Andy & Claudine & Spider & Co.

As she left Colorado's Pitkin County courthouse last week, pretty, petite Singer-Actress Claudine Longet, 34, fought back tears. Beside her, as in past moments of crisis, stood her former husband and still close friend, Singer Andy Williams, 45. Claudine had just been released on a $5,000 bond in the shooting death of her lover, Ski Champion Vladimir ("Spider") Sabich, 31, at his Aspen home, and District Attorney Frank Tucker was preparing to arraign her next week. Possible charges range from criminally negligent homicide (a misdemeanor carrying maximum penalties of two years in prison, a $5,000 fine, or both) to second-degree murder (with a maximum of 50 years' imprisonment).

The episode that shook the high-altitude, high-living ski resort occurred shortly after 5 p.m. on a bright Sunday. After spending a couple of hours on the slopes and several more reportedly drinking with some male companions at a popular watering hole, Longet returned to Sabich's house. Soon afterward, she phoned the Aspen Valley Hospital to report that there had been a shooting. Sheriffs officers, police and ambulance attendants found Sabich lying in the master bathroom, next to a sunken tub, mortally wounded by a single .22-cal. bullet in the abdomen. As Aspen Valley's Dr. Charles Williams related it, Longet "told police officers that he [Sabich] was showing me how to hold the gun and it went off."

Claudine and Sabich met at a 1972 celebrity ski race in Bear Valley, Calif. Friends say Sabich built his sumptuous $250,000 timber and stone house at exclusive Starwood, three miles west of Aspen, expressly for Longet. Sabich, the son of a Placerville, Calif., cop, finished a highly respectable fifth in the slalom at the Grenoble Olympics in 1968, turned pro in 1971, and started earning big money. His prizes alone topped $50,000 in 1972, and he pulled in at least that much in endorsements for everything from ski products to coffee.

But in 1973 he was eclipsed by French Superstar Jean-Claude Killy; in the final race that year, Sabich split several vertebrae in a brutal fall at Aspen. The next season he suffered a knee injury that plagued him throughout 1975--when he failed to earn a cent on the pro circuit. This year he had earned only $800.

French-born Claudine was with a Folies-Bergere revue in Las Vegas in 1961. The same year she and Williams were married. They led freewheeling lives for the last few of the 14 years they were married. Gossip often linked her with some of Hollywood's leading actors. After her separation from Williams in 1970, one frequent companion of Claudine's was Los Angeles Tennis Executive Steve Peyton. "Claudine was living with the children at Malibu at the time," a friend recalls. "When she'd go out with Steve sometimes, she'd call Andy to ask him to babysit." Williams, for his part, was squiring a series of young women and was a frequent escort of Ethel Kennedy after she was widowed.

Claudine shortly moved on to Sabich, but in recent months there were signs that their relationship might be foundering. Some Aspenites contend that Claudine's tart tongue and aloofness had made her an outsider among the resort's regulars. Not long ago, Sabich reportedly told a close friend that their relationship was at a crucial point. "It's either going to end," the friend quoted Spider as saying, "or we'll be married within a year." Rumors were flying in Aspen last week that the skier had been considering ordering her and her three children out of his house--and his life.

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