Winter House

by Carol O'Connell

  My father doesn’t even know I have this stuff,” said Riker.

  “You stole it from him?”

  Riker shook his head. “I came by it the night Gran died. That old man literally worked this case right up to the end. He had coroners’ reports from six states, patching time lines and murder contracts together, but nothing after the date of the Winter House Massacre. So, it’s twenty years later, and the trail is as cold as it ever gets. That’s when Gran figures Stick Man must’ve died back in the forties, the year of the massacre.”

  “Well, he was only off by two years,” said Mallory, examining her nails, “if Nedda killed Stick Man in Maine.”

  “Yeah. Too bad the Maine police weren’t on Gran’s radar. He might’ve closed out the case.” Riker knew she was wondering when this family saga would finally end. He was always trying to connect with her on some human level, forgetting who and what he was dealing with.

  “Your dad,” she said, prompting him for an explanation of why this door was closed to them.

  “Okay,” he said. “Now remember, Gran and my dad worked this case together for years—from the day my grandfather retired until he died. Well, Granddad was always pumped. Dead or alive, he wanted to bring Red Winter home. All those nights at the kitchen table, looking at clues and kicking around ideas—that was the only time my father’s old man ever talked to him.”

  And this family custom of stone silence had carried into Riker’s generation.

  “The only time Dad was really happy was when he was filling the kitchen with cigar smoke, emptying a whiskey bottle with my grandfather and talking shop. So it was hard to understand what Dad did when his old man died. That was the night my father brought home a twenty-two-year-old autopsy report on the second fortuneteller, the one who died after the Winter House Massacre. After Granddad read it, he got all excited. He couldn’t get the words out. He stood up, hugged my dad—for maybe the first time ever—then fell across the kitchen table dead.

  “Later that night, my mom was out on the porch, waiting for a hearse from the mortuary. And Dad was in the kitchen with his father’s corpse. I can still see him on the floor, crawling around on hands and knees, picking up all the papers that scattered when Gran had his heart attack. After my father had the whole file all bundled together, he dropped it into the garbage can and never talked about the case again.”

  The files young Riker had rescued from the trash still bore faint stains of what the family had dined on that night.

  “As much as your dad couldn’t stand the sight of that file,” said Mallory, “that’s how much he loved your grandfather. It was just too much pain. That’s why he tossed it in the garbage can.”

  Riker nodded. He had come to understand that over the passing years, but Mallory the Machine should not have been able to work it out—and so quickly. “But that’s not the reason I can’t ask for Dad’s help with this case.”

  “I know.” Mallory pushed her empty beer bottle to one side. “It’s because now you understand why your grandfather was so excited he couldn’t talk. For those twelve days between the massacre at Winter House and the fortuneteller’s murder in the police station—Nedda was learning to read tarot cards.”

  That was the pattern: a new fortuneteller to replace the old one. What other reason could a hitman have for stealing a child? And what a tall child; one who could pass for a woman, but so much easier to control—an heiress who could one day reappear to claim a fortune.

  This last piece dropped into place so neatly, he could almost hear an audible click in the gears of Mallory’s mind.

  Riker stared at her for what seemed like a very long time, perhaps no more than a minute, but how those seconds crawled along. She could still surprise him, and sometimes this caused him pain. He had watched her grow up, but he could never really know her. And, fool that he was, he was always tripping over himself each time he underestimated her—and yet he never learned.

  He nodded now. She had gotten it right.

  When his grandfather had felt the onset of a massive coronary, when joy had overpowered fear and pain, that must have been the moment when the old man realized that the stolen child could still be alive. Riker looked down at the sprawl of papers on his own kitchen table—the family tradition of fathers and sons.

  “My father was a great cop. None better. That murdered fortuneteller was the key. If he’d gone on working this case, Dad would’ve followed through on Humboldt. He would’ve run him down to the ice-pick stabbing in Maine and a red-haired girl.”

  Mallory nodded. “He would’ve brought Red Winter home forty years ago.”

  “I can never tell him that.”

  We have to stop meeting this way. People will talk.” “Yes, ma’am.” Officer Brill gallantly strained to smile at this line, which had been an old one before to Nedda was born. After opening the cellar door, he clicked on his flashlight, and she followed him down the stairs. The yellow beam roved over the broken glass on the floor. He had found one piece that he liked and put it into a plastic bag.

  “Is that blood on the glass?”

  “Yes, ma’am, it is. Did you cut yourself?”

  “Not my hands.” She examined the backs of them. “And I had shoes on my feet.”

  “You didn’t stab anybody, did you, ma’am?”

  “No, I’m off that now.”

  Officer Brill’s polite smile widened into a genuine grin. “Good to know.” He looked up as he redirected the beam of his flashlight to the broken bulb overhead. There was more blood on one of the shards that still clung to the socket. “So, we’ll be looking for a tall man wearing a bandage on his head. That’s more of a description than we usually get.”

  Back upstairs again, the patrolman accepted her offer of tea, but insisted on preparing it himself. He seemed at home in a kitchen. She guessed that he had a grandmother her age, and, during the course of their conversation, this proved true. The young man lived in the Bronx with a large extended family that included both of his grandparents. He spoke of them warmly as he pulled out a chair for Nedda and seated her at the table.

  When the kettle released its steam in a shrill whistle, he was quick to kill the flame of the burner. As he poured hot water over the tea bags in their cups, he noticed the tarot deck on the kitchen table, and he smiled. “My grandmother spends ten dollars every Monday to have her fortune told.”

  “Well, that’s cheap. She must know an honest fortuneteller.”

  By the expression on the young man’s face, Nedda could tell that he considered this an oxymoron. How could a fortuneteller ever be honest?

  “An old woman taught me to read tarot cards.” Nedda unboxed the deck. “These belonged to her.” She selected the card that most resembled the young policeman. “This is your significator, the Knight of Swords. It’s what you are. Now think about the problem that troubles you most.” She shuffled the cards. “I’m guessing that’s me.” After cutting the cards three times, she laid them out in three piles. “Put the deck back together and hand it to me.”

  He did as she asked, and she knew it was only to humor an old woman, for he was a child of the new century, a firm believer in scientific explanations for everything.

  She lifted one card from the top and laid it down upon the knight. “This covers you.” And with the next card laid lengthwise, she said, “This crosses you for good or ill.” In quick succession, she placed four cards at compass points all around the first three, then dealt four more cards in a row to one side.

  “And now you’re going to tell me my future.”

  “No, that’s for the fool,” said Nedda, “the kind of person who seeks patterns that aren’t there—the sort who sees the Virgin Mary in a grocer’s deformed potato, then pays a ten-dollar admission fee to worship it. Given a fool’s nature, he deserves what he gets—a lighter wallet and nothing more.”

  She covered the policeman’s hand with hers. “You’re not like that. You wouldn’t want to see the future, not even if you believed it
was possible.” No, this boy would never bow to the idea of a destiny writ in stone. “You already see a possible future—the one you can forge for yourself.”

  Nedda pointed to the west card. “This is where that future begins, in your past. You became a policeman, not for the good pension plan, but because you wanted to help people. That’s your nature.” She pointed to the south card. “This is the foundation of the matter. You’re exactly where you should be in the world. You like what you are, and that’s rare.” Her hand drifted toward the north card. “You strive to create order out of chaos.” Her finger landed on the east card, the immediate future. “And you will do this every day in small ways and big ones. But you already know that. You’ve made it your mission.” She studied the remaining cards. “Now, if I’m right and your worry of the moment is me . . . I can tell you that you’ll see me again.”

  But would she be dead or alive?

  “That was an easy one,” she said. “I spend a great deal of my day at the windows. I’ve seen you drive by from time to time, probably more often than you should. You always slow down when you pass my house. I suspect that you keep an eye on me.”

  A good guess. She had taken him by surprise.

  Her hand drifted up to the last card dealt, the culmination of all that had gone before. “In this matter where our paths have crossed, we will each reap what we deserve. But then, that’s true for everyone. Hardly magic or psychic phenomena.” She swept all the cards together. “Just a tool to keep you focused on the road ahead.”

  He must have intuited that this card play was a ruse to keep his company a while longer, for he leaned toward her, saying, “Shock is a funny thing.” He cleared their cups from the table and set them in the sink. “Sometimes it makes people weak in the legs. Sometimes they’re afraid to be alone. If you hear any noises, or if you just feel jumpy, you can call and ask for me. I’ll be on duty for another six hours.”

  The cleaning lady entered into a street fight of sorts, or so she would tell it later on, as she wrestled over a wire cart filled with her supplies. The young policeman insisted on carrying it up the stairs for her, and by brute strength he won.

  “I don’t tip cops!” yelled Mrs. Ortega in Brooklynese.

  “Suits me fine,” the young officer countered with his Bronx accent. “Chump change ruins the line of my uniform.” And now that he had settled her cart by the front door to the mansion, he tipped his hat and left her standing there agape and with no comeback line.

  No need to ring the bell. The door was opened wide by a woman as tall as Detective Mallory, but much older. The hair was white, her eyes pale blue, and what a curious smile. “You’re from the temp agency?”

  “Lucky guess, lady. Here, you gotta sign this.” The smaller woman handed her a work order tapped out on Mallory’s computer and guaranteed to pass for the genuine article. “The name’s Ortega,” she said. “You can call me Mrs. Ortega.” And by the signature, she knew this was Nedda Winter.

  And now the cleaning lady had to fend off more good manners, offers of tea and conversation, for God’s sake. But she was firm. “I only got a few hours.” Mrs. Ortega powered up her vacuum cleaner and kept her mouth closed until, an hour later, she opened the door to the closet in the foyer. “What the hell?”

  The shelves were narrow for a linen closet, and they were lined with women’s hats.

  “It’s a hat closet,” said Miss Winter.

  “There’s no such thing,” said Mrs. Ortega. “You know how many years I been cleaning houses like yours? Hell, even fancier than this one, and there’s no such a thing as a damn hat closet. This is a linen closet, and you never find a linen closet in a damn foyer. But that’s not what I was talking about.” She leaned down and picked up one hat that had fallen from a lower shelf, then pointed to a hole in the wall. “What’s that?”

  “A mouse hole, I suppose. Would you like a cold beer?”

  Two blocks west of Winter House and two hours later, Mrs. Ortega was sitting in the front seat of Mallory’s car. “So I says to Miss Winter, you got real classy rodents here—that’s a nice round hole. Between you and me, Mallory? I’d say that mouse used a drill with a four-inch bit. And it was a damn tall mouse. That hole was two feet off the ground.”

  Mallory nodded, hardly listening.

  “The back of the closet was cheap plasterboard,” said the cleaning lady, attempting to liven up her story. “Now that’s odd because the sides are cedar. It don’t make sense. You see the problem?” No, she guessed that Mallory had lost interest in the closets of the rich, and Mrs. Ortega was still unclear about what service she had done to warrant a hundred-dollar bill on top of her regular cleaning fee. And so she felt obliged to elaborate, drawing on her vast reading in true-crime paperbacks. “You know that house has a history, right?”

  Mallory’s face had no expression that the cleaning lady could read. Mrs. Ortega offered a hint. “The Winter House Massacre? Ring any bells?”

  “That’s way before Mallory’s time,” said Riker. “Mine, too.” He had returned from his deli run. After settling into the backseat, he handed Mrs. Ortega her requested bagel and coffee. “Now here’s our problem.” He held out a sheet of paper with the letterhead of Crime Scene Unit. “A rookie investigator has a note here. Suspicious hole in shallow closet.”

  “Crime scene, huh? Another murder. Do you know how many—”

  “Don’t get excited,” said Riker. “It was a robbery.”

  “Oh, sure,” said Mrs. Ortega. “You two turned out for a robbery.”

  “That’s right,” said Mallory, pressing another large bill into the woman’s hand. “Is there a problem here?”

  “Absolutely not.” Mrs. Ortega pocketed the bill. “So this rookie—did he mention the seam around the closet hole?” Well, that got their attention. “The backing on that closet is old and rotted. But the hole and the seam? Not so old. Somebody cut out a section and then put it back in place. There’s a ridge of glue around the seam for the patch. And there’s dust on that ridge.”

  “Well, that tears it,” said Riker. “Whatever got walled up in the closet, it’s long gone now.”

  “Tell me about Nedda Winter,” said Mallory.

  “Real jumpy. Followed me everywhere, and it wasn’t like she thought I was gonna rob her blind. She just wanted the company. Didn’t wanna be alone. That was my take. I cleaned her room. Hardly needed it. Very neat. No personal items. There’s a metal suitcase stashed under the bed. I thought that was her house, but she acts like a real polite guest who isn’t sure how long she wants to stay. So then the little one comes home.”

  “Bitty Smyth.”

  “Right. Soon as I saw her, I knew which room was hers. Never had to ask. It had to be the one with all the stuffed toys on the bed. Like a kid’s room. Now that’s because she’s so small. I bet people still pat her on the head. She’ll have teddy bears on the bed when she’s ninety years old. Well, as soon as she showed up, I left.”

  “Good job.” Mallory nodded to the police cruiser behind her car. “That officer will drive you anywhere you want to go.”

  Mrs. Ortega looked back over her shoulder to the rear window and its view of a policeman in uniform, the same cop who had wrestled her for the cleaning cart. “Good. A rematch.” As she closed the door of the car, she leaned down to the open passenger window. “Just one more thing, you guys. Instead of asking yourselves what was walled up in that closet, you might be wondering who. It was a damned big patch.”

  No intruder could hide in the dark of an old house. Every creak of a timber and each footfall on the stair was kettledrum and timpani; moments of silence were suspect and fraught with tension—waiting, waiting.

  Nedda rose from her bed and walked to the window. Evidently, Officer Brill had not been impressed by the most recent break-in. There were no police cars parked out front. She held the opera glasses borrowed from her mother’s old trunk in the attic. Raising the lenses to her eyes, she looked out over the park, bringing leaves in
to sharp focus and searching for a sign of movement among the branches.

  Her brother and sister had not returned. They had been absent for yet another break-in, and she wondered what the police would make of that coincidence.

  Cleo and Lionel spent so much of their time at the summer house, and Nedda blamed herself for making the town house unbearable. Bitty had offered another theory: they simply liked to drive; it was nothing for them to make the round trip in a day, only spending a few hours in one place or the other. Her niece believed that they used the summer house as an excuse, needing some destination for their drives, else they would drive in circles. The pair had longtime acquaintances, but no real friends to visit in the Hamptons.

  But they had each other. And what of Bitty? She had no one but a lame cockatiel.

  Nedda refocused the opera glasses and strained to see a man in the mesh of leaves. No, there was no one there, but she imagined him behind each tree. The wind was rising, and the branches lost more of their cover with every gust.

  Waiting, waiting, anticipating.

  She closed the drape and lit the lamp. Next, she sat down at the writing desk and picked up her pen. Nedda meant to explain her actions to her family, or that was her intention, but she could think of no way to begin her letter. Instead, she wrote the same line, over and over, filling both sides of a paper, then reaching for another sheet. If things should go wrong tonight, this might be the most eloquent explanation she could leave behind. Or was it a confession of sorts? Pages covered with her handwriting drifted to the floor as the hour grew late. Over and over again, she wrote the same line: Crazy people make sane people crazy.

  Rising from the desk, she switched off the lamp and returned to the window. There were no pedestrians in sight, and the traffic was light to nonexistent. She focused the opera glasses. There, a face moving behind the trees near the stone wall, that low barrier between the sidewalk and the park. Nedda looked back at the clock on her bedside table. Officer Brill would have gone off duty hours ago. What would she say if she called the police station?