Square in the Face (Claire Montrose Series) Read Free Page B

but sara’s too-intent expression didn’t change.   “So what does Oregon have that New York City doesn’t?”
    Dante squeezed her shoulder. Claire could have launched into a list for the rest of them, one that would have started off with the word ‘friends.’ She could have talked about living in a green lushness cradled by forested hills and snow-capped mountains, of being less than a two-hour drive from the ocean, the mountains, the desert. She could have talked about the different pace and attitude. Instead she put on her own false smile and added a country twang to her voice. “Oh, you know, sara, maybe Oregon’s not much different than here. We just got more pine trees, pickup trucks and poverty. That’s all.”
    Even Ant laughed.
    URBSTD

Chapter Two
    Claire stepped over the foot-wide dog dish that lay on the porch. Emblazoned in gold script along the edge was the word “Duke.” Charlie had gladly paid the extra dollar to have it personalized when she bought the dish at Portland’s Saturday market. She said it was cheaper than a burglar alarm - or a real dog. Claire put her key in the lock, picked up her suitcase and pushed the door open with her hip.
    In just a few seconds, a tiny white-haired woman bustled into the living room. “Clairele! It’s so good to have you at home again!”
    Charlotte Heidenbruch - Charlie to her friends, which was pretty much anyone - opened her arms wide. Claire put her bags down just inside the door and gave her roommate a hug. It was impossible - given that Charlie was a foot shorter and nearly fifty years older - but for a moment Claire swore her feet left the ground. Then again, Charlie was the star of her Self-Defense for Seniors class.
    “Careful there, Charlie.” She straightened up. “You don’t want to break anything.” Claire wasn’t sure which of them she was referring to.
    “Come back into the kitchen and tell me how is your flight? New York City? Your lover?” Charlie pronounced it luffer. Even at seventy-nine, her Marlene Dietrich accent and casual European acceptance still drew men to her.
    “The flight was okay.” Claire had tried to lose herself in a paperback mystery, hoping to forget a recent 60 Minutes episode that basically demonstrated most airport control tower were run by ancient computers far less sophisticated than Claire’s digital watch. “And Dante’s - well, Dante.” After the awful dinner with his old college friends, he had spent her remaining time in New York trying to make it up to her. They had stayed up well past midnight the night before, eating Chinese takeout in bed and watching kung fu movies on TV. When a piece of mu shu pork had escaped her chopsticks and landed with a plop on her chest, one thing had led to another. They hadn’t gone to sleep until after three. She and Dante had barely made it out of bed in time to make it to the airport. Claire smiled to herself as she followed the older woman.
    Charlie’s house was about the same age as she was, and both were well-maintained. There was fresh white paint on the high-ceilinged walls, and a touch of coral on Charlie’s lips. The kitchen was modernized with stainless steel appliances, just as Charlie wore, not an old lady’s polyester pantsuit and twenty years out-of-date shoes, but a rose-colored cotton knit tunic and pants accessorized by her trademark pink tennis shoes.
    “And will you tell me anything about New York, Clairele?” Charlie picked up an already open bottle of red wine. She refilled her own glass then poured one for Claire. The affectionate “le” ending was one of the few things Charlie had kept fifty years after leaving her hometown near Stuttgart, with a two-year stopover in a concentration camp. The country and the language had been left behind, but the green embroidery of the camp tattoo on her arm would never fade. Strangers who heard the way she talked sometimes insisted on knowing what she was, but Charlie’s answer was always the same: