The Color Of Night Read Online Free Page A

each address had the faded air of a disregarded byway.
    Strand parked in front of Mrs. Reinhardt’s address and got out of the car. He followed a pathway of dun bricks through a tiny garden of ordinary shrubs, nandina and boxwood and wax ligustrum. The midmorning sun penetrated the thick overstory in broken amber streams and fell onto the crown of a small dogwood near the front door, the soft light illuminating the pale pink blossoms as if it were a theatrical spotlight.
    He rang the doorbell and waited. All around him the dense woods dampened every sound to quietude, the constant rumble of city traffic seemed distant, and even a contentious blue jay sounded more disgruntled than raucous.
    Strand was not a man who was often caught flat-footed, slapped in the face by surprise, but when the door opened and he found himself staring squarely into the unsuspecting eyes of Mara Song, he was caught off guard.
    “I’m Harry Strand,” he managed to say with deceptive equanimity. He wasn’t sure his face was playing along.
    “Mara Reinhardt,” she said, smiling, a little wearily he thought. Her handshake was light, and he could feel her warmth and the slenderness of her body in the shape of her hand. He had to will his eyes to relax, not to gaze on her. “I appreciate your coming,” she said, backing away from the door and letting him in.
    She didn’t have a trace of a foreign accent; she was one hundred percent American bred and born. Her eyes were just below level with his, which meant that she was a tall woman, certainly tall for an Asian. The mouth that he had seen with such effect through the moonstone water he now saw had a slight dimple to one side that gave her smile a suggestion of irony. Her dark hair was again pulled to one side and fell over the front of her shoulder. She was wearing a long saffron shirtwaist dress with short sleeves.
    “I have the drawings in another room,” she said, getting right to the point. “I’ve been working in here, and it’s cluttered. Anyway, the light’s bad.”
    She led Strand through a modest living room with an abundance of art books scattered about in rambling stacks. The furniture was pedestrian and told him nothing about her. He guessed that it had been included with the town house lease. As they passed through the room he glimpsed some uncommon touches here and there, a small draped table with a collection of softly burnished black pottery and three white lilies lolling in one of the lean amphorae, a rich throw glinting with gold threads tossed over the corner of the dreary sofa, an expensive and beautiful Anatolian medallion rug with predominant colors of scarlet and pollen yellow. These, he imagined, were Mara Song.
    In just a few steps they had crossed a hallway and entered a bright sunroom with tall windows looking out into a small enclosed courtyard filled with potted plants. The stones in the courtyard were still wet from the morning watering. There was another sofa here and several comfortable rattan armchairs. The drawings were mounted in archival folders and were arranged in an approximate semicircle on these pieces of furniture, propped up against the backs of the cushions.
    “Here they are,” she said. “They’re in alphabetical order. Balthus… Delvaux… Ingres…” She stepped slowly past them in review, her right hand, wrist up, indicating each artist by flicking a long index finger at each drawing. “Klimt… and Maillol.”
    Then she stopped and turned around.
    “Five men. Seven naked women,” she said matter-of-factly.
    There were indeed seven drawings, and Strand was delighted to see that they were very fine examples of the artists’ work. In fact, the collection was superior, and as they talked about each drawing, he realized that even though she was not a “collector” she had an educated and discerning eye and that her appreciation for these drawings went far beyond their financial value. She had a genuine affection for them.
    As he stood