Nedda turned her eyes back to the sidewalk activity. Her brother stood beside the car, shaking his head. He was refusing to lug the suitcases up the stairs. Lionel put two fingers to his lips and whistled. The doorman from the neighboring condominium came running, smiling as a dog would smile if it only could. Money changed hands, and Lionel slipped behind the wheel of the Rolls and drove off to the parking garage, leaving his sister to supervise the doorman, who gathered up her bags. Cleo looked up at the parlor window, saw her elder sister standing there, then quickly looked away. This was only one small slight of many.
Nedda understood. She might never be forgiven for coming home again.
Though Cleo and Lionel had been to town only a week ago, Nedda was amazed anew each time she saw her sister and brother, these chic people so little affected by time. In her early sixties, Cleo appeared closer in age to her forty-year-old daughter. There was not a single strand of gray in the perfectly coiffed ash blond hair, and her flesh was suspiciously smooth and firm.
Nedda let the drape fall, then sank down to the window seat. The front door opened, and the foyer was filled with the sound of dueling accents, American diva and Spanish immigrant. The doorman was making short work of the bags, stacking them inside the door, while Cleo surveyed the front room, checking for signs of sudden death. Or would she be more concerned with possible breakage?
Cleo turned to her sister with a vacuous smile; one might call it professional, the way a stewardess can smile at her passengers though she hates them and hopes they will die. „You look wonderful. Your color’s so much better.“
The yellow cast had passed off months ago in the hospice, where Nedda’s siblings had expected her to pass away from natural causes.
Fooled you all. So sorry. I never meant to.
„But you’re still a little pale, Nedda. You really must get some sun and fresh air. We’ll have to get you out to the Hamptons one day.“
The sisters both knew that day would never come. There would be too many questions from the Long Island neighbors. It was so much easier to hide embarrassing relatives in the more anonymous city. And now, small talk exhausted, they fell into a silence – awkward for Nedda, easy for her sister.
When the doorman had lugged the last suitcase indoors, he learned to his dismay that he had not yet earned his money, not until he carried them up the stairs to a bedroom. He looked up at the winding steps – and up, and up, shaking his head in denial. Finally, the job was done, and her brother had returned from the garage on the next block. Lionel preened for a moment before a mirror, running one tanned hand through hair as white as her own.
Her brother could still be called a handsome man and surprisingly youthful in the way that a waxwork can never age. So this was what sixty-nine years looked like in the twenty-first century. Nedda rarely consulted a mirror on her own account, for she was a different creature now, and no such comparison to her former self was possible. Though she had made good use of the third-floor gymnasium, the treadmill and the weights would not give her back any of the time she had lost. She was marked by the wrinkles and stitched up scars of a difficult life.
Not so for Lionel and Cleo.
Nedda had returned to find her siblings well preserved in the amber of younger days. Every creature so preserved was dead, and still the simile held true. There was no life in their dark blue eyes, dead eyes, flies in the amber.
„Neddy“ was all that Lionel said to her by way of a greeting. She could see that it irked him to slip and call her Neddy, but he had never known her by any but that childhood name. In a cruel departure from a good-natured boy of eleven, Lionel the man reminded her of their father now. Quentin Winter had been a cold one, too. It had been said of Daddy, in his youth, that he left footprints of ice across the floor of a warm room on a summer day. She recalled Lionel as a child of five, following his father about in the month of July to see if this was true. In part it was.
She turned to her sister, always searching Cleo’s face for evidence of the child she had been. Up to the age of five, young Cleo had danced through the average day, always in motion to music that had played round the clock, a laughing child, who had no bones, who moved to the beat of drums and cornets with fluid joy. Daddy’s little Boogie Woogie Wunderkind had never been able to pronounce this mouthful, and so she had been called Jitterbug by one and all. But Nedda never forgot herself and called her sister by this old pet name. It was unsuitable now, for Cleo had become somewhat stiff on several levels.
Nedda wondered how she was remembered by her siblings. She shuddered, and this thought passed off like a chill.
Lionel walked to the center of the carpet. „Was it here? Bitty wasn’t all that clear on the phone.“
„Yes, that’s where the man died.“ Nedda turned from one sibling to the other, saying, „Charles Buder was here last night. Did Bitty tell you that?“ Cleo broke into a rare wide smile. „The frog prince? No, Bitty never said a word.“ And now something dark had occurred to her, no doubt linked to the shrine in Bitty’s room. The woman sat down, more solemn in her tone, saying, „My God, did the police see the – “ Nedda nodded. „And they brought Charles Buder here? They showed him – “
„The shrine in Bitty’s room? Yes, he saw it.“
Lionel and Cleo turned to one another to hold one of their eerie conversations of the eyes. It was something akin to the made-up languages of small children bonding in secret alliance against the adult – herself. This time, it was easy for her to guess the content of their discussion, and, in answer to their unspoken question, she said, „The police believe that Bitty was stalking Mr. Butler.“
„Charles Butler,“ said Lionel. „Wasn’t he one of the Gramercy Park Butlers?“
„Yes, dear,“ said Cleo, the keeper of the social register. „Charles is the last one, but there haven’t been any Butlers in Gramercy Park for ages. He lives in SoHo, of all places. He owns an apartment building there.“
Trust Cleo to know the details of wealthy families who would not take her phone calls and the environs where she was not welcome. The Winter family had fallen away from polite society long before the massacre.
„Charles Butler,“ said Cleo. „Bitty must’ve been thrilled.“ And, by inflection, she conveyed the opposite meaning. „Well, we must do something before this business gets out of hand. I’ll call Bitty’s father. Sheldon will know how to handle it.“
„Oh, Christ,“ said Lionel, at this mention of his erstwhile brother-in-law, the attorney. „Did the police take Bitty away?“
Both faces turned to Nedda. They were almost twins in expressing the horror of publicity.
She shook her head and stood with them in cold silence, the natural state of their every reunion, until a movement in one of the many mirrors caught her eye. Nedda turned around to see her niece slowly coming down the grand staircase, hesitating now, eyes wide and wondering if it was safe yet. Bitty had never outgrown a child’s stature and a child’s issues, the cowering deference to her mother and her uncle. And yet, one day, brave as any knight, this tiny woman had marched into a hellhole and plucked Nedda out of it, soul and all.
„Hello, dear. Kiss, kiss,“ said Cleo in lieu of actual affection for her daughter. „I’ve decided that we ‘11 have a small dinner party tonight. I think I can arrange for the frog prince to come.“
Bitty’s feet were frozen in place on the last step, and one hand drifted to her heart, as if her mother had shot her there.
„Yes, dear,“ said Cleo. „Your beloved Charles Butler. Won’t that be nice!“
Bitty nodded meekly, then turned away from them and crept back up the stairs.
Lieutenant Coffey was enjoying a rare hour of calm. Two homicides had been closed out before noon, a banner day. There would have been three cases closed by now if Riker and Mallory had only cooperated. But they were both exhausted and badly in need of a rest. They had logged more overtime than anyone else on the squad. And this was how Jack Coffey rationalized his irrational behavior of the morning, allowing them three days to work a bogus case.