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.
„We met when you were very sick,“ he said, in a surprisingly normal voice, hardly threatening. „You made a nice recovery, didn’t you?“
She had not expected this – a civilized conversation replete with polite inquires on the state of her health. Had they met in a hospital? There had been so many of them over the years. And then there had been the nursing homes and finally the hospice. Her grip on the ice pick remained very tight.
„No,“ he said, lowering the flashlight. „You wouldn’t remember, would you? You were really out of it then.“
And now she must pin that down to one of three places. They might have met in the last hospital where her health had severely declined, or the nursing home where her life would have ended if not for Bitty. Or was it the hospice?
The man was coming closer, his white hands dangling from the arms of a loose flannel jacket that might conceal any number of weapons.
„Were you a patient, too?“ she asked, as if this might be a normal chat with some acquaintance who had slipped her memory.
„Me? In a nursing home?“ He actually smiled. „Not likely.“
No, he was only thirty years old at the outside. So he had met her in the Maine nursing home.
He placed his flashlight in the crook of his arm, shining its light on the trees behind him, and freeing both hands to open the buttons of his jacket. Did he have a gun? An ice pick could not beat a bullet. He was one step closer, his right hand still concealed.
His backward-shining beam spotlighted another figure in the wood, a lovely face with the luminous skin of a haunt.
Mallory.
The young detective was only a few yards away. Holding a very large gun in one hand, she crept closer with no clumsy breaks of twigs underfoot, but padding like a cat, taking her own time in Nedda’s elongated sense of seconds expanding in slow motion.
The man was pulling his hand from the folds of his jacket. What was that dark object in his hand?
Mallory was smiling as her gun hand was rising. The young policewoman was enjoying this moment, and a moment was all it was before Nedda heard the connection of heavy metal on bone. The man made less noise when he dropped to the ground.
A uniformed policeman stepped out of the woods in the company of Detective Riker, who hailed her with a broad smile and, „Hey, Nedda. How’s it going?“
Mallory waved one hand toward the younger of the two men. „You remember Officer Brill.“
„Yes, of course,“ said Nedda. „He comes to all of our crime scenes.“ She smiled at the patrolman. „How nice to see you again.“
„Evening, ma’am.“ Officer Brill tipped his cap, then turned to the chore of helping Riker pick up the fallen man. They carried the unconscious body up the path that would lead them back to the stone wall. A police car was waiting for them, its red lights spinning through breaks in the trees.
Nedda was left alone with Mallory, who was slow to holster her gun. „What brings you out so late, Miss Winter?“ The young detective circled around Nedda, then dropped her voice to a whisper behind the older woman’s back. „Hunting?“ Louder, Mallory said, „Not enough action back at your house?“