Winter House (38 page)

„Totally mad.“ He continued to turn the pages. „And I didn’t see it. How could I have failed this woman so badly?“

„After a few therapy sessions? You said all her conversation with you was lucid, and I’m sure it was. Trust me, she was a strong lady, very good at holding things together in situations… where all the sane people crack up.“ Mallory took the diary from his hand and looked down at the pages, lines of madness, lines of truth. „Not your fault, Charles. She seemed sane enough to me, too. Nedda was probably using all her energy to keep her mind together – for a while. She had unfinished business with her brother and sister.“

He nodded. „If Cleo and Lionel had seen the diaries, the relationship would have been quite different.“

„They would’ve taken better care of her,“ said Mallory. „So if Nedda listened to a radio that never worked – “

„But
I’m
not insane.“ He hung his head, suddenly recognizing that this was now open to debate. „The night you called me to the crime scene, I saw her play that radio. She raised the volume and turned it off with the dial.“

„The whole face of the radio would’ve lit up when it played. Did you see that?“

„Yes.“ Less sure of himself, he added, „I think so.“

„You’re no worse than the average eyewitness. People see what they expect to see.“ She reached into her coat pocket and pulled out a sheaf of papers. „This is the play list for all the radio stations. The night of the dinner party, Nedda told you her station only played jazz from the forties. That’s wrong. There’s only one that plays jazz that time of night. But it’s a mix of contemporary and – “

„I
know
what I heard.“

„Do you? Your sound system only plays classical music. When I programmed the channels, those were the only ones you wanted to hear, remember? Nedda was the expert on jazz. I don’t know what tunes you were listening to that night, but she only heard what she wanted to hear.“

„I know jazz when I – “

„Listen to me. One more time, all right? Before Nedda came outside with the wine, she probably tried to disable the alarm. I’m betting it wasn’t even turned on. So she tapped the control buttons for the sound system by mistake. That was the music
you
heard, a local station that plays – “

„No, that’s not it. Her sister had that system programmed for popular music, rather crass –
and,
I promise you, nothing as elegant as Duke Ellington.“

„You know how easy it is to mess up the programming.“ She had reset the channels on his own sound system many times before painting the on/off switch with nail polish and forbidding him to touch any other buttons. „You wouldn’t know the dates of every piece you heard that night. Nedda would, but she was listening to music inside her head – no songs older than the Winter House Massacre.“

„So first,“ said Charles, still the skeptic, „she mistook the stereo panel for the alarm. Then she just got lucky with all those buttons and called up the one jazz station out of all – “

„What, at core, do you believe in? Coincidence and luck – or a haunted radio?“

Her solution had trumped his ghost story. She could see that he was defeated. At least, he had ceased to resist her take-no-prisoners logic. A graceful loser, Charles smiled, but not in the usual inadvertent manner of a happy loon. He had learned a new expression, more sardonic, and Mallory knew that he would never be the same; the cost of closing her cases had become too damned high.

She poured the wine, the medicine, into their glasses, then lifted hers in a toast. „To the lady who loved jazz.“

Charles clinked his glass with Mallory’s, and they sat very close together in the chill night air, sharing wine and a bit of body heat and the illusion that life had not been forever changed by a death too many.

Nearby was a burst of static, and a radio began to play an old Count Basie tune. Mallory drummed her fingers to the same rhythm.

Charles did not.

If he heard the music, he never acknowledged it, not by the tap of his foot or a nod in time to the beat. No, of course not. He was stable now and smiling as he looked up at the stars – the silent stars. All was right on Charles Butler’s planet.

Mallory’s fingernails dug deep into her palms, making red crescent wounds in the flesh, as if pain could drown the low notes of a string bass thrumming close to the earth – the ripple of piano keys that flew over the trees and up to the sky.

Crazy people make sane people crazy.

She looked back at the open windows of Winter House, expecting to detect a faint glow from the dial of an old-fashioned radio.