Winter's Curse

by Mary Stone

  The bank was on the corner of a road that saw moderate traffic, El Camino Real. It was housed in the same building as a Starbucks. There was a traffic light in front of the bank, and businesses around it. Hard to believe that there hadn’t been any witnesses stepping forward to say they saw two Nixons leaving the bank with a big bag that morning.

  Winter made a mental note to double-check whether the local PD had looked at the traffic cameras or any outdoor security cameras from neighboring businesses. The suspects had opted not to double-park for their getaway but must have circled the block until they could pull into a spot with an easy exit. Since the bank was still closed now, most of the parking spots were free.

  As they got out of the rental car, Winter saw one parking place, the painted lines looking brand new, directly in front of the building. It was striped over, as if the area was blocked off for a loading zone. The paint gleamed like it had just been done.

  Maybe it had.

  Sheriff Marchwood joined them in front of the building. Before she could unlock the door, Winter pointed out the space. “You live here,” she said. “Can you remember if that spot has always been a loading zone?”

  The sheriff’s eyes sharpened. “That paint looks new.”

  Even Sun perked up. “Have you accessed the CCTV footage from the traffic cameras?”

  Marchwood nodded but was already on her cellphone. “Davis, I need you to check the footage from the traffic light on El Camino in front of the bank.” Winter could hear the new excitement in the woman’s voice. “I know, but I want you to start with the day before the robbery. Let me know if you see anyone painting parking spot lines in front of the entrance.”

  “Good eye,” she told Winter when she’d hung up. “I can’t believe I didn’t notice that.” Her attitude had warmed toward Winter, but she was still freezing out Sun.

  Inside the bank, it was freezing cold, like someone had left the air condition running on full blast. Congealed blood was still thick beside the counter where one victim had been shot. It had been tracked across the floor in places, likely by emergency personnel that had responded after the scene was cleared by police.

  Then, Winter understood the air conditioning. There was enough blood that the coppery smell would have been overpowering had the temperature been warmer.

  Based on the witness statements, they already knew about what had happened, but Sheriff Marchwood walked them through it again.

  The suspects had come in during a lull in business hours, already wearing the masks. They’d approached the counter. The security guard had been in the employee restroom in the back. He’d just come out of the hallway, behind the tellers, when the female Nixon shot him. He’d fallen, blocking the branch manager’s door. Everything had happened so fast, no tellers were given the chance to push their emergency buttons.

  The suspects then ordered the branch manager to be brought out. She’d made a 911 call from her desk but left the phone off the hook when she left her office. Another teller, having escaped to the back offices, called 911 within a minute after that.

  Officers were dispatched—the American Bank and Trust was only a minute away from the substation at San Clemente City Hall, just on the other side of the overpass—but they’d also had all units responding to two other emergencies happening simultaneously. The first two officers were en route and rerouted, but they didn’t arrive until about nine minutes after the call had been placed.

  Within five minutes, the suspects had the money in hand. Within another thirty seconds, the female suspect shot the branch manager, and the two suspects left the building. None of the tellers could say what happened after that. They were too traumatized by the murder of their boss to have looked out the window at that point.

  When Marchwood finished her run-through, Winter went to the counter where she’d seen the glowing dot on the security footage. Wedged just beneath the trim below the counter was a religious medal of some sort.

  It always irked Winter when police dramas had investigators grab an ink pen or some such thing to pick up a piece of evidence. Who knew how many people had already touched that ink pen, causing cross contamination? Taking a fresh swab from the evidence collection kit she carried, Winter tore off the paper and used the swab as a reaching device to pull the medal out. Despite the blood spatters all around it, the medal was clean, the silver shining in the overhead lights.

  “What are you looking at?” Sun demanded.

  “Anyone have a pair of sterile tweezers?”

  “Will these work?” Marchwood crouched beside Winter and handed her a pair of needle-nose pliers. “The air conditioning switch in the cruiser I drove is broken,” she explained. “Everyone who drives it carries a set of these if they don’t want to roast.”

  Since they would clearly contain DNA, Winter wrapped the pliers with clean gauze, then used them to grasp the end of the medal and turn it over. There was blood on the bottom. The medal hadn’t been there before the murder.

  “Got an evidence bag in your pocket too?” Winter asked Marchwood.

  With a half-smile, the sheriff pulled one out and handed it to her. “Who doesn’t?”

  Winter dropped it in, sealed the bag, and held it close to read the writing around the head of the saint that decorated the front of the medal.

  “Saint Dismas,” Sheriff Marchwood read. “Do we have any Catholics in the house?”

  “Saint Dismas is sometimes called the patron saint of thieves, along with Saint Nicholas,” Sun put in, her voice vibrating with excitement. She grinned at them, something Winter had never seen her do…unless it was at someone else’s expense. The way it transformed her face was startling. “I watch Jeopardy,” she admitted.

  Marchwood’s phone rang. She listened for a moment, and a grim look came across her face.

  “I wasn’t sure about you two at first,” the sheriff said after she’d hung up from the call. “But now, I think you might just be my good luck charms. One of the traffic cameras was at the perfect vantage point to pick up footage of a man painting the lines on that parking spot on the day before the robbery. We even know who he is.”

  “You don’t look happy about that,” Sun pointed out. “Why is that?”

  “Our units were split that morning between two calls when the robbery 911 came in. One was a possible homicide. Someone called in a report of a dead body on the beach. That body was Jack Hanley, our Picasso caught in the footage.”

  7

  He’d have preferred California for the weather, but New York did have a certain level of charm in December. The Christmas decorations and lights, busy shoppers bundled up against the tit-numbing cold. A recent dusting of snow covered the smog-grayed banks and edged the icy puddles that struggled to stay frozen under the afternoon’s bright winter sunshine.

  Jamaica, Ryan thought, also had no snow. He wanted to be in Jamaica.

  He reached to his collar, where his good luck charm normally hung. Saint Dismas, though, had fallen off somewhere. Not a good omen for his current business relationship. Dismas protected thieves.

  The absence of the little metal disc and its chain sent a little chill of superstition up his spine. No help for it now, though. He’d have to find time to buy another. If he could find the time.

  He glanced at the long list on his phone, complete with dozens of ridiculous details and instructions, and tugged his wool cap lower on his forehead. Sunglasses shaded his eyes. His black down-filled coat was bulky and puffy—the kind that made its wearer look about fifty pounds heavier. The tip of his nose was numb, but beneath the coat, he was sweating.

  The reasoning behind the instructions Heidi had given him was incomprehensible. It was like a scavenger hunt run by a schizophrenic squirrel.

  Stash your luggage at an airport locker. Number 365, to be exact.

  Visit the Metropolitan Museum of Art at precisely noon. Stand for three minutes in front of the Portrait of Madame X.

  Take a taxi to the Empire State Building. Tip the driver t
en dollars and fifty cents.

  Go to Macy’s. Buy one pair of a specific type of dress shoe, one-half size larger than your regular size.

  And on, and on, and on.

  What the bloody hell was he supposed to do if Macy’s didn’t carry the right size? If the Madame X portrait had been moved last minute to another museum?

  The entire thing was a bloody waste of time. He’d been running, sometimes literally, all over town. He was exhausted. Nowhere on the list was take a well-deserved break and sit down at a coffee shop somewhere for a cuppa.

  Now, he was hauling all the packages he’d picked up that day to the address of the hotel she’d specified on the Lower East Side. He was looking forward to getting off his feet, but this neighborhood did not look promising.

  Ryan was laid back. Easygoing. Every man for himself, sure, but live and let live. At the first sight of the hotel that Heidi, the sadistic bitch, had booked for him, he felt complete and total rage.

  It was a dingy walk-up above an appliance repair store that looked to be a leftover from the middle of the century. The narrow staircase smelled like spilled milk gone rancid. The check-in counter was caged behind chicken wire like the stage at a bad honky-tonk bar. The bored-looking clerk slid him a key across the desk when he gave his assumed name and didn’t look up from the tiny television in front of her.

  To top it all off, there were three flights of stairs to climb since the elevator was out of order.

  He unzipped his jacket at the bottom of the third flight and would have sworn he could see steam billowing out into the unheated air. He tried not to think about the fact that he could be already kicked back on 300-thread count sheets at the Four Seasons instead.

  Ryan made his way down the hall, grimacing at the sound of a couple two rooms over fucking with great enthusiasm. He used his key on the assigned door, though a half-hearted shove would have done the job just as well. But he paused, his hand on the doorknob, and sniffed at the air. Under the musty smell of the hallway carpet, he detected perfume. Fresh. Something musky and sexy and out of place.

  Turning the handle, he let the door swing open with a creak. At first, he thought he’d been mistaken, and he’d gone into the wrong room. The woman sitting on the single bed was all leg.

  Black high heels with ankle straps. She wore black tights, and a short, violently green skirt hugged her crossed thighs like a second skin. A black top, the neckline scooping low. Hair as red as an Irish sunset draped across her shoulders in loose, fat curls. Wicked blue eyes in a face that looked like Heidi’s…but didn’t. It was slimmer, somehow. More contoured. She’d done something with her eyes, too, with makeup, to make them dark and exotic-looking. Her Mona Lisa smile was slicked with red.

  Ryan ignored the automatic tug in his groin and stepped in, closing the door behind him. It shut the sounds of the neighbors out, but not all the way. He dropped the bags on the floor beside him.

  “Tarted yourself up good and proper, now, didn’t you?”

  As her now-blue eyes narrowed, he realized that he didn’t know what Heidi Presley looked like—if that was even her real name, which he doubted. She wasn’t the drab cowgirl he’d first met in South Dakota. She also wasn’t the prim, buttoned-down businesswoman with the short, chestnut curls who’d robbed a bank in California in a Richard Nixon mask. He could likely pass the real woman on the street without a flicker of recognition.

  She was slippery.

  “You followed my instructions well today,” she said. “Good.” Her voice was the same. Cold and crisp.

  “Up until now,” Ryan corrected in a smooth tone. “If you think there’s any way in bloody fucking hell I’m going to sleep on that bedbug-infested mattress in this—” He gestured to the room, not much bigger than the bed she sat on.

  A mini desk fan was mounted in one corner of the ceiling, maybe an effort to stir the stagnant, musty air. There was no bedside table. Nothing but a rickety three-legged stool with a tiny television perched on top, positioned at the foot of the bed.

  “You’d sleep in this bed if I told you to,” she said. Her eyes glinted with a dangerous light, even though she used the same, patient tone one would use to chastise a beagle. “We’re partners, but I hope I’ve been very clear about who is running this show. As it happens, though, your ‘assistant’ has already registered you a room at the Park Lane Hotel. Your luggage has been delivered to an executive suite with an excellent view of Central Park.”

  The stab of relief he felt was almost pathetic, and Ryan hoped it didn’t show on his face. He’d come a long way from his underprivileged upbringing. This place reminded him too much of the flophouse he’d been raised in.

  Something about the way she watched him told him he hadn’t hidden the reaction deep enough.

  “Then why the charade? Having me traipse all over and meeting you here?”

  “Persuading you to participate was one thing. Assuring myself that you could follow directions without question was another. You passed the test.”

  “And what if I hadn’t?”

  She stood up and picked up the jacket she’d been sitting on. He forced himself not to recoil when she closed the space between them. The hooker heels made her taller than him, and he had to look up in order to meet her gaze. For all their pretty color, hers were cold and flat as a frozen lake.

  “Let’s go. Leave the bags.”

  Heidi slipped around him and into the hallway. Instead of heading toward the stairs he’d come up, she went to a set at the other end of the hall. It descended down four levels, where a fire exit opened out on to an alley at the back of the building. No alarm rang when she pushed it open.

  A silver Lexus with dark tinted windows waited for them.

  “You’re Oliver Brown, a professor at Oxford on sabbatical,” Heidi told him on the way. “There’s a bag in the back seat. You’ll look the part. I’ve instructed the staff that you’re working on a novel and don’t plan on leaving your room for at least a week. You don’t require housekeeping or a nightly turndown service.”

  He reached into the back and pulled out a gray briefcase. Inside were a pair of tortoiseshell glasses, a package of colored contacts, a salt-and-pepper wig, and cheek padding. He’d used the same type before. It wasn’t comfortable, feeling like a food-hoarding chipmunk, but the padding would fill out the slight hollows in his cheeks and make his face look rounder.

  “How long will I be there?”

  “No more than two days.” She glanced away from the heavy traffic for a moment. “And you will stay in your room.”

  Irritation bubbled again. “Are you going to tell me what happens next?”

  “No. You’ll know as soon as you need to.”

  This was bollocks. Insane. If he’d had a gun, he’d have turned it on her in a heartbeat and damn the consequences. Ryan had never killed anyone before, but he’d be glad to make an exception.

  Sure, he’d stay in his room at the Park Lane Hotel like a good boy. Hell, maybe he’d even start his memoirs since it appeared that anyone with a little computer skill could find out every damned thing about him. But the second he found an opportunity, he was gone.

  Heidi either sensed his rebellious thoughts or had uncanny timing.

  “I’ve left you a laptop,” she said, sarcasm threading her words. “Be sure to read the dossier I’ve put together on you if you get a chance. I really think it’s some of my best work.”

  He schooled himself to calm down, recognizing the area they were driving through. He’d stayed in the same part of New York when he’d been here on a job two years before. They were almost to the Park Lane Hotel, and he’d be able to at least put some distance between himself and his blackmailer.

  He put in the contacts that changed his eyes from blue to hazel and added the glasses. The cheek pads went in, and he had instant jowls. An eyebrow pencil and some delicate shading, along with some sallow-looking powder aged him by about twenty years in thirty seconds.

  He modestly considered h
imself gifted with disguises, and she must have known that, providing all of the gear he would have bought for himself. The wig was the finishing touch. The items went back in the briefcase, except for the ID and credit cards that would make the transformation just about complete.

  It was creepy what she’d done to his photo. It was a photo of himself, and she’d somehow computer-aged it. The resemblance to his Uncle Frank made him feel a little sick.

  “Swap the puffy coat for the one in the back,” Heidi instructed, pulling up in front of the hotel. “I’ll contact you in two days,” she reminded him. “Stay put.”

  Ryan shrugged into the black wool greatcoat, grabbed the suitcase and got out of the car. The freezing air that smacked him in the face was warmer than the inside of the Lexus had been, and for the first time since he’d found Heidi in his room, he felt like he could breathe again.

  He nodded to the doorman as he passed. He had two days.

  He would use them.

  This was easier than she’d thought it would be.

  Heidi pulled away from the curb without waiting to make sure that O’Connelly went in. She had other things to do before she checked in to her own hotel for the night, and he would do as he was told.

  It was satisfying to see that she hadn’t been off-base in her assessment of Ryan O’Connelly. Like most men—like most other people—he was weak.

  She allowed herself a smile, remembering the way he’d looked baffled and angry when she’d checked in on him at the art museum. He’d glanced around, looked at his watch, glanced around some more. Those three minutes must have felt like an eternity, but he obeyed her instructions to the letter.

  He looked and behaved like a throwback to the old days when a professional thief was a mysterious, debonair figure, and cat burglars crept the silver screens. He was smart, quick, and could charm the average woman out of her panties in about twelve seconds, if he really put his mind to it. Handsome enough to do it in twenty, if he wasn’t paying attention.