The doctor ignored this. „Charles, did you know that Nedda’s father saw the shoot-out between the cops and Two-Gun Crowly on West Ninetieth Street?“
„My father and thousands of other West Siders,“ said Nedda. „My grandfather was with him that day. He said the shoot-out went on for three hours. When Two-Gun Crowly gave up the fight, he still had a pistol stuffed in each sock.“
Rabbi Kaplan picked up the deck and dealt out the cards. „My father only took me to baseball games. I had no idea the Upper West Side could be so exciting.“
Nedda, Charles, Edward and Robin fell silent.
„What if the massacre started at the top of Winter House?“
„That’s not the way the cops figured it at the time.“ Riker stepped back from the cork wall to take in the reconstruction of his grandfather’s work. „But I think they got a lot of things wrong.“
He added more pages from the old man’s files. „Check this out. Granddad made these notes in an interview with the lead detective. This was right before Fitzgerald died of cancer. Now this was maybe ten, fifteen years after the murders. It helps if you know that Fitzgerald ruled out murder for hire. The lawyers told him that the uncle knew the terms of Edwina’s will twelve years before the massacre. James Winter always knew that he could never inherit. Well, that killed the only money motive. If there’s no adult who stands to gain, then who hired the hitman? That’s why the cops settled for a lunatic on a killing spree. Fitzgerald figured it this way. Stick Man starts on the first floor and works his way up. Then he runs out of steam when he gets to the nursery. Or maybe something scares him off before he can finish the job and kill the baby.“
„But your grandfather always figured it was a pro. Why?“
„Fitzgerald’s theory hung on what the lawyers said. They’re the ones who killed the money motive. But Granddad never trusted lawyers.“
„Nine people. That’s a lot of killing, a lot of risk. Maybe Stick Man wasn’t working alone. Three generations of hitmen. What if there was a fourth – an up-and-comer?“
„A fledgling killer?“
Most of the poker chips were in neat stacks in front of Nedda Winter. „This is so embarrassing.“
Her comment was met with a chorus of encouragement. The other players had been so eager to teach her the game that they had helped her to beat them at every hand. Eventually she did manage to lose all the money back to them, but she had to fight them for the privilege.
The telephone rang, and Nedda glanced at her watch. „I’ll get it. I’m sure it’s forme.“
Four gentlemen rose to their feet as she left the room.
David Kaplan turned to Charles. „She’s a charming woman. How did you meet?“
Charles made a slight stumble in his mind. So many confidences to keep. „She sat next to me at a dinner party.“ That was the truth, was it not? Well, no. And now, he could feel the heat rising to his face, and how would the rabbi read this sudden blush?
David Kaplan’s head tilted to one side. He must find it odd and disconcerting to catch a friend in a lie. His beard framed a sweet smile, and his eyes were both forgiving and more, telling his host that he could only believe the best of him. David, the master of cryptic logic, had apparently deduced that honor must lie in the direction of falsehood – and the new player was not what she seemed.
Nedda returned to the table, saying with regret, „I have a hired car waiting for me downstairs. I’ll have to say good night. And thank you all. This was the most fun I’ve had in years.“
„Send the car away,“ said Charles, rising from his chair. „I’ll take you home.“
„No, no. You stay right where you are. I’ll be fine. We always use this driver. My niece has a car service.“
„Then I can at least walk you down to the street. I insist.“
When the apartment door had closed behind them, Charles said, „Maybe it’s unwise right now. I mean – hashing this out with your brother and sister. After what you’ve been through in the past few days – “
„I should’ve done this the day I came home. Don’t worry about me.“
Charles opened the door to the waiting car and handed Nedda into the backseat. And then he gave her a set of his house keys. „Promise you’ll come back tonight – no matter how late.“
He watched the taillights of the car disappear as it rounded the corner onto Houston, then turned back to see Mallory in shadow, leaning against the wall of the building.
„This is getting out of hand, Charles. Suppose you gave your house keys to a mass murderer?“
„You don’t expect me to believe that,“ he said. „You don’t.“
„I know she’s killed before.“
„Self-defense,“ he said. „And that man was a serial killer.“
„Nedda didn’t know that. And he wasn’t holding a weapon when he died. Could you stab an unarmed man in the heart? Could you even imagine it? I don’t think you could ever kill another human being. You’re just not made that way.“ She followed him inside the building, close on his heels, saying, „What’s Nedda made of? Don’t you wonder? Imagine her sticking that ice pick into a man’s chest. She ‘d have to be fast – no hesitation, one clean strike. No fear.“
„That’s enough.“ He walked past the elevator and opened the door to the stairwell.
„And she did it in the dark.“ Mallory climbed the stairs behind him, chasing words with pictures she planted in his head. „He never saw her coming for him.“ She followed him through the stairwell door and down the hall to his apartment. „And what about that man in the park last night? What if she’d killed him, too? Would we still be talking about self-defense?“ They stopped outside his door, but the poisoning went on relentlessly. „When we found her in the park, she had an ice pick in her pocket. Remember that, Charles.“
How could he forget – ever?
„Nedda will always be welcome in my house.“
Mallory looked as if he had struck her. „And I’m not. I’m just annoying you.“
Oh, no, on the contrary. He could never encounter Mallory without feeling a sudden lightness of the head, a fullness of the heart and a gang of birds fluttering inside his rib cage. He reached out to touch her, but his hand dropped back to his side. Never did they truly connect, and they never would, for his nature had made him incapable of two things for a certainty: he could never kill a human being, and he could not tell this woman that he would love her until he died.
How sad was that?
The door to his apartment opened.
„Finally!“ A grinning Robin Duffy took Mallory by the arm and pulled her inside. „Edward’s winning streak is back. You have to stop him, Kathy. He’s murdering us.“
Lying on the floor, her head pressed to the wood, Bitty awakened to a shrill sound from the telephone receiver, an alarm to remind her that the phone was off the hook. Rags was running about in circles, shrieking to hold up his end of the conversation with this mechanical noise.
Bitty struggled to raise herself up to a sitting position, then cracked the bedroom door to listen for the sound of Aunt Nedda’s voice, but she was not there, not home yet. The other voices were growing more distant, fading off to another room with a door they could close for privacy.
Aunt Nedda, where are you?
Any more delay could cost dearly. If she closed her eyes one more time, she might never wake again.
Robin Duffy had found the only flaw in Mallory’s gift, a hole in one of the struts that branched out from the table’s pedestal. It had been drilled by the previous owner, a ship’s captain, so he could run a chain through the wood and secure the table in rough weather.
However, given the original owner, a renowned gangster, Robin had hopes of a more exciting explanation. His eyes were wide with great expectation. „Is that a bullet hole?“
„Yes,“ said Mallory, „that’s exactly what it is.“ She dealt the cards out all around. „And away we go. The name of the game is five card stud. No wild cards. No
nickels and dimes in the pot. Sky’s the limit. This is not your grandmother’s poker game.“
Four men mentally fastened their seat belts.
She had to smile at Charles. He was looking down at the best hand he had ever held, and she knew he was pondering a problem of ethics, one he could not solve. If his cards had been dealt from the bottom of the deck, a little gift from herself, it would not be right to play the hand, and he should fold. What a gentleman.
It was too easy for her to read his thoughts.
Now he was worried. Since she knew he held a world-class hand, if he folded his cards instead of playing them, it would be like accusing her of cheating. Oh, but if he won and had to show his hand, then everyone would know she had cheated. The hand was that good.
She should know.
Kathy Mallory was not only a master of palming cards; she could also tie a fair Gordian knot. This one had been designed with no possibility of an honest resolution. He would have to settle for the least damage – just as she did every day.
Charles played the hand he was dealt. She knew he would. Fortunately for him, he could never run a bluff. The other players read victory all over his giveaway face and they folded. No one called him on his hand and asked to see his cards. Of course, she had predicted that outcome – just as he had. His winning pot was small, but so was his guilt.
Mallory fell a bit short of tradition by not taking all of the medical examiner’s money within half an hour of play. She had left him a short stack, and Edward Slope eyed his dwindled chips with ill-disguised dismay. She folded her own cards, and that seemed to give him a glimmer of hope. The doctor won this hand, but that was pure mercy on her part.
„I’ve got a problem,“ she said, addressing the doctor. „How does a man move through a mansion, killing floor by floor, stabbing nine people with an ice pick, and there’s not one scream to give him away?“
While Edward Slope was pondering this, Mallory watched the rabbi. David Kaplan had that look of trying to recall an elusive dream. The nightmare of the Winter House Massacre? And now he let it go and looked down at his cards. This settled her mind on the problem of the other players keeping her confidences.
The doctor sipped his beer, then leaned back in his chair. „If the murderer had chased his victims through the house, there would ‘ve been lots of noise. So, obviously, it didn’t happen that way. More than likely, the victims weren’t expecting to be stabbed.“
Like Nedda’s dead burglar. Are you listening, Charles?
Edward Slope studied the hand she had dealt him. „The first reaction would be stunned surprise. The heart is shredded, blood draining. Shock sets in. I’ll take two cards.“
She dealt them out, and they were good ones.
Happier now, the doctor continued. „Next, the sensation of cold is followed by sudden weakness throughout the body, then loss of consciousness. A quiet death.“
Charles would be wondering if Nedda’s burglar had died quietly. And now he must realize that she had never needed to ask these questions of the doctor. Who knew more about violent death than she did? Yes, at last, he understood that she was maligning Nedda Winter for his own sake.
Their eyes met across the table. Almost imperceptibly, he moved his head from side to side to tell her that this was not working.
The rabbi folded his cards, saying, „I’m out.“ He then went off to the kitchen in search of another cold beer.
Mallory leaned toward the medical examiner, saying, „So the hitman wasn’t a stranger to that family.“
„And that narrows it down,“ said Charles, „to a hundred gangland types who attended parties at Winter House.“
„Yeah,“ said Robin. „Nedda told us that Lucky Luciano came to dinner one night. Can you imagine that? But you can cross that bum off the list. His murders were messy.“
Mallory was thinking about a little boy, just four years old, and his drawing of a stick figure. She pictured a bit of blood and one tiny hole where the ice pick had pierced the paper and a child’s heart in one strike. There was only one scenario. In the moment before his death, the boy had been holding up that drawing, showing it to someone he knew, maybe someone he loved, saying a child’s ritual line, „Look what I did.“
The front windows were dark as Nedda climbed the stairs to the front door of Winter House.
Her hopes died.
Lionel and Cleo had no doubt bolted for the summer house in the Hamptons. There would be no family gathering, no reconciliation tonight.
She unlocked the door and opened it onto a dark foyer, calling out, „Bitty? Are you home?“
Upon crossing the threshold, she saw a dim light coming from the hallway that led to the kitchen, but the front room was pitch black. She was turning round with the intention of finding the wall switch for the chandelier when she heard the sound of footsteps rushing up behind her.
She could hear the voice of Uncle James coming from a long ways off and many years ago, yelling, „Nedda, drop the ice pick! Drop it now!“
Chapter 9
THE FRONT ROOM FLOODED WITH LIGHT FROM THE Chandelier. Lionel ran past her to the front door. Nedda had forgotten to turn off the alarm. She murmured apologies to her brother as he madly tapped the button pad on the foyer wall, entering the code that would prevent it from going off.
Crisis over.
And now that they were spared another visit from the NYPD, he said, „Neddy, we couldn’t reach Dr. Butler. We thought you might’ve gone back to the police station – possibly under arrest. We couldn’t get anything out of Bitty.“
Arrest? For which of her crimes? Did he mean the stabbing death of a man in this same room or the other man she had planned to kill in the park? Or was her brother alluding to the mass murder of their family members?
She turned to the sound of more footsteps. Cleo entered the front room, followed closely by her ex-husband. Sheldon was no doubt here by design; her brother and sister had no wish to be alone with her tonight. She was wondering where her niece might be hiding when a weak voice called down from the staircase, „Here. Up here.“
Four heads were turning, lifting to the sight of Bitty dragging herself to the edge of the stairs. In a childish gesture, one small hand raised slowly, as if to wave bye bye, and then she laid her head down on the floor and closed her eyes. Nedda was the first to reach her. None of them could wake her.
Charles was holding a rather mediocre hand of cards when he answered the knock at his door. His unexpected visitor was a stout woman from a more Luddite-friendly century. An old-fashioned carpetbag sat on the floor at her feet.
O pioneer.
She had the well-muscled arms of a woman who labored hard for her living, and the iron gray hair was bound in braids. Her walking shoes were sturdy, and the blue dress had great integrity, so plain and serviceable. He half expected her to produce a pitchfork or some other farm implement. She stared him down with great sensible brown eyes, then extended a hand to greet him, albeit somewhat reluctantly. The calluses on her palms fitted so well with the social slot he had created for her.
Later, he would learn that the hobby of her retirement years was rock climbing, hence the good muscle tone and calluses; that she hailed from a large city in the state of Maine, so much for the farm life; that she held advanced degrees in library science and was a denizen of cyberspace.
„Susan McReedy,“ she began, not one for unnecessary pronouns and verbs of introduction. „I don’t take you for a sneak, Mr. Butler, and I’ll tell you why. When I asked you blunt questions on the phone, you didn’t lie to me. You wouldn’t tell me the truth, Lord knows, but you wouldn’t lie. And I suspect that goes against the grain with you. So tell me straight out. Is she still alive?“
After escorting their new interview subject into Charles Butler’s private office, Riker sat down in an armchair beside the librarian from Maine.
Mallory regretted agreeing to second chair in this interview. Out in the hallway, her partner had argued that little old ladie
s were his forte, that they loved him on sight. This might well be true, but Susan McReedy was not little, nor did she look all that old, and she could probably take Riker down in two falls out of three.
Riker began with small talk and offers of coffee or tea. The woman from Maine tapped one shoe, barely tolerating this waste of her time. Off his game today, he had missed the other signs of her fidgeting fingers and lips pressed tight. He compounded his error by pausing a beat too long to allow her the full impact of his widest smile. Miss McReedy did not respond in kind. Her mouth dipped down on one side, and now both shoes tapped the floor with irritation. This baffled him. He must wonder what foot he had put wrong.
So obvious.
„You’re sure I can’t get you a cup of coffee?“
The woman only glared at him, finding him suspicious because of his engaging grin – too quick and easy, too professionally charming.
Mallory had a cure for excess charm.
She rose from the couch and moved into that narrow area between their chairs, too close to allow this woman any personal space – and closer. She put her hands on the arms of Miss McReedy’s chair and bent low until their eyes were level. Closer. „So your father was a cop? Was he a lousy cop? Didn’t he raise you right?“ Every inflection dropped out of her tone, and each word had equal weight when she said, „I – am – the – law. I don’t have time to mess with you. Start talking.“
Though Susan McReedy never twitched or blinked, she did smile in approval. „You want the whole story, or just the salient points?“
Riker stood up, conceding his chair to the new champion of senior-citizen interviews, and Mallory sat down, saying, „I want everything you’ve got on the red-haired girl. Don’t leave anything out.“
„All right. The girl’s hair wasn’t red the first time I saw her. It was shoe-polish black – dyed and cut real short.“ Miss McReedy had lost her edge, almost mellowing as she described the night, fifty-eight years ago, when two local boys had seen the yellow stalks of headlights beaming up beyond the rim of a bottomless quarry pool. „The car was hung up on an outcrop of rocks twenty feet below the rim, just hanging there, smashed to bits, all turned around and ready to fall another fifty feet to the water. When Dad and the neighbors got to the lip of the quarry, it looked like it was going down any second. There were six flashlights altogether, all aiming straight down through a broken windshield, and they could see the girl plain as day. So much blood. The twisted metal pinned her down on the passenger side. It was a sheer drop between the edge of the rock face and that car.“
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