A Cat in the Wings: (InterMix) by Lydia Adamson Read Free Book Online

When she did not in turn introduce the black woman to us, my hasty assumption that the woman was a nurse was confirmed. She had been hired, I guessed, by the Maury family to keep an eye on Lucia during these stressful days.
    “Your friend really looks like someone in trouble,” Tony stage-whispered to me, as I left his side to join Lucia on the sofa.
    I don’t think Lucia heard what Tony had just said, but she looked distinctly discomfited by his presence. He remained standing, rocking back on his heels and smiling. He was wearing a nondescript sweatshirt and the kind of dark-colored trousers a bus driver might wear. It seemed that more and more these days Tony made people uncomfortable. It wasn’t so much his clothing as his grin that nearly always struck one as inappropriate.
    Lucia reached out for me and I nearly flinched from her touch—it was deathly cold.
    “Yes, that’s right, Alice,” she said. “Come and sit by me, the way Splat used to do. I can just see that old thing sitting here cleaning himself.”
    I nodded. “Lucia, did Frank Brodsky tell you about our talk?”
    “Yes, he did. I’m so grateful for your help, Alice.” And her voice suddenly rose a notch. “I need your help, Alice! It isn’t mine, that gun! I don’t know how it got there, I swear! It isn’t mine!”
    “Listen to me, dear,” I said firmly. “There’s no need to convince me of any of that. But right now I have to find someone who knows where and how Dobrynin spent his last few years. After he . . . dropped out, lost it, if you can call it that. After he threw everything away.”
    “He became a derelict, obviously.”
    “I understand that. But he may have maintained some minimal contact with people he’d known. Even if he spent most of his time under the West Side Highway.”
    “You don’t understand, Alice, the state he was in. He was impossible to deal with. He was mad.”
    I paused for a moment there. “But how do you know how it was to ‘deal’ with him? If you lost contact with him, how do you know he was mad?”
    “I know!” she spat out, with such desperate force that the woman across the room half rose from her chair.
    “Lucia,” I said slowly, “you told me you never saw Dobrynin again after the affair ended. Is that the truth or not?”
    Lucia looked away from me. “No,” she said grimly. “I saw him once more after that.”
    “After he’d dropped out of the ballet scene?”
    She nodded, seemed to be fighting for composure. Tony, who had gradually come closer to us while we talked, now moved back a bit, as if to give Lucia air.
    “He caused a terrible scene here,” she went on. “It was awful. He came into the building demanding to see me. The doorman tried to question him, to reason with him, and finally to throw him out. It was just an insane coincidence that I happened to come home from the office while he was in the lobby.”
    “Why had he come?”
    “He wanted to stay here, for a few nights, he said. He was crazy, though—shrieking and prancing about the lobby. His clothing was soiled and he smelled like—” She paused to catch her breath. “I refused him. We fought. Someone telephoned the police.”
    She stopped the story again, leaning forward as if she were experiencing stomach cramps.
    “And then what happened?” I asked, trying my best to ignore her distress.
    Lucia was crying now. “He said—after calling me the predictable names—he said I was just another in the long line of people who had loved him when he was on top, sucked the life out of him, and betrayed him now that he was on the bottom.”
    “Anything else?”
    “No. No. He left seconds before the police car pulled up.”
    “Did he mention the names of the others who he thought had betrayed him?”
    “I guess so.” She blew her nose on a tissue the nurse had brought over to her. “I don’t know—maybe.” She shook her head. “He was in a rage at all of us. He probably named Melissa. And Betty Ann