Mrs. Meier's sitting room held a large table and eight chairs. Five of them were occupied.
A quarter of an hour ago, the police had arrived, chasing the tenants off the landing but telling them to stay in the building for further interrogation. They were not to discuss the case with each other.
Now they were sitting in the janitor's living room, where the woman had offered them asylum, cookies, and coffee.
The coffee was one of the few things that Art liked about this country—you could get a decent espresso almost everywhere. But apparently not at Mrs. Meier's. The brownish, tepid water listlessly lurking in the cup before him was sweet with the sugar he had added but didn't taste of much else.
But the chocolate chunk cookies were okay, even though the half kilogram bag that Mrs. Meier had unloaded into a bowl wouldn't last long. Monica the waitress crunched through them at an alarming pace. Art wondered how she could be so thin.
"Shouldn't we get Mr. Pathan, too?" Adriana asked. "The police said that all the tenants should wait here." The blonde was sitting next to Art, on his right side. She still held on to her unlit cigarette.
"I rang his doorbell," Ralph answered. "But no one opened. Maybe he's out, driving his taxi."
Art heard a faint, whispery drumming. It came from Adriana repetitively tapping the table with her cigarette.
"Sorry," she said, apparently noticing Art's eyes on her hands. "This story freaks me out." Her voice was subdued. She flashed a smile at Art, set down the cigarette, and took up her empty coffee cup, studying its china. "It's horrible." Her mouth was a thin, pale line.
Art nodded, assuming that she wasn't referring to the cup she held in her hands and wondering if an answer was expected. "Yeah," he finally said.
"It's the kind of thing that we do reports about... at the radio station where I work." She put the cup down again. "Well, not me, you see. I'm in the entertainment department. I'm running the music collection. Selecting songs, keeping track of the playlists, handling the licensing, and making sure that we pay the fees." She shrugged then gave Art another quick smile. "Just administrative work, nothing glamorous."
She picked up the cigarette again and wrinkled her brow. "I think I should give them a call... our news people, I mean."
"Sorry, you can't do that." Ralph, who was across the table from her, straightened himself in his chair and lifted a finger. "The police have asked us to keep quiet about this... affair, for the moment."
"Hmm." Adriana moved a stray strand of hair back behind her ear. Most of it was bound into something that Art believed to be called a bun, pierced by two chopsticks. He briefly wondered about the topology of the knot, curious about the role of the sticks in the geometry.
Her drawn-back hair exposed brown roots trying to recapture territory lost to blond dye.
She turned her face towards Art. "Do you think the police can do that? Forbid us to tell others, I mean?"
He shrugged. "I don't know."
"Aren't you a scientist?" She raised her eyebrows.
"I'm a mathematician, not a lawyer." The word lawyer came out harsher than had intended. He wasn't sure if law should be called a science at all. "And I'm not familiar with Tavetian law, anyway. But over in the U.S., you're well-advised to follow police orders."
"Well, here's a bit of news for you. We're not in the U.S.". Monica's voice sounded irritated. She pushed another one of the cookies into her mouth. "And I'm—" She held up a hand while chewing, then swallowing, "—I'm not going to sit around here forever."
YOU ARE READING
The Egg at Dumstreet
Mystery / Thriller[Completed] A U.S. expatriate is cast into a rainy, foggy corner of Europe. He went there on the pretense to work on his research, but he actually wanted to put as many miles as possible between himself and his ex. The university he works for has fo...
