Mallory nudged Riker. „So the fortuneteller’s storefront was a drop site for money, and the old lady brokered the hitman’s murders?“
„Yeah. Two different fortunetellers used the same location. They were both murdered, but Pinwitty doesn’t know that.“ Riker looked on as the author lost his audience. One by one, the escapees peeled off from the tour group. „But he did get a few things right.“ He looked up to the second-floor window. „When the detectives broke down the door, that apartment was clean, and I mean spotless. No prints anywhere. Ballsy, huh? Cops breathing down his neck, and he takes the time to wipe down the walls and the furniture.“
„And now we ‘ve got Nedda Winter with tarot cards at the dinner party,“ said Mallory. „You think Stick Man would kidnap a twelve-year-old girl to replace his old fortuneteller?“
„It’s a stretch. Remember, the girl disappeared from Winter House twelve days before the fortuneteller died.“
„If Stick Man thought the cops were closing in on his drop point, maybe he planned to break in the girl as his next tarot card reader – before he killed the old woman. Nedda was tall for twelve. She could’ve passed for a teenager.“
„Could be.“ In fact, Riker had already thought of this. But why would a hitman believe that a little girl might go along with that idea?
The spooky brat beside him read his mind. „Maybe,“ she said, „Nedda wasn’t all that broken up about the murders. Maybe she knew what was going to happen to her family before Stick Man showed up at the door.“
Riker gave this idea half a nod. „It’s possible.“ There were too many possibilities and they might all be wrong.
Mallory turned back to the author and his few remaining tourists. He had moved on down the street to the scene of another crime. She listened to the fading banter for another moment. „You said his research is an ongoing thing?“
At the bottom of the stairs, Lionel was waiting for them. Bitty shrank back, thinking of something better to do on the upper floor, and she retreated.
Sensible.
After last night, Bitty would not want a confrontation with her uncle.
Nedda accepted a cup of coffee from her brother’s hand. She was so absurdly grateful for this small gesture and hoping for something more, but he looked at her with such wariness. And hate? It was difficult to read Lionel’s thoughts anymore. As a child he had never been cold to her. There had been a bond between them once, the two eldest children against the confusing and sometimes violent world of their parents’ making.
When brother and sister were seated in the dining room, Nedda turned her gaze to the glass-paned doors that opened onto the back garden. It looked so mournful now, pruned back to a few shrubs and a single tree. Once, there had been a swing attached to the lowest bough. Her brother had preferred the higher climbs, the branches closer to the sky. He had been a beautiful, nimble boy with a sunbrowned face and perpetually skinned knees.
„And now,“ said Lionel, „you’re wondering about Baby Sally.“ Nedda shook her head. No, she had been hunting out of doors for some old memory to share with him, a common ground. She wanted only a bit of conversation and his company – nothing more.
„Cleo and I were away at school when Sally… when she left. I’ve given a lot of thought to that day. It was nothing that we did. We were – “
„Old history.“ Nedda dismissed the rest of his words with a wave. And now she wanted so much to reach across the table, to take his hand in hers and tell him how good it was to be home. However, in this moment, she was more the coward than Bitty. She anticipated Lionel shrinking away from her touch, withdrawing his hand and turning to ice.
Her own hands remained folded in her lap.
Martin Pinwitty was beside himself with happiness. Two genuine homicide detectives were visitors in his humble home – underscore the word humble. There was only one room, unless one counted the closet that housed a toilet, and Mallory did not. The bathtub, concealed by a broad wooden board, did double duty as a table, and the hide-a-bed sofa had been hastily folded away, one more sign of an impoverished make-do life.
Mallory could guess how much of this man’s meager income was daily sacrificed for stamps. Correspondence was piled on every surface that was not cluttered with page-marked books. The postmarks on his mail were wide-ranging, and a few envelopes had the return addresses of police departments in other states.
On the way to his apartment, Pinwitty had insisted on stopping at a bodega so that he might treat them to doughnuts on this special occasion, believing, as all civilians did, that this was a staple of every cop’s diet. And now both detectives, stuffed with Charles Butler’s croissants and crepes, ate their sugar doughnuts, while feigning gratitude and swilling tea that was unspeakably bad.
Riker shoveled more sugar into his cup. „So the reporter who died in the Village – that was the last ice-pick job?“
„For a professional assassin? Yes, I believe it was,“ said the author. „I have sources everywhere. If there’s an old unsolved murder with an ice pick, I hear about it. The pick was going out of vogue years before that man was murdered.“
After scanning one of Pinwitty’s files, a lengthy list of muggings and murders, Mallory set it aside, agreeing with Riker that this was an amateur investigation. „What about the freak who killed the Winter family? You think he retired after the massacre?“
„Oh, definitely,“ said Pinwitty. „That or he died. You know, once, I actually thought Red Winter had killed him. A man was stabbed with an ice pick in the state of Maine.“ He stood up and walked to a bookshelf crammed with texts, papers and manila envelopes. „I have a separate file for that one. Nothing ever came of it.“ He pulled out a folder and smiled. „I even went up to Maine for a few days to check it out.“
This piqued Mallory’s interest, for that little junket would’ve represented a lot of money for this impoverished little man.
Pinwitty settled into a chair and opened the folder on his lap. „I’ll tell you what made this incident so interesting. The victim of the stabbing was a man named Humboldt.“
Riker’s teacup was suspended in midair, all attention suddenly riveted to the author, and Mallory had to wonder what that was about.
Pinwitty continued. „Humboldt once shared a cell with a murder suspect in New Orleans. The cellmate was charged with the ice-pick murder of a politician.“
Riker’s cup clattered back to its saucer.
„Now this suspect – “ The author paused to bring the page a bit closer to his nearsighted eyes. „Oh, I don’t have a name for this one, but I know it began with an H. Well, no matter. Turned out the man was innocent. There’d been another murder while he was in custody. However, it occurred to me that Red Winter didn’t know that, and she might have mistaken Humboldt for the suspected ice-pick killer. Maybe she heard a confused report of the New Orleans murder. You see, the first time I heard this story – more like a rumor, actually – Humboldt was killed by a girl with red hair. I postulated that Red Winter might’ve hunted down the wrong man and killed the cellmate by mistake, believing that Humboldt was the one who murdered her parents.“
Mallory smiled. Ah, the penalties of bad scholarship – death. „And this happened when?“
„Two years after the massacre. I was originally led to believe that it happened much later than that. In any case, it wasn’t Red Winter who killed Humboldt. She would’ve been a fourteen-year-old child at that time. When I went up to Maine, I discovered that he was killed by a full-grown local woman.“