end of his long, narrow nose. "What else do you see that"s changed?"
Ethan groaned, but more from habit than real irritation. Uncle Thomas was forever cross-examining him. It was a holdover from when he"d trained Ethan. "Detection is fifty percent observation, fifty percent perspiration," his uncle used to say.
Thomas waited, his eyes patient and amused. He liked to claim the prerogative of age when Ethan complained about his little pop quizzes. "Makes me feel useful," he"d say, trying to look pathetic. He actually did pathetic pretty well. Or grandfatherly, or helpless, innocuous, friendly, upset. The outraged consumer was one of his best bits. He could be whatever the subject he was questioning needed him to be.
Uncle Thomas had never had much of a head for business, but he was h.e.l.l on wheels at getting people to talk.
"Manipulative old b.a.s.t.a.r.d," Ethan muttered.
"Show some respect, boy." Uncle Thomas"s eyes twinkled. "What would your aunt Adele say if she heard that kind of language?"
"That I shouldn"t listen in on her private conversations," Ethan retorted. "Since that"s what she calls you when she"s mad at you." But he capitulated, as they"d both known he would. "Okay, okay. The feed-store is new, like I said. The wagon by the feed-store, too. The store next to the bank has changed-used to be a drugstore, didn"t it? And something"s different about the mayor"s house." He studied it a moment. "I"ve got it. The oak tree with the little swing is gone."
"Blasted cat of Adele"s got hold of it. Why that fur ball wants to chew on fake trees, I"ll never know." Thomas Mallory ducked under the table that held up the east end of his domain, straightening with a grunt. He shoved his gla.s.ses up a split second before they fell off. "Not bad. Guess you have learned a little something about observation. But you didn"t come here in the middle of a workday to ... uh-oh." He stopped, frowning.
"What?" Ethan looked around, but couldn"t see anything wrong.
"You got laid."
Ethan felt his cheeks heating. "Come on, Nero Wolfe. You can"t tell just by looking at me."
"Sure I can. Haven"t seen you this relaxed in months. Either you"ve been laid, or you"re in love."
Ethan"s mouth went dry. His uncle was just trying to get a rise out of him. He refused to jump to the bait, but for some reason he couldn"t think of a thing to say.
Thomas carefully unhitched the locomotive and inspected it, tipping his head back to look through his half gla.s.ses. "Think the smoke was getting a little thin ... yep, the reservoir"s dry." He picked up a funnel and a water pitcher. "I hope it wasn"t that Cecily Barone who put a smile on your face."