Winter House

by Carol O’Connell

  A ghost story.

  Mallory’s hands balled into fists. She hated ghost stories.

  Nedda backed away from the staircase, then stopped – dead stop. What was that?

  The million fine hairs of her body were on the rise as she sorted out the noises of the house. A light slap on glass came from the garden, where a leafy branch licked the panes of the doors. Elsewhere, a clock was ticking. She turned around, looking across the front room to the foyer and the burglar alarm. There was no glowing light to assure her that the alarm was working. She rationalized this away. The new housekeeper had not set the alarm before going out, and that was common enough. They never stayed very long, and few of them had found the time or inclination to memorize the daily change of the code that disabled the alarm upon reentering the house.

  Was the door even locked?

  Another noise, a knock, then a thud, was followed by the sound of breaking glass.

  Nedda drifted across the room and down the hall toward the kitchen, the source of her fear. She could not stop herself, though her legs threatened to buckle and fail. She was like one of those elderly women on the hospital ward, driven by a compulsion she could not name, her limbs moving of their own accord.

  On the kitchen threshold now, eyes on the cellar door, fascinated and afraid, she was moving toward it. One hand trembled on the knob, and she opened the door to absolute silence, that moment between one footstep and the next, the still vacuum of holding one’s breath. And now she heard another noise. By the dim light filtering downstairs from the kitchen, she saw a mousetrap at the edge of the first step. She wanted so much to believe that it was a rodent down there, a big one with enough weight to make the sound of crunching glass underfoot. But she was not so gifted at delusional thinking.

  Nedda backed away from the door, keeping her eyes trained upon it as she reached out for the nearest drawer. This was where Bitty had found the old wooden ice pick the other night, the one used to satisfy the curiosity of Detective Riker. And now that pick was in Nedda’s hand.

  She backed out of the kitchen, never taking her eyes off the door until she turned and ran light-footed down the hall, heading for the staircase. Bitty’s room on the floor above had a good strong bolt on the door.

  Nedda gripped the banister, and stood there very still, one foot upon the stair. She shook her head. She could not hide; she could not take the chance. What if this intruder surprised the next innocent to come through the front door?

  Well, she would call the police.

  And say what?

  I hear noises in my house? My burglar alarm isn’t working?

  The night of the break-in, she could not remember having the luxury of time to question what she should do next. Nedda looked down at the ice pick in her hand.

  She could do it again.

  Riker stood on a chair to reach the box at the back of his closet. He hoisted it down and dropped it on the floor at Mallory’s feet. „I was just a kid then. Every night after dinner, they’d spread all this stuff on the kitchen table. Mom called our kitchen the murder room.“ He lifted the box and carried it to his own kitchen table. „The earliest cases date back to the eighteen-hundreds, but they all used Stick Man’s signature. They ended in the forties, the year of the massacre.“

  Somewhat mollified by Riker’s hasty disavowal of a ghost story, Mallory asked, „How many generations of hitmen?“

  „Three.“ He sat down at the table and opened the box. „The first one was a crazy little bastard in Hell’s Kitchen. He worked for the Irish gangs. Started when he was only thirteen. Back in those days, they called him Pick. What really spooked the locals was the daylight killing. He ‘d walk up to a guy on the street at high noon and just do him on the spot.“

  „Too crazy to worry about witnesses.“

  „Right. And who wants to make an enemy of the neighborhood nutcase? So everybody knew who he was, even the local beat cop, and nobody talked.“

  Riker pulled out a handful of yellowed papers and photographs, diagrams and scraps of paper with notes in faded ink. He tapped a picture cut from an ancient newspaper and preserved in laminate. „This is his mother. Smart lady. She was the broker for all his jobs. And – surprise – she read tarot cards. That was her front for the murder contracts, and she never did one day in prison. Well, her son was nuts, and I mean a real standout kind of crazy. But the mother paid off the cops when they started asking questions. Then one day, there’s a new commission to investigate police corruption, so the cops run out and pick up her son just for show. That closes a few dozen homicides in an afternoon, and the department really shines in the morning paper.“ He grinned at Mallory. „Don’t you love this town?“

  „That’s when Pick died?“

  „The first time? No, not yet. After the arrest, he was committed to an asylum. And that’s where he hooks up with his replacement – an orderly named Jay Holly.“

  Riker had covered every inch of the table, laying out his files in stacks of a dozen folders, each one another death. „You won’t find this stuff in police reports or history books. Pinwitty’s research was pathetic next to Granddad’s.“ He found a mug shot from a New Orleans Police Department and handed it to Mallory. „That’s Jay Holly. He did a deal with the fortuneteller.“

  „Wait – she put out a contract on her – “

  „Her own son? Yeah. Her crazy son was too dangerous to keep alive. It was just a matter of time before his mother was tied to the murders.“ Riker shuffled through more papers, producing a list of assets: expensive homes and purchases beyond a fortuneteller’s means. „But the old lady didn’t wanna give up a good income. So she hired Jay Holly to kill her son in the asylum. Pick was smothered with a pillow.“ He pushed an old copy of the death certificate across the table.

  Mallory glanced at the date, then picked up a column cut from a yellowed newspaper. „And five days after that, there’s another ice-pick murder. All right, I get it. She pays Jay Holly to make her dead son look like an innocent man. Now the old lady’s in the clear, too.“

  „Yeah.“ Riker placed another file in front of her, another death. „And then – “

  „The next day, she’s back in business,“ said Mallory, „as the new hitman’s broker. But the cops don’t bother her anymore.“

  „My grandfather would’ve loved you, kid. Yeah, that’s the way he figured it. Jay and the old lady did real well, until she died – of a stroke. More likely it was murder. There was no autopsy. Granddad figured that must’ve been the first instance of the pick in the eardrum. Another fortuneteller took over the same storefront, and this one was young and good-looking. Then Jay Holly got caught in New Orleans. That’s where he hooked up with our guy in a holding cell.“

  „Humboldt.“

  „Yeah, but that wasn’t his real name.“ He handed her another sheet. „These are Humboldt’s aliases. He did time all over the South for fleecing women out of their savings. A real charmer. The last lady withdrew the charges. So Humboldt was about to get out of jail around the time Jay Holly was taken into custody.“

  „They share a cell – they do a deal.“

  „Yeah. So now Humboldt knows the style. The day he gets out of jail, there’s another ice-pick murder, same MO, and the cops release Jay Holly. Then Holly dies, but it’s not an ice-pick kill. Humboldt’s smarter than that. Jay Holly was found dead on a barroom floor. He’d been poisoned, and the cops had no leads on the man he was drinking with that night.“

  „Humboldt goes back to New York and uses the same fortuneteller for his broker.“

  „Right. And he keeps this one alive for a long time. She was an old woman before he murdered her in the police station.“

  „Twelve days after the murders at Winter House.“ Mallory drummed her fingernails on the table. „And your father keeps working on this?“

  „No, he stopped the night my grandfather died.“

  „You think he could help us?“

  „No, I could never ask Dad to do that. It�
�s a long story.“ Mallory’s face was a study in grim resignation.

  There was no need to touch the light switch for the cellar. From the top of the stairs, Nedda could see shards of broken glass clinging to the socket of the hanging bulb. The last time she had visited the cellar, it was to help one of the housekeepers replace a biown-out kitchen tuse, and then her own head had cleared that bulb by only a few inches. So the intruder must be a tall one, over six feet.

  The new housekeeper was also tall, but Nedda had no illusions about finding the woman down there on some innocent errand. However, this might explain why an intruder had dared to come in by the front door. He must have been watching the house. He would have seen them all leave and go their separate ways, perhaps mistaking the housekeeper for herself. And then, he must have heard approaching footsteps and fled for the cover of the basement.

  Nedda raised the pick high. And, because she was afraid, she gathered dead brothers and sisters around her. Mrs. Tully, an animated corpse of formidable girth, led the procession down the cellar stairs.

  Just like old times.

  The kitchen light petered out beyond the bottom step. There would be a flashlight on top of the fuse box to her left. But now she saw the bright rectangle of an open door on the other side of the basement. Whoever had broken into the house was long gone. Beyond the threshold, ten steps led up to the backyard and escape. A breeze called Nedda’s attention to a high window. Its heavy wood frame was propped open with a stick. This was how the intruder must have gained entrance. As she drew close to the window, dead brothers and sisters walked with her, lending comfort. All of them looked up to see a field mouse at the window, testing the cellar air, nose high, whiskers twitchy. Its small pink hands were almost human as it gripped the wooden sill. The tiny creature was half in, half out. And, though the wind had ceased and there was no visible agency to move the propping stick, the stick did fall. The slamming wood frame broke the back of the mouse. Its mouth opened wide and, in surprise, it died.

  Mrs. Tully laughed.

  Nedda, in concert with the children, moved back from the window. By the good light of the open door, this small audience of the dead and the living could see wet drops of blood on the steps leading up to the backyard.

  What had the house done to the intruder?

  „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 rilling 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 botde 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 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.“

&
nbsp; 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.