PRAISE FOR THE NOVELS OF CAROL O’CONNELL
“. . . one of the most poetic yet tough-minded writers
of the genre.” —San Francisco Chronicle
WINTER HOUSE
“Winter House should have readers running to the library, if not to get to know Mallory, then at least to discover an author who can raise goosebumps with both her plot and her prose.”
—Detroit Free Press
“No mystery author I’ve read writes with more truthful emotional intensity about family issues than Carol O’Connell in her peerless Mallory series. The story is held together by O’Connell’s usual witty, bravura writing, and by the emotional power almost never found in other mysteries.”
—The San Jose Mercury News
“Carol O’Connell’s Mallory is surely one of the genre’s oddest and most interesting creations . . . [a] unique bundle of twisted talents, who we have come to O’Connell for, and once again, neither woman disappoints us.” —Chicago Tribune
“Dubious deeds are just the tip of the ice pick in the hands of O’Connell. Vivid prose keeps the pages turning in this intricate tale of betrayal [and] buried secrets.” —Publishers Weekly
“This is not your ordinary mystery . . . Mallory is no ordinary police detective. O’Connell’s Mallory novels are always unusual, and Winter House is no exception . . . quite unlike anything you’ve ever read.”—Bookreporter.com
“O’Connell serves up the requisite pieces . . . and twists them beyond recognition into another enjoyably idiosyncratic tale . . . [a] gleeful breaking of the usual rules.”
—The Baltimore Sun
“Winter House is a fantastic police procedural filled with plenty of action . . . Mallory is a terrific lead character . . . a fabulous New York mystery.” —Midwest Book Review
“One of the most unique, interesting,
and surprising heroines you’ve ever come
across in any work of fiction.”
—Nelson DeMille
DEAD FAMOUS
“O’Connell’s prose—sharp, gritty, and streetwise—is in top form. Ingenious . . . O’Connell sets the standard in crime fiction.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“Mallory returns with a vengeance and in total control . . . blazingly original. Once again, O’Connell transcends the genre.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
CRIME SCHOOL
“Easily one of the most original and striking crime fiction protagonists to appear in the last few years . . . Multilayered, serpentine in plot . . . a rich, evocative novel.”
—St. Petersburg Times
MALLORY’S ORACLE
“Mallory is a marvelous creation.” —Jonathan Kellerman
“A classic cop story . . . one of the most interesting new characters to come along in years.”—John Sandford
“An author who really involves you, and makes you care.”
—James B. Patterson
“Wild, sly, and breathless—all the things that a good thriller ought to be.”—Carl Hiaasen
THE MAN WHO CAST TWO SHADOWS
“Even more satisfying than Mallory’s Oracle. And that’s high praise indeed.” —People
“Beautifully written.” —Harper’s Bazaar
“The suspense is excruciating.” —Detroit Free Press
KILLING CRITICS
“Darkly stylish . . . highly original . . . This is great fun.”
—Chicago Tribune
“A tight, twisting mystery.” —Newsday
STONE ANGEL
“A hard-edged, brilliant, and indomitable heroine. Stone Angel, as much Southern novel as mystery novel, is rich in people, places, and customs vividly realized, with mordant humor, terror, and sadness.” —San Francisco Chronicle
SHELL GAME
“Rich, complex, memorable . . . another superb effort from one of our most gifted writers.” —Booklist (starred review)
JUDAS CHILD
“Breathtakingly ambitious suspense . . . A brilliant twist . . . mesmerizing.” —Minneapolis Star Tribune
“Her most stunning novel yet . . . more chilling, twisted, and intense with each page . . . [a] soul-shattering climax.”
—Booklist (starred review)
TITLES BY CAROL O’CONNELL
FIND ME
WINTER HOUSE
DEAD FAMOUS
CRIME SCHOOL
SHELL GAME
JUDAS CHILD
STONE ANGEL
KILLING CRITICS
THE MAN WHO CAST TWO SHADOWS
MALLORY’S ORACLE
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
WINTER HOUSE
A Berkley Book / published by arrangement with the author
Copyright © 2004 by Carol O’Connell.
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This book is dedicated to a woman who had two wedding rings. My mother’s only marriage had outlasted the original gold band. On a cold day in February, I found that first ring my father had given to her. It was worn until it was worn out, thin and brittle, but not broken.
And then she died.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Many thanks to researcher Dianne Burke, who answers legal and medical questions and can chart the paths of binary stars with equal facility. And thanks to Phillip Skodinski, attorney-at-law. Any errors in this novel are surely my own. And any untoward humor at the expense of the legal profession is expressed by fictional people (not me); and, said humorous, though disparaging, remarks would not have been made if t
hey had not been important to the plot—really—no, really.
And thanks to my brother Bruce for the gift of time; and thanks to cousins Norman, Melinda, Camille, and Noel for an eleventh-hour visit that meant the world to me.
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Acknowledgements
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
1
THE HOUR WAS LATE. THE TRAFFIC WAS SCARCE. A FEW cars crawled by at the pace of bugs attracted by house lights, five flights of electric-yellow windows.
The narrow mansion was not a rarity in New York City, home to millionaires and billionaires. However, its nineteenth-century façade was an anachronism on this particular block of Central Park West. The steep-pitched roof was split by a skylight dome, and attendant gargoyles were carved in stone. Wedged in tight between two condominium behemoths, this dwelling was in the wrong place at the wrong time and regally unrepentant, though the police were at the door.
And in the parlor, up the stairs and down in the cellar.
So many police.
Nedda Winter sat quietly and watched them pass her by on their way to other rooms—and they watched her for a while. Soon they came to regard her as furniture, but she took no offense. She turned on the antique radio that stood beside her chair. No one reprimanded her, and so she turned up the volume.
White hot jazz.
Benny Goodman on the clarinet and other ghosts from the big-band era flooded the front room and infected the steps of people in and out of uniform, passing to and fro.
Lift those feet. Tap those toes.
Miss Winter repressed a smile, for that would be unseemly, but she nodded in time to the music. The house was alive again, drunk on life, though the party revolved around the dead man at the center of the floor.
Miss Winter was well named. She had the countenance of that season. Her long hair was pure white, and her skin had the pallor of one who has been shut away for a long time. Even her eyes had gone pale, leached of color, bleached to the lightest tint of blue. She was so well disguised by time that the police continued to ignore her, demanding no apologies, nor any explanation for her long absence. They had even failed to recognize this house, an address that was infamous when the music on the radio was young.
Fifty-eight years earlier, in the aftermath of another violent crime, which remained unsolved, a twelve-year-old girl had vanished from this house, and now the lost child, grown up and grown old, had come back home.
The medical examiner’s vehicle was parked at the curb, and behind it was another van with the CSU logo of the crime-scene technicians. The front windows of the house were all alight, and the silhouettes of men and women moved across pulled-down shades and closed drapes.
A warm October breeze of Indian summer rippled the yellow crime-scene tape that extended down the stone steps to include a patch of the sidewalk. The tape did the restraining duty of a velvet rope for theatrical productions, though tonight’s audience amounted to only three stragglers, refugees from a saloon in the hour after closing time. Happy intoxication was in their stance and in their badly sung song, which was grating on the nerves of a uniformed officer. The spinning cherry lights of police units made the officer’s face alternately beet red and pale white as he waved off the drunks with a loud “Get the hell outta here!”
Charles Butler parked his Mercedes behind a police car and stepped out into the street, unfolding and rising to a stand of six feet four. Smooth grace in motion served as compensation for his foolish face. Bulbous eyes the size of hens’ eggs were half closed by heavy lids and pocked with small blue irises that gave him a look of permanent astonishment, and his hook of a nose might perch two sparrows or one fat pigeon. Otherwise, the forty-year-old man was well made from the necktie down and well turned out, though he had omitted the vest from his three-piece suit.
He had dressed in a hurry. Mallory was waiting.
Two uniformed policemen stood guard before the house, barring all comers from the short flight of stone steps leading up to the front door. As he approached these officers, Charles inadvertently smiled—a huge mistake. Whenever his features were gathered up into any happy expression, it gave him the look of a loon—a second cousin to the three departing drunks. Before he could be driven off, Charles pointed upward to the worst-dressed man in America, Detective Sergeant Riker, who slouched against a wrought-iron railing, cadging a light from another man, then exhaling a cloud of cigarette smoke with his conversation.
“I’m with him.”
At the sound of a familiar voice, Riker turned around with that crooked smile he saved for people he liked. “Hey, how ya doin’?” The detective descended the short flight of steps to the sidewalk and gripped the larger man’s hand. “Thanks for coming out. I know it’s late.”
Indeed it was, and Riker had the appearance of a man who had slept away most of this night in his suit. But then he always dressed that way, prewrinkled at the start of every workday. The yellow light at the top of the staircase had the flattering effect of minimizing the creases in the detective’s face, making him appear somewhat younger than his fifty-five years.
“My pleasure.” Charles looked down at his friend of average height, feeling the need to apologize for looming over him.
“Did Mallory tell you anything useful?”
“No, nothing at all.”
“Maybe it’s better that way.” Riker motioned him toward the stairs, then led the way up. “Two women live here. One of them killed a man tonight. Simple enough?” He flicked his cigarette over the railing. “Check ’em out. We’ll talk later.”
When they passed through the open door, Charles heard music, vintage jazz, and he would not have been surprised to hear the clink of ice in cocktail glasses as they entered a din of conversation in the large foyer. They walked by a cluster of men wearing badges clipped to their suit pockets, and Detective Riker nodded to them in passing. “Those guys are settling a little problem of jurisdiction.” He led Charles through a louder dispute between a woman in uniform and a man in a suit. Riker explained this one, too. He pointed to the young man with the folded stethoscope squeezed tightly in one raised fist. “Now, that’s one pissed-off medical examiner. Mallory won’t release the body. She’s using it to rattle the ladies who live here.”
At the threshold of the front room, Charles had only time enough to blink once before entering a spatial paradox. The inside of the house appeared to be much larger than the exterior—a trick of cunning architecture. And some of the magic was done with a score of mirrors in elaborate silver frames ten feet tall. They created a labyrinth of rooms and flights of stairs and corridors where none existed. Thus, a dozen people were transformed into a mob, and each reflection added its own energy to the fray.
The grand staircase was the focal point, a tenuous bit of engineering that seemed to have no secure supports as it curved up to a partial vista on a floor above the cathedral ceiling. Though the rest of the stairs spiraled out of sight, in mind’s eye, he was swept along with them, rushing around and upward through all the dizzying flights.
Back to earth—a corpse lay on the floor, partially obscured by upright people, and Charles Butler, unaccustomed to crime scenes, was caught in a quandary of manners: perhaps he should have admired the dead man first, and maybe he should not be tapping his feet in time to the music of a clarinet.
An even less reverent police photographer stepped over the body to speak with Detective Riker, who directed the close-up shots of the deceased. After snapping pictures in quick succession, and in time to the beat of a snare drum, the photographer departed to another room, giving Charles his first
clear view of the victim.
He had been prepared for something brutal and grisly, given that this case had attracted so much attention, but the man on the floor seemed to be merely resting—if one could only discount the pair of scissors protruding from the chest. The victim did not belong in this neighborhood of wealth. His pants were shapeless and dirty, the T-shirt stained with more sweat than blood, and a pointed object lay near one open hand. Thus laid out was the simple story of an ice-pick-wielding intruder felled by a homeowner who favored shears.
What could possibly interest all of these—
Following a cue of upturned heads, his attention was drawn to the second-floor landing and the slender young woman standing there in blue jeans and an attitude of privilege. Blond curls, cut by a virtuoso, grazed the shoulders of a tailored blazer worn over a silk T-shirt. Arms folded, she affected the pose of one who owned all that she surveyed, even the people in the room below and, most particularly, the corpse.
Mallory.
Winter House Page 1
