I see a pale face in the woods?
No, they would not send anyone to search Central Park for suspicious persons, not on her account. They would write her off as a crazy old woman, and perhaps this was true. She watched the wood across the way and saw him more clearly now, but just the back of him moving deeper into the foliage.
Nedda disrobed to stand naked before her closet, moving hangers hunting for something night black. When she was dressed, she reached beneath her pillow to grab up the wooden handle of the ice pick. With great stealth she slipped down the hall to the stairs, finding her way in the dark, descending slowly, minding the steps that made noise. The alarm light was on in the foyer. She tapped in the number code to disarm it, then found the switch to turn off the light above the outside stairs.
Charles Butler returned home from a charity auction, his wallet lightened by a donation, but no purchases had been made aside from cocktails at the bar. None of the antique furniture had remotely resembled the gaming table of his dreams. And now he had less than a week to replace the one that had been destroyed. Before he could insert the key into the lock for his apartment, he saw the lighted glass of the door to Butler and Company.
Mallory? She liked the late hours.
He entered the reception area and saw a light at the end of the hallway, but it was his own office and not hers. Charles found his cleaning woman fast asleep and slumped over a book in her lap. Now that was odd. Oh, wait—not odd at all. She had been reading the book on Winter House, and that would put anyone to sleep.
He put one hand on her shoulder. “Mrs. Ortega?” When her eyes opened, he said, “I’ve never known you to work so late.” He glanced at his watch. “It’s after midnight.”
This took some convincing. She had to look first at his watch then her own. “I’ll be damned. I couldn’t clean your office this afternoon,” she said. “I had to do an errand for Mallory. I didn’t think you’d mind if—”
“Oh, but I don’t mind. So what sort of errand did you do for Mallory?”
“I can’t tell you.”
“Ah, sworn to secrecy. I understand.” He walked to the credenza behind his desk and returned to join her on the couch, holding a bottle of sherry and two glasses. “However, it wouldn’t count if I guessed, would it?”
Undecided, she accepted a glass and allowed him to fill it—several times in quick succession.
He pointed to the book in her lap. “I’m guessing it’s something to do with Winter House.”
“Maybe,” she said, and then she smiled. “Are you a betting man?”
“You know I am.” Indeed, he never tired of losing at poker. “What’s the wager?”
She held up the thick volume. “I know what happened to Red Winter.”
“Fascinating.” Charles dipped the decanter to refresh her glass. “Twenty dollars and a limo ride home to Brooklyn?”
“It’s a bet. I say Red Winter was never lost. That kid never even left her own house. The body was walled up in the foyer closet. That’s my theory.”
“Really.” He filled her glass again. Mrs. Ortega had a high tolerance for alcohol, and it might take a while to get the entire story.
Nedda stood on the sidewalk in a long black leather jacket and slacks. She felt cold—exposed. A single car rolled by, and she turned away from the headlights, hiding the ice pick in her side pocket. She ran full out to cross the boulevard. When had she last run for her life or any other reason? It made her young again. The wind hit her face and picked at the loose weave of her braid. She approached the low stone wall as a twelve-year-old girl and easily scaled it, her feet hitting the broken branches and cracking dead leaves on the other side. And now she played the child’s game of statue, quieting her heart the better to hear a stranger’s footfall.
She was terrified, exhilarated—alive.
This was a better plan than waiting for him to come for her. They were old friends now, she and Death. It got easier each time they met. And this time, she had selected the meeting place. Her head snapped right with a sound of a dry stick broken underfoot, and she walked that way, pushing branches to one side, going deeper and deeper into the wood and losing the light of the path lamps.
“Red Winter,” said a man’s voice just behind her back.
Her hand closed around the ice pick in her pocket. She turned around to face him, but there was no one there.
“My God, it’s really you.” A tall figure stepped out of the foliage. Only a shadow and only his voice discerned his sex. “Red Winter. You don’t remember me, do you?” He clicked on a flashlight and shined it on his own face, making it ghoulish with sharp shadows riding the planes of his cheeks and the deep eye sockets. Yes, he was a tall one, and, just as Officer Brill had predicted, he wore a bandage high on his scalp where the lightbulb’s broken glass had scratched him.
“We met when you were very sick,” he said, in a surprisingly normal voice, hardly threatening. “You made a nice recovery, didn’t you?”
She had not expected this—a civilized conversation replete with polite inquires on the state of her health. Had they met in a hospital? There had been so many of them over the years. And then there had been the nursing homes and finally the hospice. Her grip on the ice pick remained very tight.
“No,” he said, lowering the flashlight. “You wouldn’t remember, would you? You were really out of it then.”
And now she must pin that down to one of three places. They might have met in the last hospital where her health had severely declined, or the nursing home where her life would have ended if not for Bitty. Or was it the hospice?
The man was coming closer, his white hands dangling from the arms of a loose flannel jacket that might conceal any number of weapons.
“Were you a patient, too?” she asked, as if this might be a normal chat with some acquaintance who had slipped her memory.
“Me? In a nursing home?” He actually smiled. “Not likely.”
No, he was only thirty years old at the outside. So he had met her in the Maine nursing home.
He placed his flashlight in the crook of his arm, shining its light on the trees behind him, and freeing both hands to open the buttons of his jacket. Did he have a gun? An ice pick could not beat a bullet. He was one step closer, his right hand still concealed.
His backward-shining beam spotlighted another figure in the wood, a lovely face with the luminous skin of a haunt.
Mallory.
The young detective was only a few yards away. Holding a very large gun in one hand, she crept closer with no clumsy breaks of twigs underfoot, but padding like a cat, taking her own time in Nedda’s elongated sense of seconds expanding in slow motion.
The man was pulling his hand from the folds of his jacket. What was that dark object in his hand?
Mallory was smiling as her gun hand was rising. The young policewoman was enjoying this moment, and a moment was all it was before Nedda heard the connection of heavy metal on bone. The man made less noise when he dropped to the ground.
A uniformed policeman stepped out of the woods in the company of Detective Riker, who hailed her with a broad smile and, “Hey, Nedda. How’s it going?”
Mallory waved one hand toward the younger of the two men. “You remember Officer Brill.”
“Yes, of course,” said Nedda. “He comes to all of our crime scenes.” She smiled at the patrolman. “How nice to see you again.”
“Evening, ma’am.” Officer Brill tipped his cap, then turned to the chore of helping Riker pick up the fallen man. They carried the unconscious body up the path that would lead them back to the stone wall. A police car was waiting for them, its red lights spinning through breaks in the trees.
Nedda was left alone with Mallory, who was slow to holster her gun.
“What brings you out so late, Miss Winter?” The young detective circled around Nedda, then dropped her voice to a whisper behind the older woman’s back. “Hunting?” Louder, Mallory said, “Not enough action back at your house?�
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All Nedda saw was the flash of one white hand before she felt a light tug on her jacket. The movement was so quick, there was hardly time to be startled before she realized that the detective had just robbed her pocket of the ice pick.
“Brill was so worried about you,” said Mallory. “And he even knows how good you are at taking down violent criminals.” She glanced back over one shoulder, perhaps wanting the assurance they were alone—without witnesses. “Incidentally, that man had a gun, but it was still holstered behind his back.” The detective held up a small camera. “This is what he had in his hand. So it’s lucky I interrupted you before you killed another unarmed citizen.”
Lucky indeed. Nedda jammed both hands into her pockets, not wanting this young woman to see her tremble so.
The detective was looking down at the ice pick resting on the flat of one palm, then the camera in her other hand. She seemed to be weighing one thing against another. “I don’t know who to charge tonight. It’s a real crapshoot.”
“If you don’t mind a suggestion?”
“Go for it.”
Nedda looked to the shadows where the police and their prisoner had disappeared. “It might be better if you charge him—since you cracked his skull.”
“Good point.” Mallory held up the camera. “You run pretty fast, Miss Winter. Yes, we were watching you from the woods. Nice sprint.” She held up the camera. “Three more shots left on the roll.” She pointed through the trees toward a path that was well lit. “I want you to run that way—fast as you can.”
When Nedda hesitated, Mallory said, “Do it. Now!”
And Nedda ran. She stumbled the first time she heard the click behind her. She had been shot with the camera. She looked back over one shoulder to the startling sight of Mallory running behind her and shooting her again.
“That’s good! Now stop!”
Nedda halted on command—like a pet—and turned around to see the detective removing a roll of film from the camera.
“If anyone should ask,” said Mallory, “my prisoner took those last three pictures.”
“You’re asking me to falsify—”
“You’ve got a problem with that? Would you rather visit the local station house and explain what you were doing in the woods with a concealed weapon?” Mallory rested one hand on her hip. It was a gesture of total disbelief. “I see you at the window every night. Always looking out at the park. You’re holding out on me. That man—you were waiting for him to show up. Am I right?” Mallory held up the ice pick. “You want to talk about this now? No? Then meet me downtown in six hours.”
“What do you want me to do? Make a statement or—”
“You didn’t get my message? You agreed to take a polygraph exam, Miss Winter. I set it up for this morning. Were you planning to back out?”
“No, I’ll be there.”
The detectives rode in the back of the patrol car with their unconscious prisoner propped up between them. Mallory was going through the man’s wallet.
“This is trouble,” she said, holding up a private investigator’s license issued in the state of Maine.
“So now we know he’s got a permit for the gun,” said Riker. “Damn. Too bad you didn’t shoot him, kid. Fat chance we can keep Nedda out of the papers now.” He rolled back one of the prisoner’s eyelids and waved his hand back and forth between the man’s eyes and the car’s dome light. “The pupils don’t react. I think you might’ve caught a lucky break. He’s not gonna wake up anytime soon. Maybe never.”
“Okay, you win!” Annoyed, Mallory leaned toward the driver. “Cancel the SoHo station. Aim this car at the nearest hospital.”
The prisoner transport swerved off Seventh Avenue and rolled into the emergency entrance for Saint Vincent’s Hospital in Greenwich Village.
Riker, sarcastic alarmist, gave her no credit for knowing how to pull her shots. She had not hit the man all that hard, and he would certainly live. Also, and this was a bonus, a prolonged awakening worked in her favor. She could have the photographs developed before the man regained consciousness.
Nedda parted company with Officer Brill on the stairs outside her front door. She entered the house by herself despite his kind offer to come inside with her. After crossing the room in the dark, aided by memory alone, her hand closed on the banister, and she made the long climb to the second-floor landing with time enough for deep regret to settle in.
Why had she ever gone into the park?
The man with the camera was most likely a reporter, and now irreparable damage had been done. Cleo and Lionel would have to bear the consequence of her little walk in the woods tonight. Very soon, perhaps in the early morning hours, they would be accosted by microphones shoved in their faces, cameras and questions to fend off.
Gone was every hope for reconciliation.
She entered her room and switched on the bedside lamp, then examined the disarray of her clothing. Her leather jacket was scored with the scratches of tree branches, her slacks were ripped open in places, and dirt caked both her shoes. She turned to the only mirror in the room.
What a fright.
Strands of hair had escaped the braid in wild profusion. A branch had sliced into her neck and broken the skin. She touched the wound and her hand came away with drops of blood on it. She removed her jacket, then jumped when the ice pick fell to the floor. Mallory must have covertly slipped it back into her pocket, but why would an officer of the law do such a thing?
Behind her, there was a sudden intake of breath. Realizing that she was no longer alone in this room, she whirled around to see her small niece standing in the open doorway, all eyes and staring at the weapon on the floor—the blood on Nedda’s fingers.
“Oh, God,” said Bitty, “what have you done?”
The elder woman started at these words—echos—of Uncle James, her first accuser. Bitty was back stepping into the hall, and Nedda bowed her head, so sorry, so utterly destroyed.
6
RIKER’S BACK WAS BROKEN AFTER FIVE HOURS OF BAD dreams on a lumpy couch in the hospital lounge.
A voice close to his ear said, “I know you’re awake.”
Mallory sounded so damned alert, but she was young; she could string three days together with catnaps and never miss the sleep. Well, he might be awake, but she could not force him to open his eyes.
“I talked to the state cops in Maine,” she said. “They went out to Susan McReedy’s place.”
Riker rolled over and away from her, burrowing into the upholstery.
Mallory’s voice was louder, more testy. “McReedy’s gone. The neighbors said she left town doing eighty miles an hour. She’s on the run. I ran her credit cards. No charges. She’s paying cash for her gas.”
Riker mumbled, “Some people still use cash, Mallory.” Morning light was breaking through the slits of his sore eyes. “Maybe the lady just needed a vacation.” Life in the boondocks of Maine might be more exciting and stressful than he had previously supposed. He rolled on his back, eyes all the way open now, and decided that—naw—Susan McReedy was on the run. “Damn. So that private dick upstairs is all we got left.”
He was talking to the ceiling. His partner was crossing the lobby, forcing him to rise and lope after her.
Nedda faltered on the stairs as she made her way up to the south attic, where the trunks of the dead were kept—all but Baby Sally’s. The light from the gabled windows was waning. The morning was turning dark and promising rain. She wandered the rows of stored effects until she found her mother’s trunk and opened it. The lid was heavier today.
So tired.
Nedda dropped the opera glasses inside and closed the trunk softly, reverently. She moved on to the neat row of murdered parents and children. One by one, she dragged their trunks to an open space. The sky was rumbling over her head as she arranged them in a circle, and lightning flashed in every window when she sat down, tailor fashion, surrounded by all that remained of her dead.
This was the family.
Following a crack of thunder, rain streaked the glass panes. As Nedda cried, so did the house.
Nestled in her lap was the canvas sack of Baby Sally’s rotted clothes. This child was never far from her thoughts, though she could only see her youngest sister as a newborn with hair of soft down—fingers and toes impossibly small. Nedda called up a memory of solemn children gathered in the kitchen. Old Tully the housekeeper had taken it upon herself to explain this impending death of their baby sister, and she had done it badly, telling them that they were all dying from the moment they were born. “That’s what life’s about,” said Tully.
Not good enough.
The children, not one philosopher in the pack of them, had demanded a more concrete explanation. Obligingly, the housekeeper had gone out into the yard, captured a slug and returned with it, laying the slimy creature on the kitchen table. “This is death,” she had said, holding up a heavy mallet used for tenderizing meat. The old woman had brought her weapon down upon the slug and smashed it into a smear on the tabletop. “There,” said Tully, “it’s gone to live with Jesus.”
Nedda held up a little dress that a four-year-old might wear.
Sally, my Sally.
A child-size wraith in a white nightgown hovered by the attic stairs.
Only Bitty.
Nedda swiped her wet face with the back of one hand, then turned to her niece and braced herself for some new accusation. Bitty was lit by a flash of lightning. Her eyes rolled up toward the rafters, and she stiffened slightly, waiting for the thunderclap.
It never came.
“I’m sorry, Aunt Nedda—about last night. I got a call from Officer Brill this morning. He wanted to know if you were all right. He told me what happened in the park. After everything you’d been through, I made you feel like a criminal.”
“Don’t give it any thought, dear. It was perfectly understandable.”
Winter House Page 17
