Winter House

by Carol O'Connell

  The detective laid two sets of fingerprint cards on the table. One had been found in Pinwitty’s stash of stolen evidence, souvenirs of a massacre. “These are your uncle’s elimination prints. The police took them on the day of the massacre. They wanted to rule out family members.” The second set of prints had come from the New Orleans police; this was the fruit of Riker’s grandfather and his lifelong search for Red Winter. “This set of prints belonged to the man you stabbed in Maine. They’re a perfect match for James Winter.”

  “That’s impossible.” Nedda shook her head. “My uncle was alive for years after I stabbed Humboldt.”

  “No, that’s the story you got from your family. And the real story? After two years as guardian, James Winter’s signatures were forged on all his checks. He was dead. You stabbed him to death when you were fourteen years old. He died in Maine the night he came back to kill you.” She held up both sets of cards. “Walter McReedy was right. Fingerprints can’t lie. Your uncle and Humboldt were the same man.”

  Mallory waited out a long silence in something close to pity or mercy—as close as she could come to these qualities. She had just told this woman that her life in hiding had been for nothing—that she could have gone home to grow up in her own house with Cleo and Lionel—her family. And now the truth was slowly, quietly killing Nedda Winter.

  “If you like . . . I could get you a cup of tea,” said Mallory, as if she had not just destroyed this woman.

  Nedda reached out for the detective’s hand, but she must have sensed that her touch would be unwelcome, and she withdrew.

  “These are just copies.” Mallory slid the fingerprint cards across the table, making a little bridge to Nedda Winter with these sorry bits of paper. “You can keep them . . . if you like.”

  The woman’s mouth opened wide to emit a strangled cry. She doubled over as if her great pain were physical and her wounds mortal. And then came the tears.

  And now Mallory knew what she must do.

  She left the room to fetch a cup of tea. The magical properties of this drink were writ large in her inherited rule book for life in Copland. Tea was a detective’s official bandage for grief and tears—so said her foster father. Coffee made people jittery, Lou Markowitz would say, and soda’s just as bad. Oh, but a cup of tea could soothe all the bloodless wounds, the killer pain that came with the worst news of life and death in New York City. Mallory had simply accepted this arcane lore and gave it equal credence with her store of instructions for the best way to bag blood-soaked clothing and the meaning of maggots in a ripe corpse.

  Tea would fix Nedda Winter.

  The three of them silently advanced down the hospital corridor, but Cleo and Lionel were not part of Sheldon Smyth’s united front. They had reservations, and Sheldon must have sensed this for he turned to his exwife, saying, “Cleo, we simply can’t leave Bitty here.”

  “Why not?”

  “It doesn’t matter now,” said Lionel Winter. “The decision’s been made for us. Bitty isn’t going anywhere.” He pointed to the end of the corridor and the police guard posted outside of his niece’s room.

  “He won’t be a problem,” said Sheldon. “I can get a court order if it comes to that. I’m not without friends in this town.”

  “And family,” said Cleo. Indeed, there were Smyth connections to all the major fortunes of New York City. They were prolific with their seed, all but sterile Sheldon. He had been forced to adopt his family’s bastards, Paul and Bitty, the cuckoo’s eggs planted in other people’s bloodlines.

  “Bitty will be in my custody,” said Sheldon.

  “We’ll see,” countered his ex-wife. Lionel stood at her side to form a little wall of two that would brook no resistance. Cleo left her ex-husband to the chore of cowing the young policeman while, against the officer’s protests, she and Lionel walked into Bitty’s hospital room.

  Charles Butler entered the interrogation room to find Nedda with her eyes red and swollen. Her face was wet with tears.

  He held his arm out and she took it, allowing him to raise her from the table. As they moved toward the door, she did an odd thing, considering whom she was dealing with tonight. Nedda rested one hand on Mallory’s shoulder and lightly kissed her hair. The young detective never moved. She only sat there, rigid, unyielding—alone.

  Charles and his elder companion strolled arm-in-arm out of the police station and down the narrow SoHo street, heading in the direction of his apartment building.

  She corrected his premature judgment on her weeping. “Mallory has given me the greatest gift. I’ve never been so happy.”

  Charles struggled with the image of Mallory as a bringer of gifts and joy. However, it was hard to argue with the evidence of this smiling woman at his side.

  She pressed the precious fingerprint cards to her breast. “You know it was Bitty who told me that they were alive—my brother and sister. I had something to live for, someone to come home to. You can’t know how badly I wanted my family back.” She paused in a pool of lamp-light and studied her cards. “Now, thanks to Mallory, I can prove that I was innocent, and that I never abandoned them or stopped loving them.”

  An hour later, Charles was still coming to terms with the gift, terrible and wonderful, that Nedda had received at the police station. Oh, the waste of all those years. Tonight, this woman glowed by candlelight that softened the evidence of age, and he could see what her alternate life might have been: far from the narrow confinement of hospitals, her intelligence and grace, wealth and beauty would have laid open the entire world for Nedda Winter. He found her lack of bitterness remarkable, and so he was the one who felt the profound sense of loss. They sat at the kitchen table, sharing a late evening repast of wine, a wide selection of cheeses and a generous assortment of oven-warm croissants stuffed with sweetmeats. Charles fobbed this off as snack therapy.

  Stuffed with his good intentions of excess food, his houseguest pushed back from the table. “This is so charming—a psychologist who holds sessions in the kitchen. How wise. So cozy and secure.”

  “Good,” he said, “I’m glad you approve. The next session is breakfast.”

  Nedda glanced at her watch. “I wonder if Bitty’s asleep. I suppose it’s too late to call her at the hospital.”

  “No need to worry about her. I think it’ll do Bitty good to be out of that house for a night. And you, too.” He had made up the spare room and intended to bar Mallory from the door indefinitely, even if it meant laying his body down across the threshold. “Tomorrow night, we’ll have your brother and sister over here for dinner.”

  “And that, of course, means group therapy.”

  “And down the road, we’ll include your niece when she’s ready.”

  “Charles, did you find it odd that Bitty never wanted to move out of Winter House and get a place of her own?”

  “No, not at all. I don’t think she’ll be able to leave until she has her mother’s approval. I assume that’s the reason she went looking for you—to finally please her mother.”

  “She got no thanks for that. With just a few words, Uncle James made me believe that I was the prime suspect. I’m sure he had an easier time convincing two younger children.”

  “You’re quite sure he did that?”

  “Yes. It was pretty obvious the first time I saw them at the hospice. Horrible, isn’t it? For Lionel and Cleo, I mean. No wonder they spent all their time at the summer house. And poor Bitty. Not the response she expected from them, but she couldn’t take back her gift. And now—this suicide attempt. I’ve been such a disappointment to her.”

  Bitty Smyth stepped out of the Rolls-Royce. Her father and mother held her arms as they supported her—imprisoned her, and Uncle Lionel drove off to the parking garage with his precious car. Bitty looked up at the only home she had ever known and its dark parlor windows so like dispassionate eyes. Winter House did not care what transpired within tonight, not because it was inanimate, but because it had grown accustomed to the lack of love
and the plethora of death.

  11

  CLEO WINTER-SMYTH FUMBLED IN HER PURSE FOR HER own prescription sedatives. She handed the pharmacy bottle to her ex-husband. “Sheldon, you’ll have to crush these in water.”

  “Why?”

  “Because your daughter could never swallow pills.”

  Bitty watched him amble off toward the kitchen. She was always startled by each reminder that her father knew less about her than strangers did. But now this pain was put aside. Uncle Lionel would be back from the garage soon, and this was rare and precious time, a few minutes alone with her mother. “I want to show you something.” She retreated to the foyer closet, flung open the door and swept three hats from a lower shelf.

  “No, Bitty, don’t do that.” Cleo had the tone of one reprimanding a four-year-old as she came up behind her daughter and bent low to collect the fallen haberdashery. But now the hats dropped to the floor as her hands flew up to cover her face. “My God. It’s a mouse hole. But the house hates mice. How could this—”

  “No, Mother. I drilled that hole myself. See how shallow the closet is? And the back wall isn’t cedar. All the other closets in the house—”

  “Well, of course it’s shallow. It’s a hat closet. It’s always been a hat closet.”

  “There’s no such thing. Aunt Nedda said this was a normal closet when she was a little girl. She said coats were kept in here.”

  “Well, the house was rented out when we were children. One of the tenants must have changed it into a hat closet.”

  “No, it’s a normal closet with a false wall. If you look through the hole—”

  “Not a mouse hole,” said Cleo. “Well, that’s a relief.” Her eyes traveled over the exposed section of the wall. “You’re right. It’s not cedar. Looks cheap. I can’t believe I’ve never noticed that before. But then, it’s always been full of hats. There was a time when everyone wore them. So it made sense, you see, to have a place to—”

  “It’s not a hat closet!” This was Bitty’s attempt at yelling, but it came out as an impatient squeak. “It’s a hiding place.” She hunkered down in front of the drilled hole. With more composure, she said, “If you shine a light in there, you can see a trunk. It’s just like the trunks in the attic. Did you ever count them, Mother? One for every dead Winter—except for Sally. Didn’t you ever wonder about Sally’s trunk?”

  “The south attic? We never go up there. Why would we? Why would you? I don’t think I want to—Oh, no. Bitty, I asked you not to do that.”

  Hats were in flight once more as Bitty cleared one shelf and then another. Cleo ran about the foyer rescuing hats on the fly and yelling, “Bitty, stop! Stop it this instant!” She reached high in the air to catch one with a wide brim sailing by like a Frisbee.

  Bitty lifted one board from its moorings and then the next. She never heard the door open, but now Uncle Lionel was behind her asking, “What’s going on? Bitty, have you lost your mind?”

  Bitty was laughing, though not hysterically. This was genuinely funny. She might be the only one in the house who could pass a psychological evaluation.

  Cleo’s arms were wrapping round her daughter as she yelled, “You’re not well! You don’t know what you’re doing! This has to stop!”

  Oh, yes—the terrible insanity of skimming hats across the foyer. Bitty wrestled free. She ran through the doorway and across the front room, aiming herself at the kitchen like a missile. She collided with her father. A glass of water fell from his hand and crashed to the floor. She circled round him, ducking his hand and almost slipping in the wide puddle. Upon entering the kitchen, she pulled open the glass cabinet that housed the fire extinguisher and the ax.

  Bitty returned to the front room to enjoy one shining moment as the center of attention. The three of them were agape and staring at the fire ax in her hand. Her father was shaking his head, trying to make sense of this sight—his daughter armed with a lethal weapon. Ah, and now she discovered a new side effect as she walked toward them and they moved back.

  Power.

  She entered the foyer to stand before the closet. It was now bare of every shelf within her reach. She took one mighty swing of the ax to crack open the brittle plaster wall. Her second swing was too high, slicing through one of her mother’s hats and trapping the blade in the cut of high shelf.

  Braver now, the trio entered the foyer, hands reaching out.

  “Don’t you dare!” Bitty pulled the ax free and turned on them.

  Her mother held up her hands like a mugging victim. “It’s all right, dear. Everything is going to be all right.”

  Bitty swung the ax again, putting another hole in the thin board of the closet’s back wall and raising a small cloud of white plaster dust.

  “That’s enough,” said her mother, sternly now, as if her forty-year-old child were merely acting up in front of company.

  Bitty made another swing, wielding the ax with all her might. The wall cracked inward. She used the ax as a hammer to drive the shards of the wall back into a hollow space.

  “That’s enough!” said Cleo. “Stop it!”

  Completing her very first act of open rebellion, Bitty pulled loose other sections of the ruined wall, working like a dervish to expose the small trunk on the floor behind it. As she gripped a brass handle and dragged it out, it became wedged in the opening. With one hard tug, the trunk came loose and flew backward with Bitty into the room, landing on its side and falling open to spill its contents at her mother’s feet.

  A rotted nightgown, a yellow braid—a tiny skeleton.

  If a doll had bones.

  Lieutenant Coffey had been almost flattered—almost—when District Attorney Buchanan deigned to visit Special Crimes Unit at this late hour, having left a dinner party and one royally pissed-off campaign contributor during an election year. The dapper little weasel had come accompanied by an honor guard of five minions, all of them dressed in tuxedos and shiny shoes. There were rarely any of the female assistant DAs in his traveling entourage; they were much too tall in high heels. Buchanan liked to surround himself with small men, following the principle that no head should be higher than the king’s.

  For the past ten minutes, the lieutenant had endured the protocol of ascending and descending speech. He was always called Jack, and Buchanan was addressed as sir or Mister District Attorney. And now Buchanan had run out of breath in a rather one-sided argument, or perhaps he had simply exhausted his store of insults.

  The lieutenant picked his next words with care. “Well, sir, it’s the kind of case that comes along once in a career.”

  “That’s no excuse. I told your detectives to stay clear of that law firm. They completely disregarded my direct order. And now I understand that they’re harassing one of Sheldon Smyth’s clients—a seventy-year-old woman, for God’s sake. She’s being watched around the clock.”

  “Yes, sir. We have a plainclothes detail guarding Nedda Winter.” Coffey sat down behind his desk and picked up a pen.

  “Well, Jack, you can forget that court order for protective custody. I blocked it.”

  “Yes, I know.” Jack Coffey’s grin was wide and impolitic as he finished scribbling his note, and now he passed it to the district attorney, who read the single line.

  “Oh, Jesus Christ.” The note dropped to the floor as Buchanan stood up and cleared the room, waving his ADAs out the door, yelling, “Move—now!” When his entourage had fled the office, the district attorney lowered his voice to a conspirator’s whisper. “Red Winter? You plan to implicate the Smyths in the Winter House Massacre? Do you want me to have a heart attack, right here, right now?”

  Oh, yes, and if there was a God—

  “No fucking way, Jack. The lawsuit potential is staggering. Now listen carefully. This is another direct order from me to Mallory and Riker. From now on, your detectives stay away from the Smyth firm and Nedda Winter.”

  “In that case, screw it. You don’t get to order my detectives around. That’s my job. And, i
f you’re not gonna help them, then stay the hell out of their way.”

  Buchanan’s mouth was moving, but no words were coming out. This was almost an assault, these words of insurrection. And now it must occur to him that the lieutenant had a bomb in his pocket.

  He did.

  “I smell conflict of interest,” said Coffey, and this was a roundhouse punch of words. “Hell, you’re going out of your way to advertise it.” He walked around his desk to loom over the shorter man, and Buchanan lowered himself into the chair. The lieutenant bent down, working his way into the man’s personal space, and the DA had nowhere to go. “I’m betting that law firm turns up on your A-list for campaign contributions. You like the Smyths so much? Fine. Then you go down with them.” Heady words in an election year.

  Mallory appeared out of nowhere. Neither man had heard her coming. She laid a copy of Sheldon Smyth’s canceled check in the DA’s lap to back up the lieutenant’s charge of conflict of interest. Buchanan was a long time staring at that check, as if he were counting the many zeros of his purchase price.

  As if Mallory only wanted change for a dollar, she said, “I need a court order to force Nedda Winter into protective custody. No judge will sign off on that until they get a call from you.”

  The man’s eyes were little gray pinballs as he considered his options. And now, Buchanan the Weasel was back, eyes sly and calculating. He crushed the photocopy in one white-knuckled fist, perhaps with the idea that women were easier to intimidate. “Is this your idea of—”

  “A gift?” Mallory dusted imaginary lint from the shoulder of her blazer. “Yes, that’s exactly what it is. You’ll want to return that campaign contribution before we make the arrest.”

  Mallory was now dead to the district attorney. He turned his angry face on the lieutenant. “All right, Jack. You’ll get custody of the old lady—but that’s all you get.” He held up the photocopied check. “Down the road, you don’t get to use this crap on me again.”