No intruder could hide in the dark of an old house. Every creak of a timber and each footfall on the stair was kettledrum and timpani; moments of silence were suspect and fraught with tension – waiting, waiting.
Nedda rose from her bed and walked to the window. Evidently, Officer Brill had not been impressed by the most recent break-in. There were no police cars parked out front. She held the opera glasses borrowed from her mother’s old trunk in the attic. Raising the lenses to her eyes, she looked out over the park, bringing leaves into sharp focus and searching for a sign of movement among the branches.
Her brother and sister had not returned. They had been absent for yet another break-in, and she wondered what the police would make of that coincidence.
Cleo and Lionel spent so much of their time at the summer house, and Nedda blamed herself for making the town house unbearable. Ritty had offered another theory: they simply liked to drive; it was nothing for them to make the round trip in a day, only spending a few hours in one place or the other. Her niece believed that they used the summer house as an excuse, needing some destination for their drives, else they would drive in circles. The pair had longtime acquaintances, but no real friends to visit in the Hamptons.
But they had each other. And what of Bitty? She had no one but a lame cockatiel.
Nedda refocused the opera glasses and strained to see a man in the mesh of leaves. No, there was no one there, but she imagined him behind each tree. The wind was rising, and the branches lost more of their cover with every gust.
Waiting, waiting, anticipating.
She closed the drape and lit the lamp. Next, she sat down at the writing desk and picked up her pen. Nedda meant to explain her actions to her family, or that was her intention, but she could think of no way to begin her letter. Instead, she wrote the same line, over and over, filling both sides of a paper, then reaching for another sheet. If things should go wrong tonight, this might be the most eloquent explanation she could leave behind. Or was it a confession of sorts? Pages covered with her handwriting drifted to the floor as the hour grew late. Over and over again, she wrote the same line: Cra^y people make sane people cra^y.
Rising from the desk, she switched off the lamp and returned to the window. There were no pedestrians in sight, and the traffic was light to nonexistent. She focused the opera glasses. There, a face moving behind the trees near the stone wall, that low barrier between the sidewalk and the park. Nedda looked back at the clock on her bedside table. Officer Brill would have gone off duty hours ago. What would she say if she called the police station?
I see a pale face in the woods?
No, they would not send anyone to search Central Park for suspicious persons, not on her account. They would write her off as a crazy old woman, and perhaps this was true. She watched the wood across the way and saw him more clearly now, but just the back of him moving deeper into the foliage.
Nedda disrobed to stand naked before her closet, moving hangers hunting for something night black. When she was dressed, she reached beneath her pillow to grab up the wooden handle of the ice pick. With great stealth she slipped down the hall to the stairs, finding her way in the dark, descending slowly, minding the steps that made noise. The alarm light was on in the foyer. She tapped in the number code to disarm it, then found the switch to turn off the light above the outside stairs.
Charles Butler returned home from a charity auction, his wallet lightened by a donation, but no purchases had been made aside from cocktails at the bar. None of the antique furniture had remotely resembled the gaming table of his dreams. And now he had less than a week to replace the one that had been destroyed. Before he could insert the key into the lock for his apartment, he saw the lighted glass of the door to Butler and Company.
Mallory? She liked the late hours.
He entered the reception area and saw a light at the end of the hallway, but it was his own office and not hers. Charles found his cleaning woman fast asleep and slumped over a book in her lap. Now that was odd. Oh, wait – not odd at all. She had been reading the book on Winter House, and that would put anyone to sleep.
He put one hand on her shoulder. „Mrs. Ortega?“ When her eyes opened, he said, „I’ve never known you to work so late.“ He glanced at his watch. „It’s after midnight.“
This took some convincing. She had to look first at his watch then her own. „I’ll be damned. I couldn’t clean your office this afternoon,“ she said. „I had to do an errand for Mallory. I didn’t think you’d mind if – “
„Oh, but I don’t mind. So what sort of errand did you do for Mallory?“
„I can’t tell you.“
„Ah, sworn to secrecy. I understand.“ He walked to the credenza behind his desk and returned to join her on the couch, holding a bottle of sherry and two glasses. „However, it wouldn’t count if I guessed, would it?“
Undecided, she accepted a glass and allowed him to fill it – several times in quick succession.
He pointed to the book in her lap. „I’m guessing it’s something to do with Winter House.“
„Maybe,“ she said, and then she smiled. „Are you a betting man?“
„You know I am.“ Indeed, he never tired of losing at poker. „What’s the wager?“
She held up the thick volume. „I know what happened to Red Winter.“
„Fascinating.“ Charles dipped the decanter to refresh her glass. „Twenty dollars and a limo ride home to Brooklyn?“
„It’s a bet. I say Red Winter was never lost. That kid never even left her own house. The body was walled up in the foyer closet. That’s my theory.“
„Really.“ He filled her glass again. Mrs. Ortega had a high tolerance for alcohol, and it might take awhile to get the entire story.
Nedda stood on the sidewalk in a long black leather jacket and slacks.
She felt cold – exposed. A single car rolled by, and she turned away from the headlights, hiding the ice pick in her side pocket. She ran full out to cross the boulevard. When had she last run for her life or any other reason? It made her young again. The wind hit her face and picked at the loose weave of her braid. She approached the low stone wall as a twelve-year-old girl and easily scaled it, her feet hitting the broken branches and cracking dead leaves on the other side. And now she played the child’s game of statue, quieting her heart the better to hear a stranger’s footfall.
She was terrified, exhilarated – alive.
This was a better plan than waiting for him to come for her. They were old friends now, she and Death. It got easier each time they met. And this time, she had selected the meeting place. Her head snapped right with a sound of a dry stick broken underfoot, and she walked that way, pushing branches to one side, going deeper and deeper into the wood and losing the light of the path lamps.
„Red Winter,“ said a man’s voice just behind her back.
Her hand closed around the ice pick in her pocket. She turned around to face him, but there was no one there.
„My God, it’s really you.“ A tall figure stepped out of the foliage. Only a shadow and only his voice discerned his sex. „Red Winter. You don’t remember me, do you?“ He clicked on a flashlight and shined it on his own face, making it ghoulish with sharp shadows riding the planes of his cheeks and the deep eye sockets. Yes, he was a tall one, and, just as Officer Brill had predicted, he wore a bandage high on his scalp where the lightbulb’s broken glass had scratched him.