Winter House

by Carol O'Connell

  Bitty pulled a piece of paper from the pocket of her robe. “You had an earlier call last night after supper. I didn’t want to disturb you. I thought you might be sleeping.” She held out the piece of paper as she walked toward her aunt. “It’s a message from that detective,” said Bitty, “the tall blond one.”

  BANG!

  The thunder cracked overhead. Bitty jumped and her hands flew up like wings. The note wafted to the floor.

  Nedda reached out to retrieve the fallen paper, already knowing its contents before she unfolded it. This was Detective Mallory’s demand to appear at the police station this morning. She looked up to see that Bitty had recovered nicely from the inclement weather.

  “Aunt Nedda?” Lightning returned to light up her face, her worried eyes. “I’ve never practiced criminal law, but I know it’s always a bad idea to take a polygraph. I don’t think you should do it.”

  “Don’t worry, dear. I can deal with this.”

  BANG!

  When the patient regained consciousness, Mallory was the first thing he saw, and Riker felt sorry for Joshua Addison, a private investigator licensed in the state of Maine.

  Mallory leaned over the hospital bed, both hands curling round the metal rail. Such long red fingernails. And Riker saw that old look on her face—hungry—as if she had not been fed for days and days.

  Startled, the patient appeared to be playing dead with his eyes wide open. Riker watched the man’s chest, fascinated and wondering how much longer Addison could hold his breath. The private investigator’s survival instinct was slow to kick in, and when he finally sucked in air and tried to raise his arms in a protective reflex, he discovered that his right hand was manacled to the side rail. “What the hell is this? What happened?”

  “The way I remember it,” said Riker, “you were making a move on a woman in the park—when you tripped and fell. Now you’re going down on a pervert charge.”

  “That’s ridiculous,” said Addison. “You can’t—”

  “You need a lawyer,” said Riker, thinking it best to bring up the subject first. The moment their suspect asked for counsel, the interview must end. “Yeah, and make it a damn good lawyer. A pervert charge is—”

  “What? You’re crazy!”

  “Addison, you were stalking an old woman. And maybe we should add an assault charge.” Mallory reached out to touch the bandage on the patient’s forehead. Her long nails were dangerously close to the man’s eyes and he flinched as she peeled the bandage back to expose a jagged cut. Though there was no doubt that the wound had come from the broken lightbulb in the basement of Winter House, Mallory said, “We need a picture of this scratch. Looks like the old lady tried to fight him off.”

  On cue, Riker pulled a disposable camera from his coat pocket and snapped a close-up photograph with a burst of light in Addison’s eyes.

  “You’re both nuts!” Half blinded by the flash, the private investigator squinted at his accusers. “I never touched that woman.”

  Mallory laid three photographs on the bedsheet. Riker knew that these pictures had been taken by his partner, though she had given him the gift of deniability by lying to him. Unlike all the other shots from Addison’s roll of film, these three had Mallory’s center fixation. Nedda Winter’s head was in the precise center of each frame, as if she had been shot through a gun sight. In the first one, the camera was facing the startled woman. In the next one, she was running away. The third shot, a personal favorite, had Nedda, still on the run, looking back over one shoulder—a documented chase.

  “We have a lock on this case,” said Mallory. “These shots came from your camera.” She laid the private investigator’s license on his pillow. “And you can kiss this good-bye. We’ve got you cold for breaking into that woman’s house.” She pulled out an evidence bag with Officer Brill’s signature. It contained fragments of glass. “This came from a broken lightbulb in her basement. It’s your blood type, O negative.”

  “Ordering a DNA test would be overkill.” Riker smiled. “Real jail time, pal.”

  “An old woman like that,” said Mallory—as if she had ever been sentimental about old ladies. “You freak.”

  “I was working a case.”

  “We don’t think so,” said Riker, more affably. “We like the pervert charge.”

  “I was working for a client, and I can prove it,” said Joshua Addison.

  Riker was loving this. Normally it was like pulling teeth to get a client name from a private investigator. “Who’ve you got lined up? Your mother?” He looked up at his partner. “Let’s book him. I’m tired. I wanna go home.”

  “That old woman,” said Addison, “I think she’s Red Winter.”

  Riker feigned mild surprise. “You’re planning an insanity defense?” He turned to Mallory in the guise of a translator. “Red Winter was a little girl, a kidnap victim. She disappeared maybe thirty years before you were even born.” He looked down at the man on the bed. “And, last I heard, she’s still lost.”

  “No,” said Addison. “Her house is across the street from the park. She’s back.”

  “You’re kidding,” said Mallory. “That’s your story? You were waiting for her to come home?”

  “You know,” said Riker, leaning on the bedrail as he opined, “this job is definitely losing its edge. The perverts get dumber every year.”

  “I was hired by Bitty Smyth,” said Addison. “At the time, I didn’t know she was Red Winter’s niece. I had to do some checking. But now I—”

  “Yeah, right,” said Mallory. “The niece hired you to stalk her aunt.”

  “No, she hired me to find her aunt.”

  “This is too confusing,” said Riker. “The lady wasn’t lost in the park. She just went out for a walk.”

  “Listen to me!” Frustrated, Addison raised himself up on one arm. “She was lost for fifty-eight freaking years!” He searched one detective’s face and then the other’s, only finding signs of disbelief. “She’s Red Winter. And I wasn’t planning to hurt her last night. I just wanted a photograph, some proof that it was the same woman I found in the nursing home. It was the Bangor Rest Home in Maine. She looks so different now. Six months ago, she was all bloated and yellow. But her eyes—those eyes.”

  Riker pulled a small notebook from his coat, then fished the rest of his pockets until he found his pen. “So let me get this straight. You wanted to pass this woman off as Red Winter, and you needed a picture.” He jotted down a few words. “A photograph you could sell to the tabloids?” Riker looked up from his notebook. “You’re telling us you’re a con artist?” He shrugged. “Okay with me, pal. We’ll add that to the charges.”

  Riker and Mallory moved away from the bedside, as if they could not leave this man fast enough.

  “Hey, wait a minute,” said Addison. “Wait!”

  They did not.

  Bitty Smyth hung up the receiver on the kitchen wall phone, then faced her aunt with a smile. “The arrangements are done. I talked to Detective Mallory’s superior, a very nice man—Lieutenant Coffey. It took a bit of negotiating, but I got everything I asked for.”

  “How handy to have a lawyer around the house.” Nedda spooned scrambled eggs from a pan onto oven-heated plates. Behind her on the stove, bacon sizzled and hot water bubbled in the kettle. “You should go back to your father’s firm.” And perhaps that would assuage her guilt over Bitty’s long sabbatical, all that time lost to the search for a long-lost child.

  Her niece shrugged off this suggestion. “I lined up an independent polygraph examiner. Lieutenant Coffey said I wouldn’t be allowed to stay in the room during the examination, but I think I can get him to change his mind.” Bitty sat down at the table and took up her fork, waving it in the air as a baton. “Good timing is very important in every negotiation. We’ll make a stand right before they—”

  “No, Bitty. It’s better if I do this alone.” Nedda picked up the teakettle before the whistle could startle her niece, then poured boiling water over
the tea bags in their cups. “And then, this afternoon we might visit some real estate brokers.” She sat down at the table and picked up a newspaper opened to listings for co-ops and condominiums. Several advertisements had been circled in blue ink. “I’m going to find a place of my own in some other part of town. I think Cleo and Lionel would like that.”

  “But this is your house. No, Aunt Nedda. It’s all my fault. I’m the one who upset you. First that scene at the dinner party—and then last night. I’m so sorry. You can’t leave. You love this house.”

  Yes, she did. But the house did not love anyone—not anymore. The house was sad and crazy and sick to death of love.

  “It has nothing to do with you, Bitty.” Nedda reached out to cover her niece’s small hand with her own. “You can come with me if you like. Call it a stepping stone to a place of your own. You can’t live with your mother forever, can you?”

  The expression on Bitty’s face was one of instant sorrow, and Nedda realized that she had trod upon one of her niece’s many closet secrets. Though others seemed to underestimate this little woman’s complexity, Nedda never did. Sometimes even a simple conversation was like navigating a labyrinth with wrong turns aplenty. She had learned to avoid every path of discourse that led to pain, and now she folded the newspaper into her lap and out of Bitty’s sight.

  The detectives had finished a leisurely breakfast in the hospital cafeteria, and now they were tying up a critical loose end: how to explain away Mallory’s behavior last night, the pistol-whipping in Central Park.

  They stood in the dark of a small room in company with a hospital physician, who flicked on a light to illuminate Joshua Addison’s X rays. The doctor pointed to a fault line, saying, “Definitely a concussion. That’s why he can’t tell you what happened right before he lost consciousness. Judging by the wound, it looks to me like somebody hit him very hard with a—”

  “A rock?” asked Mallory, raising a plastic bag with said rock neatly pocked with red. “Like this one? We found it underneath his head.” She smiled so hopefully, as if she cared about this man’s opinion. “Or do you think he might’ve fallen and hit his head on the rock?”

  “Yes, that would do it,” said the doctor, who was young, who had no experience in forensics—who had never met Mallory before. “Yes, an accident.”

  Riker had to wonder how she made her prop so realistic. He stared at the red fluid that spotted this rock taken from a construction site across the street. It looked like real blood. He could well imagine her smashing it down on the nearest living creature that came to hand—so many small dogs in this neighborhood—but he hoped it was catsup from the hospital canteen.

  Mallory glanced at the clock on the wall, a signal that they had killed enough time. They rode the elevator up to Joshua Addison’s floor for a final word with the private investigator. When they entered the room, the man in the bed had a worried look about him.

  “Your story doesn’t check out,” said Riker. “We called that nursing home in Maine. According to their records, this woman’s the wrong age.”

  This was actually true. The sketchy records had overestimated Nedda Winter’s age by eight years.

  “And one more thing,” said Mallory. “Your name is on the nursing home’s discharge papers. They’ve got you listed as her next of kin. And they’ve never heard of Bitty Smyth.”

  “Yeah,” said Riker, “explain that one. Are you trying to con the Winter family out of some money?”

  “Hell, no. The niece asked me to make the arrangements to move her aunt to a hospice in New York State. She wanted it done quietly.”

  Mallory shook the bedrail to get the man’s attention. “Did the niece try to cut you out of the deal? Is that why you were stalking that old woman in the park?”

  Addison could barely get out the word “No.”

  “We’re just going by your own statement, pal,” said Riker. “It looks like a scam to us.”

  “Then it’s the niece, Bitty Smyth. It’s her scam. All I did was find—”

  “Oh, yeah, I forgot,” said Riker. “You did what thirty thousand cops couldn’t do. You found Red Winter.”

  “Just one snag,” said Mallory. “It’s not her.”

  Riker tossed a yellow pad on the bed. “Make out a complete statement. If we don’t find any more lies, we’ll sit on the paperwork for a few days. But if we find out that you passed this woman off as a member of the Winter family, then all the charges are solid, including fraud. And, pal, we read the newspapers—all of ’em.”

  And that should neatly kill any idea of selling Nedda Winter to the tabloids. To further the impression that the detectives were bored with the improbable story of Red Winter’s return, Riker stretched out on the bed beside Addison’s. Before the private investigator had filled out half the sheet, Riker was snoring convincingly and sleeping soundly.

  Half an hour passed before Mallory woke her partner, handing over the yellow sheets, one by one, as fast as she could read them. The handwritten lines of the statement were filled with every detail of the search for an old woman in the state of Maine. Joshua Addison had done hundreds of interviews looking for someone who would fit Bitty Smyth’s specific list of characteristics. For two years, the man had covered the entire state of Maine.

  Well, now they knew that Bitty had not been leaving town on religious missions. She had been visiting nursing homes up north. But how had the woman known that her aunt was hiding out in the state of Maine?

  Mallory carried a clipboard into the interview room and walked to one end of the long table. She was ignoring the surprised polygraph examiner as she made a show of consulting her watch and writing down the time.

  Nedda Winter was wired into the machine by rubber tubing around her chest and abdomen to measure her breathing, a padded cardio cuff on her arm to keep track of her blood pressure, and metal fingertips to catch her in the act of sweating.

  The polygraph examiner cleared his throat—twice—but failed to get Mallory’s attention. “Excuse me, Detective,” he said, hardly disguising his annoyance, “I work alone. If you have any questions, I suggest you write them down. Then I can ask them during the—”

  “I’m not here to question Miss Winter,” said Mallory. “I’m here to evaluate you.” She glanced at the civilian’s polygraph equipment with a moue of distaste. “How far out of date is that machine of yours?”

  The examiner only stared at her, casting about for some comeback.

  “Obviously,” said Mallory, making a note on her clipboard, “you don’t know how old your equipment is. I’m guessing at least ten years.” She leaned down toward Nedda, showing the woman no more regard than furniture when she examined the padded arm cuff. The detective made another note on her clipboard, speaking the words aloud as her pen moved across the paper, “Still using cardio cuffs for blood-pressure readings.” She turned back to the examiner. “We gave you a chair with stress plates. Why aren’t you hooked in?” She tapped her pencil on the notebook, waiting on an answer, then examined the back of his machine where the wires connected. “Never mind.” She made more notes, saying as she wrote, “Outmoded machine. No connections for stress plates.”

  She removed her blazer and draped it over a chair, a clear signal that she planned to stay a while. And now her gun was exposed in the shoulder holster, breaking all the rules of interviews and civilian etiquette. All the power and authority was weighted to her side of the room. She leaned against the back wall, just visible to the examiner’s peripheral vision and in full view of Nedda Winter. “You can start now.”

  If any arguments had occurred to the examiner, he swallowed them. Reaching into his briefcase, he pulled out a deck of playing cards. Mallory rolled her eyes. And Nedda Winter smiled, vaguely amused by the show.

  On the dark side of the mirror in a small theater of chairs tiered in rows, two men sat up front near the one-way glass. They were observing Mallory’s humiliation of the independent polygraph examiner.

  Charles turned
to Riker. “What was all that about?”

  “Mallory wants him out of the way so she can do the exam herself. Poor little guy. He’s toast.” Riker reached over to a panel on the wall and turned off the volume. “Fun’s over. I’ve seen this next part a hundred times. Most of these idiots went to the same school for the ten-week course.”

  The polygraph examiner leaned toward Nedda Winter and appeared to be speaking in a friendly fashion. In the absence of sound, Riker translated. “Right now he’s telling Nedda that he wants to put her at ease. That’s a lie. His whole job is to jack up her anxiety. If he can’t do that—if she’s not afraid of his machine—he won’t get any responses worth measuring.”

  “If Mallory keeps smirking at everything he says, it’s hardly—”

  “He won’t last another five minutes. Now he’s telling Nedda what all the tools do, what they measure. She doesn’t seem too impressed. That’s because she’s taking all her cues from Mallory.”

  The examiner laid four playing cards facedown on the table. Nedda selected one, lifting up a corner to see which card it was. The machine was turned on, and the man stared at the rolling paper as he spoke again, watching wavy lines and hard-edged spikes, jotting down small notes on the paper as it rolled by at the rate of six inches a minute.

  “This is the getting-to-know-you stage,” said Riker. “He told her to give him a negative response every time he tries to guess her card—even if he guesses right. He’s telling her he needs to gauge her physical responses when he guesses the right card and she lies to him. That’s bull. If he didn’t know which response was a lie, the polygraph wouldn’t help.”

  “So he memorized the order of the cards,” said Charles. “He already knows which one she picked. Well then, what’s the point of this exercise? If she’s following his instructions, then there’s no attempt at deception.”

  “It’s a lot like voodoo. Nedda has to believe in the polygraph. When he guesses her card, that’s supposed to convince her that the machine can read her mind. But see? She’s not buying it. This test is only as good as the examiner, and Mallory made him look like a moron.”