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?“