Winter House by Carol O'Connell

Slope settled into one of the visitors’ chairs. „It might take a few days.“ He opened his newspaper, her cue to leave, as if that ever worked. „I’ll have Dr. Morgan determine the – “
    „No. It has to be you.“ She was almost petulant. „It has to be now.“
    „You don’t have the rank to make that kind of a request,“ he said, tacking on, „Kathy,“ just for fun.
    „Mallory,“ she said, insistent.
    She held up a stack of photographs, then fanned them like a deck of cards and dealt them out, one by one – just like her old man. Louis Markowitz had been a portly soul with hound-dog jowls and a charming way about him. Charm had never been an option for Kathy, and yet, every now and then, the doctor fancied that he found traces of Lou lingering on in his foster child, sometimes a gesture or a phrase.
    Briefly put, Lou’s daughter knew how to manipulate him.
    Even though he was fully aware of her calculation, this deliberate and casual way she had of breaking his heart, he played along every time. The doctor leaned forward to examine the crime-scene photographs, torso shots all of them, and every camera angle showed a pair of scissors driven into the victim’s chest.
    „Good aim,“ he said, „no hesitation marks. Hardly any blood loss, so it was a quick death – but you already knew that.“ Truly, he was intrigued by the request for a full autopsy, but he could not simply ask her a direct question. Their relationship had the strict parameters of a duel. And now, as he leaned back in his chair, he was even more generous with his sarcasm. „So… you had some doubt about what killed this man?“
    „No, but it wasn’t the scissors.“ She wore the only smile in her limited store of expression that was not forced. It was the smile that said, Gotcha.
    I n the early gray light of her bedroom, Nedda Winter lay very still, not even drawing a breath – waiting for the panic to subside. It was always alarming to open her eyes and find herself alone. And how quiet it was. She had lived too many years with constant companions, never awakening in any normal sense, but ripped from sleep with the early morning orchestra of a one-note moaner in the next bed, and beyond that one, the screamer’s bed and a chorus of harpies singing an angry song of Shut up! Shut the hell up! or Nursey, Nursey, I’m cold, I’m wet. Nedda had played the audience for them, staring vacantly in the direction of their noise and wondering how she would get through another day. Her nights had been whiled away with plans for her own slow death. But that was over now. She had a new plan and something to live for.
    Her heart settled into a normal rhythm, and her gaze calmly roved over the daisy pattern on the century-old wallpaper. The flowers had been yellowed with age generations before she was born. All the other bedrooms of the house had been repapered in her absence. Here, nothing had changed. The furniture was the same, just as she had left it when she was twelve years old, except for the trunk that once sat at the foot of her bed. All of the Winter children had had such trunks. By custom of the house, hers had probably been consigned to the attic when she was assumed to be dead. Otherwise, this might be like any morning from her childhood.
    Only the music was missing.
    She reached out to her bedside table and turned on the old radio. It was tuned to a station that played only jazz, her father’s favorite music for as far back as memory would take her. When Quentin Winter was alive, trumpets and piano riffs had filled this house, day and night, loudest in the party hours. Mellow saxophones had dominated at the break of a new day, and, toward midmorning, Daddy had played the blues as background music for his hangovers.
    Nedda pulled on her robe and entered the bathroom, where her eyes bypassed that strange old woman in the mirror. She looked down at the wide array of pharmacy bottles lined up on the sink. One by one, she flushed her