Winter House (13 page)

Nedda Winter was not taking this well, either. She gripped the rail with a sudden need of support.

Had both these sisters witnessed the massacre of their family? Charles’s sketchy knowledge of this old story held no such detail.

Bitty was prattling on about the other deaths and where the bodies fell as she led the party down the staircase. „And then there was the baby,“ she said, almost as an afterthought. „A newborn. Sally was her name. She survived the massacre. What happened to her after that, Mother?“

Nedda paused on the last step and stared at Cleo, waiting on the answer to that question. Clearly, she had no knowledge of her baby sister’s whereabouts. How curious. Charles wondered if another of the Winter children had been… lost.

„Sally Winter.“ Sheldon Smyth was the first to reach the bar. „I haven’t heard that name in years.“ He smiled at Charles. „Everyone called her Baby Sally. I was just a boy, away at school when I heard the news. She ran off. Isn’t that right, Lionel? Isn’t that what the nanny told the police?“

„The nurse,“ said Cleo, „Sally had a nurse.“

„Quite right,“ said Sheldon. „As I recall, your uncle James fired that woman for stealing.“ He spoke to Charles, for the outsider would need a running translation. „James Winter was their guardian after the rest of the family was murdered. Yes, I remember him confronting the nurse about stealing.“

„You’re confused, old man,“ said Lionel. „It was Uncle James who was stealing.“

„Yes, of course,“ said Sheldon Smyth. „That’s why he left town so suddenly. If I remember correcdy, that was the year you turned twenty-one.“

Lionel turned his back on the man, then poured a double shot of whiskey from the bar and downed it quickly.

Nedda’s face had gone bloodless. She drifted back to the stairs, passing all of them by, and, without a good night to anyone. In dead silence, they all watched her climb and climb, then disappear behind a door on the floor above. Bitty, the living portrait of contrition and regret, trailed after her aunt.

Sheldon Smyth was quick to retrieve a briefcase from the floor of a closet, and now he made his retreat, backing up to the door, pleading an early appointment and urging his guest to stay on for a nightcap. The caterers were gone, and so were Cleo and Lionel. Charles opened the door to the dining room, hoping to find them there, to say good night and beat a hasty retreat.

Not there. Where then?

They had not gone upstairs. After searching the kitchen and the sewing room, he returned to the front of the house to find Cleo and Lionel standing by the entrance to the foyer. With only a nod to their guest, they turned around and left. Charles heard the front door close behind them. Well, this was a bit backward, the hosts leaving the house in advance of the guest. „A most unconventional dinner party,“ said Nedda Winter. He turned to see her standing behind the bar, uncorking a bottle of wine. „My family doesn’t entertain much anymore.“ She smiled, quite her old self again, such a charming smile. She tapped a button on a control panel next to the bar, and the sound system died off to blessed silence. „Ah, that’s better. I’d like to thank you for not asking me where I’ve been for all these years.“

„To be honest, I wasn’t sure that you were Red Winter. I don’t know the story as well as I thought.“

„Do you like jazz, Mr. Butler?“

Old-fashioned record albums had appeared on the bar, stacked up beside two wineglasses. Charles examined them one by one. Any audiophile could date them back to the middle of the last century. „This is a wonderful collection.“

„Unfortunately, they’re all warped and scratched. And all the records that my sister stacked up for the party are not my idea of music.“

„Mine either.“ He pulled a record from the album cover. It was made of hard plastic that predated vinyl, cassettes and magnetically encoded discs. And it was ruined. What a great pity.

Nedda turned away from him to study the control panel for the sound system. „I was hoping you could show me how to play the radio on this thing. It has a beautiful sound quality, and I know a station that only plays jazz from the thirties and forties. I tried to tune it in once, but that made Cleo cry. She said I changed the programming for all her favorite stations. She doesn’t know how to work it, either.“

„And neither do I.“ For a birthday present, Mallory had rewired his apartment with a similar sound system, and, yes, the sound quality was incredibly beautiful, but the control panel she had installed was equally daunting. „I have one at home, but it’s a different model and the buttons are color coded.“ Mallory had programmed his stations and painted the selection buttons with red nail polish.

He strolled over to the antique radio that she had played last night. „Well, we know this works.“

T
he front windows were open. The curtains blew inward, Duke Ellington and his band flowed out into the street.

Charles Buder was in Luddite heaven. He ended the evening painlessly, sitting outside on the stone steps. The warm wind of Indian summer ruffled his hair to the tune of rippling piano keys. They were finishing off the last bottle in a prolonged good-bye.

„I haven’t gotten soused on wine since I was twelve years old,“ said Nedda Winter.

„I gather your upbringing was rather liberal.“

„You have no idea.“ She looked up at the face of her house and smiled. „It was a party that went on for years. My parents were jazz babies, and they were never bothered by nice people from good families. Our guests were miles more interesting.“ She ticked off an impressive list of actors, writers, gangsters and gamblers who had passed out at the dining room table. „But I liked the chorus girls best. They gave me a taste for cold beer and taught me to curse.“ She produced a pack of cigarettes from the folds of her shawl. „And they taught me how to blow smoke rings.“ She blew one now and it hung in the still night air. „You don’t like my house much, do you?“

„I suppose it makes me nervous.“

„Yes, I noticed that. But it didn’t bother you the other night, did it? Not with all those policemen, all that activity – and this music on the radio.“

„Well, no.“

„Oh,“ said Nedda –
big
smile, „how the house loves a good party. I’m afraid we put on a rather poor show tonight. Not nearly enough people – and that dreary music.“ She caressed the wrought-iron railing. „Poor house. It was made for a wilder nightlife.“

Though he would not describe the crime scene as a wild party, he took her point. „So, tonight, I’m seeing the house out of context. The interior – that was actually
designed tor
large gatherings, wasn’t it?“

She nodded and refreshed his glass with more wine. „My father’s work. He gutted the front room years before I was born. The staircase was the main event. It works best with a hundred people lounging on the steps, slugging back whiskey and tapping their feet to very loud music. Late in the evening, the music was live. Musicians came by from every club in town. Jam sessions till sunup. Piano men and men with horns, women with voices that could belt out a song to bring the roof down. Everyone in motion, dancing, even when they were sitting down. Now the mirrors – Daddy hung them up to create a bigger crowd than the house could hold. He even slanted the walls to give the mirrors more scope.“

„That’s why you can never avoid the multiple reflections?“

She nodded. „You could never escape my father’s illusion. All that energy. The people and the music fed the house.“ Her hand rubbed the stone step she sat upon. „Poor house. Now it’s starving – dying for the next big party.“

As Charles lit the last of her cigarettes, he glanced at his watch, startled to realize that another hour had passed. He liked this woman tremendously. However, he knew she must be tired. With some regret, he rose to take his leave, to see her safely behind the door, and to lose the pleasure of her company.

L
ionel Winter loved one thing in all the world, the 1939 Rolls-Royce – the Wraith. In the last two years of production before the war, only 491 had ever existed. The Wraith had been his father’s car, and it was in near-perfect running condition. The ride was smooth and utterly quiet. He paid lavish tips to the garage attendant for a little magic from an aerosol can that always made the leather smell like new – like 1939, the year when he had sat upon his father’s lap and steered the Wraith down city streets. Whenever he drove this car, he lived in that year.

Tonight, however, it was difficult to escape the twenty-first century, and all his thoughts were centered upon his niece. What was she playing at? Since Bitty had abandoned the practice of law at her father’s firm, she had become more and more peculiar, or so it seemed on those days when she appeared in his line of vision. Most of the time, he hardly noticed her. He could not entirely blame the wine for the night’s disaster. How long had she been harboring these suspicions, and how much could she really know?

Flying down the Henry Hudson Parkway, boats on the water, the town alight – electric – New York at night. How he loved to drive, always shuttling between the summer house and town. That was his whole life, going nowhere with great speed and always alone.

His solitary thoughts turned to Nedda. Why was she still alive? At the hospice, an ancient doctor had virtually promised him that his older sister would be dead before the month was out, that no tests were necessary to tell him that there was no hope of a cure. All the signs of end-stage cancer had been there, her skin a ghastly yellow, her belly bloated, and the rest of her body wasted. And yet, months later, Nedda had come home to Winter House, and there she resided – in splendid good health.

Doctors were so untrustworthy. Hardly science, was it?

Obviously, his older sister had been woefully misdiagnosed. So she lived – in his house – and every day Nedda summoned up the gall to look him in the eye. Every smile in his direction was a mockery. And now she was using Bitty, turning his niece against her own family. Lionel’s fingers tightened around the steering wheel, and the car accelerated down the parkway. He sped past the taillights of slower cars, the electric yellow windows of tall buildings and bright reflections on the river, going faster and faster.

Why did you come back, Nedda?

Uncle James had promised them, over and over, that their sister would never return to Winter House.

He turned toward the passenger seat to look at his sister in her own neighboring galaxy on the other side of the car. Her face was bathed in dim light from the dashboard.

„Cleo? You don’t remember very much, do you? When we came home from the park that day… and found them all dead.“

„No.“ She shivered slightly, as if awakening and shaking off dreams. „No, I don’t.“

That was not surprising. His sister had been only five years old when the two of them had come home to find their parents’ bodies sprawled on the stairs. And the dead housekeeper – what was her name?

No matter. He could not remember the nanny’s name either. Oh, but the others, his brothers and sisters. He saw them now, white and still.

His parents were his most vivid memory. What a picture for the family album: little Cleo clinging to their dead mother, the corpse warm to the touch, and by that warmth, still giving comfort to one of her children – but not to Lionel. While standing on the stairs, only inches from his father’s body, he had been a zillion miles distant from that scene, wishing himself to the moon and listening in on the world from a great distance.

Listening to a memory now – truly a long way off – he could still hear Cleo’s sad little conversation with the police on the telephone, numbering and naming the dead, then ending by asking them so innocently, „Are you coming?“

Lionel looked at his mask of a face in the rearview mirror, then glanced at his sister’s mask before turning back to stare at the windshield.

Alone again.

CHARLES BUTLER’S SUITE OF OFFICES WAS EQUIPPED WITH AN ultramodern kitchen, and Mallory was always upgrading the technology. Most of the appliances had secret lives of their own and functions that he could only guess at, but the one that he resented most was the high-tech coffeemaker. As a confirmed Luddite, he preferred his brew untouched by computer chips.

This morning he ground his own beans, as usual, percolated the coffee over an old-fashioned gas flame, then carried the cup and saucer across the hall to a door that bore the gold letters of Buder and Company on frosted glass. Once it had said Mallory and Butler, but again, the police department had frowned upon this flagrant breach of policy against using investigative skills in the private sector. The absence of her name on the door was at least an attempt at discretion.

Charles took a deep breath while fitting his key in the lock. He would only have six seconds to disable the burglar alarm, all the time that Mallory’s programming would allow him, and he was not likely to forget that – ever. The deafening siren had once jangled his brain and entirely cured his absentmindedness.

But the door was not locked.

Well, this was not a promising start to any day, not in New York City. Only two other people had keys: his cleaning woman, Mrs. Ortega, never came this early, and his business partner never came this late. He glanced at his wristwatch. Right about now, Mallory would be entering the SoHo police station, her only legally sanctioned workplace.

He pushed open the door and found that the reception area was in good order, and nothing appeared to be missing. The antique furniture in this room was costly, but burglars would probably prefer more portable items – like Mallory’s wildly expensive electronics.

He walked down a narrow hallway to the back rooms, moving at the leisurely pace of a man who is heavily insured. Mallory’s private office was dimly lit by the glow of a computer projection on a large pull-down screen. He stared at the wall-size portrait of a redheaded child standing nine feet tall. A smaller scale of this same picture appeared on three computer monitors, but for some reason, the detective felt the need to see this little girl blown up. So absorbed was Mallory that she had not noticed him yet.

Charles watched one painted image blend into another. In this new portrait, the red-haired girl wore the uniform of a private school, and she posed with her legs draped over the upholstered arms of a chair. Just a trace of white underpants was showing. Computer clicks and whirs announced the next painting, and this one was memorable. This was the jewel of the Quentin Winter collection, the only major work of art by an otherwise minor painter. This was the artist’s child, and she was naked. There was only a gentle swelling where breasts would be one day. More paintings clicked by in quick succession, and he felt like a voyeur watching Nedda Winter go through all the stages of her prepubescent life, nine feet tall on Mallory’s wall, a young giant.

„Do you see what I see?“ asked Mallory, without turning around.

So much for being able to walk up behind her unnoticed. After the next click, Mallory was once again bathed in the light of the famous Red Winter painting. He well understood her question. „Well, the artist wouldn’t be the first to paint his own child
au nature!.“

„That bastard singled her out,“ said Mallory. „Nedda was one of nine kids. He painted a lot of nude women, but she was the only child.“

„You believe he molested his daughter based on nothing more than a painting?“

„I’m ninety percent sure.“

Charles did not care for the sound of that. He would prefer not to go to certain corners of Mallory’s early life, undoubtedly the source of her expertise. Turning to face the projection on the wall, he recalled a wallet photo that his old friend Louis Markowitz had carried, a small portrait of his foster child. At the age of the young girl on the wall, Kathy Mallory had possessed those same wary eyes. Her early days on the streets had been hard and hardening. Nedda Winter, however, had been a child of wealth and luxury. Not at all the same case, and this might argue for a troubled home life in Winter House.

And molestation?

His mind now poisoned, he had to wonder, against his will, if the title word
red
denoted the color of young Nedda’s hair or her rape.

Mallory switched on the overhead fluorescent tubes, and the room became entirely too bright. Light bounced off glass monitors, gleaming metal furnishings and electronic components. The carpet was an institutional gray, no doubt selected to disguise the wood floors as cement. She crossed the room, heading toward the steel blinds that hid the graceful lines of arched windows. Her computers were dead for the moment. When they were powered up, they hummed in communication with one another, and she with them. When the machines were alive, the psychological temperature of her private office was always ten degrees below a normal person’s comfort zone.

The viewing screen was raised with the press of a remote-control button and sent rolling back up into its metal cylinder near the ceiling molding. A cork bulletin board that spanned the entire wall was now exposed with all its papers pinned up at perfect right angles, and each sheet was equidistant from the next. Mallory’s pushpin style had machine precision.

If her lovely face was incongruous in these environs, what lay beneath was not. And what truly moved him, what touched him most, was that she could have no idea that this room exposed her personal quirks, her own clicks and whirs, all the most chilling departures from her fellow creatures. This office was Mallory naked for all to see – so vulnerable.

And what did she see when she looked at him? Was it something sad and pathetic? Or was he comical in her eyes?

They could never tell one another the truth. They were friends.

„All right,“ said Mallory. „Let’s say Quentin Winter molested his daughter. Could you make a case for the girl as a spree killer?“

„What? Nedda? I was under the impression that an outsider killed all those people.“

„An ice pick killed them,“ she said. „And that dead burglar the other night? He wasn’t killed with the shears. It was a pick to the heart, same as all the victims in the massacre.“

„I see the problem.“ He sat down at the edge of Mallory’s desk. „Back in the forties, did anyone suspect the child?“

„No, but
I
might.“

Ah, but then Mallory suspected
everyone
of
something.

„So I gather,“ said Charles, „that the father had multiple stab wounds?“

„No. It was a single strike to the heart, all nine victims.“

Here he might point out that this indicated no rage, zero animosity, but Mallory had not asked him to point out flaws in her logic. And now he had to wonder if she was putting herself in Nedda Winter’s place. Perhaps this was the way Mallory would have done it – as a child – in cold blood, efficient and quick.

„Revenge,“ he said, mulling over this idea. „So she kills her father for molestation, and then she does in the witnesses – all those people? Nedda was what, twelve years old?“

„Very tall for twelve.“ Mallory powered up the computer to display the
Red Winter
painting, and there was the evidence in the child’s proportions relative to her surroundings. „And after the massacre, this girl didn’t wait around for the cops.“

„I thought the newspapers ran with the theory of a psychotic killer and a kidnapping.“

„So did the cops,“ said Mallory. „What of it? It’s my case now. This killer was cold and precise. You can’t see it, can you? A very cold little girl working her way through the house, stabbing all those people.“

He could, but it was a smaller version of Mallory, and he would be a long time getting that picture out of his head.

She blanked the screen. „The only other option is a professional hitman with a money motive. Nothing personal, just a neat quick job. But there’s a hole in that theory.“

„All right, I see the stumbling block.“ And this time he found no fault in her logic. „If the children are the only ones who profit from the trust fund, then who paid for the – “

„No, that’s not it. I could work around that.“

„All right.“ A moment to regroup, thank you. „Professional killers don’t usually kidnap children.“

„They never do.“ She inclined her head, prompting him to continue.

„And it’s probably quite alarming to have one turn up in a house full of people.“ So far so good, no stumbles yet. „Whereas, a member of the family could move through the house at leisure, taking victims by surprise without alerting the entire household.“

She nodded to say,
Now you ‘ve got it.

„Well, not to be argumentative.“ He held up his hands, even realizing that this was a defensive posture that said,
Don’t shoot me, all right? It’s only conjecture.
„Here’s another scenario. What if it
was
a professional assassin. And what if Nedda saw him in time to make a run for it?“ Charles knew he was making a mistake in offering his own theory, but he could not stop himself. „The killer would have to chase her down, wouldn’t he? Suppose he lost her outside, maybe in the park across the street? Then you’d have a little girl who thought she couldn’t go home again. Home was where the monster would be waiting for her. So the theory of a runaway child could – “

„It works for me.“ Riker stood in the open doorway, wearing a suit and tie of a different color; otherwise, it would not have been apparent that he had changed his clothes from yesterday. „Yeah. A runaway. Good work, Charles.“ The man smiled, and this was tantamount to squaring off against Mallory when he faced her and said, „I don’t think Nedda Winter killed all those people.“

Mallory’s arms folded across her breast in a warning sign that she was not happy with this division in the ranks.

Riker shrugged and lit a cigarette to say,
Well, that’s just tough.

And now she turned on innocent Charles, who had only offered the most –

„So,“ she said. „I’m guessing Nedda didn’t volunteer any details about where she’d been for the past fifty-eight years.“

„No,“ said Charles. „Sorry. I never thought to ask.“

„Did you get us anything,“ asked Riker, „anything at all?“

„Maybe,“ he said. „Breakfast, anyone?“

L
ong ago, Bitty’s room had belonged to Robert the Reader, eight years old with thick lenses in his spectacles that made his blue eyes larger, more tender. Each time Nedda Winter entered this bedroom, she saw her brother sprawled on the window seat, a book held by small dead hands, a tiny hole in his pajamas and a bit of blood from his young heart.

Nedda sat down at the edge of the bed and lifted a glass to Bitty’s lips. „Just drink it, dear. You don’t want to know what’s in it.“

Her niece obediently swallowed a mixture of raw egg, milk and steak sauce.

„My father favored that hangover remedy,“ said Nedda.

„Was he a drunk?“

„Well, yes, dear, but, in those days, who wasn’t?“ She took the emptied glass and set it on the bedside table. „And he only drank after three o’clock. He had rules.“

„Was my grandfather a violent man?“

Ah, back to the theory of Edwina Winter’s murder. „No. The only thing that aroused any passion in him was a fight with my stepmother. Sometimes Lionel got a light swat on his backside. He was always getting in between his parents, trying to protect his mother. Not that she needed any help. She always had something heavy in her hand whenever she went after my father.“

„I can’t imagine Uncle Lionel as a boy.“

„I think you would’ve liked him then. He was the only one of the children who ever stood up to my father. He was a brave one. I loved him for that.“

„Did you love your father?“

„Yes, but Lionel loved him more. Sometimes I think he took those hits just to get Daddy’s attention.“

Bitty pushed her covers aside, then, after a grimace of pain, thought better of moving so rashly. She lay back on her pillow. „What about the others? Do you remember Sally?“

„Of course. She was the baby of the family, a newborn. She cried a lot. That’s why the nursery was at the top of the house. And she wasn’t well. I remember a steady stream of doctors marching up the staircase to examine her.“

„What was my mother like?“

„She was only five when I – left. A very loving child. Big sunny smile. Poor little Cleo. She must’ve thought that I’d abandoned her. And I suppose I did.“

„Aunt Nedda, I’m so sorry about last night. That business about your mother – “ She turned her face into the pillow.

„It’s all right, Bitty. I told you, I never knew my own mother. Your murder theory didn’t upset me at all. I know my father didn’t kill her. His second wife, Alice, was a copy of Edwina. What does that tell you?“

„He loved her?“

„Madly. Once, before I was born, they were separated for a week. They wrote to each other every day. Their love letters are in her trunk up in the attic. You should read them. I know all the lines by heart.“

A small voice screamed, „What?“ It was Rags. The lame cockatiel had left its cage and now worked its way up the bedspread, climbing toward its mistress by beak and claw.

„Poor thing,“ said Nedda. „What happened to him? Why can’t he fly?“

„His wing was crushed by the window sash. It just fell on him. No, it
slammed on
him. I saw it happen. Mother said the house doesn’t like birds.“