Winter House

by Carol O'Connell

  Riker had predicted that the man would rally quickly. According to police lore, lawyers were as resilient as cockroaches, and one who had been decapitated could litigate for up to three days.

  Mallory walked back to the door and closed it—slowly—smiling as she shut out all sound and sight of witnesses, and this little gesture was not lost on Sid Henry.

  “So, Sid, let me guess,” said Riker. “You’re just an associate, right? Not a partner in the firm? Naw, you’re too young. I’d bet even money those old geezers don’t know you took a fee to bail out that butcher.”

  “Maybe,” said Mallory, “you told them it was pro bono. All the money you made on that hearing didn’t go through the firm’s billing office.” At least, she had found no record of it while raiding the firm’s database. However, she had found a large deposit in the lawyer’s personal bank account.

  By Sid Henry’s silence, Riker knew they had the man cold for pocketing money that belonged to his firm, and now they owned him. Oh, and best of all, there would be no charge of police harassment at the end of the day—even if Mallory left marks on him.

  “You didn’t ask how your client died,” said Riker, not giving the lawyer any time to wonder how the police could access the firm’s billing office. “It wasn’t in the newspapers. Not on the tube, either. But you don’t seem surprised.”

  “I haven’t seen Willy since the bail hearing.” Sid Henry picked up the photograph of his late client and forced a smile as he handed it back to Mallory. “So he’s dead. Can I assume this is your work, Detective? Rather excessive use of force.”

  Mallory ignored the photo and let it hang in the air between them until the man’s arm got tired and he lost the idea that he could win a staring contest with her. She pulled out the pocket watch that had once belonged to the late Louis Markowitz. “You’ve got two minutes to clear yourself on a charge of murder for hire.” This little trick of time, the pressure of a ticking bomb, was another hand-me-down from her foster father. “If you can’t do that, then we get to parade you out of here in handcuffs.” She waited out the silence, her eyes cast down to the face of her watch. “One minute, fifty-five seconds.”

  Sid Henry’s voice cracked. “If you think you can—”

  “We wanna know who paid for that bail hearing.” Riker snatched the photograph from the lawyer’s hand. “And don’t give us any crap about attorney-client privilege. That won’t cover the bastard who hired you. We know Willy couldn’t afford fifteen minutes of your time. So who paid your fee?”

  “One minute, fifty seconds,” said Mallory.

  “You’ve got no right to—”

  “This is a warrant.” Riker waved a folded sheet of paper. It bore no judge’s signature, but it worked well as a prop. “The charge is attempted murder. Your client tried to kill another woman last night—a rich woman. Now the older lawyers, the guys with their names on the door of this outfit, maybe they even know her. All these rich people know each other, don’t they?” He turned to his partner. “Curious, Mallory? We could ask them on the way out.”

  She nodded, saying, “One minute, thirty seconds.”

  Riker pulled out his handcuffs, then tossed a Miranda card on the desk. “I think we can assume you know your legal rights. I’m guessing you plan to use the right to remain silent.”

  “One minute, fifteen seconds.”

  Riker grinned at her. “I think your watch is slow, kid. I say we just do him.”

  It happened very fast. She had reached the other side of the desk before the lawyer knew she was after him. Now he was half risen from the chair and pulled forward by her hand dragging his necktie—no visible bruising that way. He was quickly bent over the desk, face pressed to the blotter, as she worked his arms behind his back.

  Riker threw her the handcuffs, and, while she did the honors, he stood back and smiled, wanting always to remember this special moment—Sid Henry bending over and exposing his ass to all comers.

  Evidently, the lawyer saw his own posture as a portent of things to come in lockup. “I don’t know who hired me!” he yelled.

  No—call it a squeal.

  “That’s not what we wanted to hear,” said Mallory.

  “I couldn’t tell you if I wanted to!” And now, his words came out all in a rush. “It was a cash payment—anonymous. Ask my secretary. She opened the first package. There were two installments, one before the bail hearing and one afterward.”

  “And you gave the secretary a cut to keep her quiet, right?” Riker pocketed the warrant, producing instant relief in the attorney’s eyes. “Okay, I don’t think we have to pursue this—if your story holds up.” He took one last look at the man bent over his desk, then turned to his partner. “Can we take a picture of this before you uncuff him?”

  No, he could see that Mallory was in a hurry to get on to the next interview. Well, one lawyer down and one to go. Their second target of the day was the attorney of record for the Winter family trust fund. He was also the father of Bitty Smyth.

  The reception hall of the Harvard Club had the hall-mark of wealth and power—wasted space on an obscene scale. The high ceiling was close to God and deceased alumni.

  It was rare for Charles Butler to set foot in this place. As a child prodigy, he had not made many friends among his older classmates. Today’s luncheon was at the invitation of Sheldon Smyth, scion of the oldest and most venerable law firm in New York City. Smyth had mentioned that his son, Paul, would also be dining with them. The old man harbored the delusion that Charles and Paul had been great friends at school.

  Untrue.

  Paul Smyth had been shoehorned into Harvard as the son of a wealthy alumnus, while Charles had been a sought-after child, the center of a bidding war among the finest schools on the Eastern Seaboard. There had been only one occasion when he and Paul had met on campus—in passing. At eighteen, Charles had been on his way out, one semester away from submitting a Ph.D. dissertation, and Paul had just arrived as an incoming fresh-man. No thought had been given to this—schoolmate—in decades. However, last night, the birthday party photographs in Bitty Smyth’s bedroom had raised old grudges dating back to the sandbox.

  The main dining room, a grand oak-paneled affair, was lined with the portraits of patrons immortalized in gigantic oil paintings, their names and deeds long forgotten. However, the club’s famed cheese dip was memorable.

  He crossed the room behind a waiter. If not for this escort, he would never have chosen the right table, for his old enemy was so altered by time. Paul Smyth’s hair had thinned, his belly had expanded, and his chin had tripled. But Charles was recognized at once, so little changed was he, with a full head of hair and only the one chin. So it was a balanced universe after all. Paul stood up to shake hands with him.

  In peripheral vision, Paul’s father was a thatch of silver hair with thick black eyebrows. Now the older man rose from his chair to match Charles’s stature of six-four. Sheldon Smyth extended one hand across the table to greet his luncheon guest. The old man’s eyes were the magic mirrors that every narcissist prayed for, clear blue reflections of the egoist coda, saying to the beholder: My God, I think you’re wonderful! Aloud he said, “So good of you to come, such short notice and all.”

  Charles was stunned, but not seduced. “How do you do, sir?”

  By Sheldon Smyth’s manner and smile, the other diners might believe that they were close friends who met for lunch every day. When the three men were seated with menus in hand, the elder Smyth said, “I understand the police got you out of bed last night. My ex-wife called this morning. You remember her of course. Cleo Winter-Smyth?”

  “No,” said Charles. “We’ve never met.” For that matter, he could not recall having met Paul’s father either. At those gatherings where children were forcibly pitted against one another, Paul had always been accompanied by a nanny.

  “But you did meet her once,” said Paul, “for about six seconds when you were ten. She dropped off me and my sister at your birthday p
arty. Bitty wasn’t invited, of course, but she badgered Dad, and I had to take her.”

  Sheldon Smyth cleared his throat to announce that this minor slander did not sit well with him. “Bitty is the only child by my first marriage to Cleo.”

  Charles nodded in a show of polite interest. “I see the family resemblance.”

  “Bitty’s adopted,” said Paul.

  This was a surprise, for the woman had features in common with her father, the shape of his large eyes, if not their color, the same chin and mouth. Paul, on the other hand, bore no—

  “She’s family,” said Sheldon Smyth, all but daring his son to say one more word. With a friendlier expression, he turned all of his attention on Charles. “Cleo and I adopted Bitty when my cousin died in childbirth. Now tell me, why should the police bother you about a lot of photographs?”

  “I believe they’re required to notify me of a potential stalker.”

  “But you set them straight, of course, told them she was a family connection.”

  This was news to Charles, who had no surviving relatives. He politely smiled and waited for some explanation.

  “Your mother’s second cousin, Charles. His half brother was a Smyth. No blood relation perhaps, but there you are,” he said. “Family.” The old lawyer allowed this word to hang alone, punctuated with respectful silence to increase its import.

  Charles was not surprised. He had long been a believer in the six degrees of separation: the theory that everyone on the planet was somehow connected to everyone else by a sequence of relationships. However, the Smyths had taken it to an elitist extreme, marrying into every major fortune in New York State.

  “So you’ve got a stalker,” said Paul, not quite understanding that word as the one his father most wanted to defuse. He failed to catch the old man’s eye and that look of disappointment in an idiot son. “Just like a rock star.” Grinning, Paul punched Charles on the arm, instantly calling up the days when a child-size Paul had fired sniper shots with closed fists, jabbing and bruising on the run, then finishing off his prey by killing him with words that had an even stronger punch and power. Charles had died each time they met.

  But not today.

  Sheldon Smyth had finally managed to capture his son’s attention. The old man narrowed his eyes in an ocular thump on the head, a warning not to punch their guest one more time. Glancing at his watch, he said, “Paul, don’t let us detain you any longer.” As he reached out for a roll and a butter knife, his face said the rest: Go, or be impaled on the silverware.

  And now, Charles quite liked the old man.

  When Paul had excused himself from the table and the waiter had departed with their menus and lunch orders, Sheldon Smyth leaned forward, voice lowered. “So, my boy, Cleo said the house was full of police—standing room only. Why all this fuss over a burglar?”

  “Well, he was a dead burglar. You didn’t know?”

  “No, my ex-wife neglected to mention a corpse. So typical of Cleo,” he said, as if dead bodies lying about the house were an everyday nuisance. “I think she was more concerned that you might cause problems for Bitty. When I called my office this morning, I was told that the police had paid a visit. Well, naturally . . . I wondered if you’d pressed charges against my daughter.”

  “No, sir, it never occurred to me.”

  “Good man.”

  Salads arrived during the ensuing silence. Then Charles further reassured Bitty’s father, saying, “I had a long talk with Bitty last night. I’m satisfied that she isn’t the least bit dangerous.”

  “Quite right. No more than a simple schoolgirl crush. I’m sure you found it quite charming.”

  Charles understood this from his host’s perspective. Quite comical, really. A man like himself, one with the attributes of an eagle beak and bullfrog eyes, would have so few choices; how could he fail to be flattered by the fixation of a neurotic elf?

  Between one course and another, he learned that the Smyth firm had served the Winter family for more than a hundred years. The old man’s eyes were always fixed upon Charles, as if he regarded his guest as the most important personage on the planet. It was an illusion from a lawyer’s bag of tricks to win over juries and stalking victims alike, but Smyth had perfected it to a fine art, and Charles felt that his immunity to flattery was slipping.

  Meanwhile, heads were turning at all the other tables. Mallory had arrived to work her usual effect upon a room. No one thought to stop her forward momentum across the wide floor. She was so obviously one of the power people in this gathering. What waiter would risk being trampled? There were nods of approval all around. Yes, the patrons assured one another, she was one of them, though so few of them carried guns to lunch. Hers was exposed—quite deliberately, Charles thought—as she swept the blazer to one side and reached into a rear pocket of her jeans, where she kept her gold shield.

  Only now did Smyth realize that his table had become a spectacle. He looked up to see the young homicide detective standing beside his chair. She was no longer displaying the gun, but only discreetly holding out her badge.

  Mallory gave Charles a curt nod. “Hello, Dr. Butler,” she said, employing a title he never used, though his credentials entitled him to do so. And with this pointed formality, she wiped away their friendship, their business partnership and the years that they had known one another. They were merely recent acquaintances—that was her message to him. And now, after forcing Sheldon Smyth to wait out this little farce, she turned her eyes on him. “Your office told me I could find you here.”

  “Really,” he said. With those two syllables, Smyth managed to convey that some minion would be parted with his head just the moment he returned to his office.

  Hardly inclined to wait on an invitation, Mallory pulled up a chair at the table. As if she did not already have Smyth’s complete attention, she asked, “Can you think of any reason why someone would want your daughter dead?”

  Smyth stared at her, then shook his head and kept his silence, perhaps adhering to a lawyer’s code to ask no question to which he did not already have the answer. And then, of course, he could not have been more stunned if she had pistol-whipped him.

  Mallory seemed to like that reaction. She liked it a lot. “Money motives work for me. Who inherits if your daughter dies?”

  The words were slow to come. “No one,” said Smyth. “I drew up her will myself. Her estate goes to the Legal Aid Society.”

  “I know there’s a family trust fund.” Mallory’s tone implied that she had caught the old man in a lie.

  “My daughter has no stake in that. The only beneficiaries are her mother and her uncle.”

  “And Nedda Winter?”

  The old man nodded.

  “Tell me why your daughter doesn’t benefit from the trust fund.”

  It took a moment for Sheldon Smyth to adjust to the fact that he was not in control of this interview. He graced her with a radiant smile—an experiment that immediately failed. She had a natural immunity to charisma, and this seemed to irritate him. The old man made a great show of looking at his wristwatch, and he would not meet her eyes when he spoke. “I can’t discuss the trust fund with you.” He addressed the empty chair on the other side of the table. “It’s privileged information. I can tell you that Bitty doesn’t need to draw on the trust. I provide her with a generous allowance.”

  “That’s not what I asked.” Mallory leaned forward and raised her voice, as if the old man might be hard of hearing. “So, apart from you, her only source of income is her law practice?”

  Charles sat up a bit straighter. “Bitty? A lawyer?”

  “Yes, my daughter was top of her class at Columbia.” The old man misunderstood Charles’s startled expression. “Of course, I wanted her to go to Harvard, but she preferred to stay close to home.”

  Mallory called Smyth’s attention back to herself. “Where does your daughter practice law, and what’s her area of expertise?”

  “She used to work for my firm, but n
ow she’s on sabbatical. She’s always concentrated on contract law.”

  “Would that include trust-fund busting?”

  “You can’t mean the Winter family trust.” Smyth was incredulous. “What would be the point if she didn’t—”

  “I need copies of all the documents for that trust fund,” said the detective. “I want them today.”

  “Got a warrant, Detective?” Smyth seemed suddenly cheered by Mallory’s prolonged quiet. “No,” he said, “I didn’t think so.”

  “You’re the executor,” said Mallory. “You can give me any—”

  “That trust fund has a long history. The documents—every bill and receipt and canceled check, paperwork for decades of transactions—it fills a good-size storage room.” He leaned toward her with new confidence. “It would take a small army to copy all that paperwork, and the originals will never leave my firm.”

  “Did I mention that I was trying to keep your daughter alive?”

  “And were you listening when I said there was no motive for anyone to harm her?”

  “It’s my job to decide that,” said Mallory. “You’re only a lawyer. I’m the law.”

  Sheldon Smyth inclined his head and smiled, perhaps in agreement with this distinction, but more likely in approval, a sudden change in his opinion of this young adversary. “Detective Mallory, I can give you the basic structure of the trust. Cleo Winter-Smyth and her brother are entitled to a monthly draw.”

  “And Nedda,” said Mallory, reminding him once more of this woman’s existence. “She could also be a target. So if she dies—”

  “It doesn’t change the amount of the draw. You should also know that the trust fund is entailed to charity. The payouts end with Lionel and Cleo’s generation.”

  “And Nedda,” said Mallory. “You keep forgetting her.”

  Sheldon Smyth dropped his smile and laid his napkin on the table. “I think we’re done here, Detective. Talk to my secretary if you need more information. She’ll schedule an appointment.” And now, because he must sense that she did not take direction very well, he added, “I’m afraid we’re boring poor Charles with all of this.”