The Burnt Orange Sunrise

by David Handler

  Which surprised Mitch, who was about ready to stuff his cold compress in Aaron’s big mouth. He couldn’t believe she was taking this crap from him.

  “In the meantime, I still have to take your statements,” she went on. “And I still want you in your rooms. So let’s get moving.”

  Aaron stayed right where he was. “I say we arm ourselves.”

  Teddy let out a mocking laugh. “Oh, do you now, you manly man.”

  “Shut up, Uncle Teddy,” Aaron snarled at him. “I’m sick of your sarcasm.”

  “There are … couple of deer rifles in the kitchen,” Jase murmured. “The gun case.”

  “Gee, I don’t know about that, sweetie,” Jory said doubtfully.

  “No, no, he’s right.” Aaron pounced eagerly on the news. “Let’s go get them. We can take turns standing guard until the authorities arrive. We must protect ourselves.”

  “I’m with Aaron,” said Spence. “Let’s arm ourselves.”

  “Hold on, guys, this is getting way out of hand,” warned Mitch, his head throbbing. “What we need to do is relax.”

  “I’m with Mitch,” said Teddy.

  “Please, everybody just take it easy,” Hannah agreed.

  “Yes, kindly cool it with this vigilante business,” Carly said. “And no offense, Acky, but when did you suddenly turn into Ollie North?”

  “You know, I’ve had just about enough of your cutting little remarks, too,” Aaron huffed at her, his nose twitching.

  “How’s that for a happy coincidence,” she retorted sharply. “I’ve had just about enough of you.”

  Mitch glanced at Des, surprised that she’d let this situation flare up so badly. “What do you say, Master Sergeant?”

  In response, Des pulled her SIG out of her coat pocket and showed it to all of them. “I say no one is touching those rifles. I say there is one gun and it’s in my hand. Anyone who is not on board with that plan, kindly speak up right now, and I will be happy to bind and gag you for the duration. Anyone? How about you, Aaron?”

  Aaron lowered his eyes and shook his head, reddening.

  “Does anyone else have anything they’d like to say?” Des asked.

  Jase cleared his throat and said, “Did Les get around to stoking the fires before he …”

  “I’m afraid not, Jase,” Mitch told him.

  “Would it be okay if I …?”

  “Now is not a good time, Jase,” Des said to him. “Please return to your rooms now, okay? All of you.”

  They obeyed her, grumbling and mumbling. And double-locking their doors behind them, each and every one of them.

  Mitch and Des remained out in the hall, her hand still clamped around his arm.

  “Why didn’t you just shut that jerk up?” he asked her. “You practically had a mutiny on your hands.”

  “It’s much better if you let people vent,” she explained patiently. “That way, they get it out of their systems, and are less likely to actually do anything.”

  He smiled at her fondly. “Pretty smart, aren’t you?”

  “Not feeling very smart right now,” she confessed, steering him over to the two chairs at the top of the stairs, where they sat. “On a rare positive note, the pilot of SP-One said he may be able to take off within the hour. You wouldn’t know it to look outside, but the storm’s tapering off. We’ll need to plow a section of the parking lot so he can touch down.”

  “Sure, we can use Jase’s truck. So you updated Soave?”

  “From the woodshed,” she replied, nodding.

  “What did you tell him?”

  “That I was wrong.”

  “About what?”

  “I don’t have this situation under control.”

  Mitch reached for her slender hand and squeezed it. “That’s not true. You’ve done everything you could do.”

  “Les died on my watch,” she said miserably. “That means I screwed the pooch. Aaron’s not totally wrong.”

  “He is, too. There’s no way you could have anticipated what happened to Les. How could you? From where I’m sitting it defies any form of logical explanation. It couldn’t possibly have happened. And yet it did happen. All we have to do now is figure out how, and we will.”

  “Mitch, I never took my eyes off this hallway,” she said as those pale green eyes of hers scanned the corridor. “They were all in their rooms, I swear. How did someone slip out on me, kill Les and then sneak right back in without me so much as catching a glimpse? How did someone do that? Who is he, the Invisible Man?”

  “There’s Teddy to consider. He was by himself in the Sunset Lounge.”

  “But I could hear the piano that whole time,” Des countered. “Not once did he stop playing. I don’t see any possible way he could have gone outside, bopped you on the head and—” She broke off, her eyes flickering.

  “Did you just think of something?” Mitch asked her.

  “No, not really,” she said quietly. “How does your head feel?”

  He glanced at the compress he’d been holding against it. Clean. The bleeding had definitely stopped. “Well enough.”

  “Can you remember how it all went down?”

  “Very fast is how it all went down. We were loading up the wheelbarrow. I turned my back for one second and, wham, I was out. Honestly, I thought it was Les who’d hit me. Until I realized he was dead, that is.”

  “Somebody lost their breakfast out there.”

  “That was me, after I came to,” Mitch said, shuddering. He was back there again, seeing Les lying facedown in the dirt. “Then I came straight in to get you. I didn’t see any footprints leading anywhere else in the snow. Did you?”

  “I followed two sets back to the kitchen door. I assume one is yours, the other belongs to … whoever.”

  “Can you tell anything from them? What kind of shoe the killer wore, the size?”

  “The snow’s way too mushy. I can’t even tell whether a man or a woman made them.”

  “Do you think a woman could have done that?”

  “Buried a hatchet in Les’s head? No problem. I did notice that the kitchen floor was all wet.”

  “That was me, too. The floor was completely dry when I came in.”

  “You sure about that?”

  “Positive. Whoever did it must have taken off their wet shoes before they came back in and tossed them in the snow or hidden them somewhere. Changed their pants, too, I’m figuring. Look at mine, Des. My cuffs are soaked. So are my gloves and my hat.”

  “I found one jacket in the coatroom that was plenty damp.”

  “Spence’s, am I right?”

  “You are.”

  “That’s from when we were working outside before. Mine was still damp, too.”

  “And Jase’s wool overshirt in the mudroom is damp.”

  “Same story. Did you find anything else?”

  “No wet boots or pants, that’s for damned sure. We’ll find them eventually, but we can’t afford to take the time right now. There are a million hiding places in this castle. Plus they could be out in the snow, like you said.” Des stared intently down the hall, shaking her head. “I cannot fathom how someone got past me.”

  “Could somebody have gone out their window? The sills are pretty wide. Maybe they made it to the observation deck by climbing from window to window, then downstairs from there.”

  “Mitch, those sills have six solid inches of ice on them. And the windows are frozen shut.” On second thought, she got to her feet and said, “I’m not taking anything for granted. Are you up for checking out the observation deck?”

  “I sure am”.

  Des examined everyone’s windows while Mitch headed to the end of the hall and pushed open the outside door. The snow was still coming down pretty hard out there. The sky did seem to be brightening a little, but that may just have been wishful thinking on his part. Or his head wound. He studied the snow carefully for fresh footprints, then came back and sat down and waited for Des to return.

  “Any
thing?” he asked her when she did.

  She shook her head. “You?”

  He started to shake his head, but that only made it throb worse. “Bupkes.”

  Des lowered herself into her chair and brooded there in silence for a moment. “Okay, let’s try going at this another way.”

  “Which is …?”

  “Why Les? Why did someone want to kill Les?”

  “For one of two reasons, it seems to me. Either he figured out who killed Norma and Ada, and had to be silenced before he could tell you …”

  “That plays,” she said, nodding. “I’m with you so far.”

  “Or he actually killed them himself, and had to be punished.”

  “Are you talking about frontier justice? I don’t buy that.”

  “Why not?

  “Because that would mean we’ve got us two different crazies operating in the same physical space at the same exact time. It doesn’t happen that way. Not in my experience. Not unless we’re dealing with running buddies who’ve had themselves a nasty falling out.”

  “Maybe that’s it. Ada did tell you they wanted this place.”

  “That she did,” Des acknowledged. “What were you and Les talking about before you got knocked out? Did he give you any news we can use?”

  “He may have. It turns out he was getting it on with Martha Burgess.”

  Des raised her eyebrows in surprise. “From the Frederick House? Well, well…”

  “She doesn’t exactly seem like the type, does she?”

  “Mitch, there is no type. Wives who sleep around on their husbands are just normal everyday women like Martha. Although she is awful quiet, I’ll give you that. Her husband, Bob, is the talker of the pair. A real Mr. Outgoing.”

  “Somewhat like Les in that regard, don’t you think? Not that I mean to speak ill of the dead. He told me he couldn’t admit it to you out loud in front of Norma, even if she was dead. He was ashamed, I think.”

  “Well, I can buy that. Do you think Norma knew who it was?”

  “If she did, she never let on. Les did say that they’d been ultra-discreet. If I had to guess, I’d say neither Norma nor Bob knew about the two of them. Actually, Les said maybe he shouldn’t have told me, under the circumstances.”

  Des frowned. “What circumstances?”

  “Apparently, there’s another little wrinkle he thought you should know about.”

  “What little wrinkle?”

  “Des, I wish I knew. But that’s when everything went black. I’m afraid we’ll never find out.”

  “Oh, we’ll find out,” she vowed.

  “You think so?”

  “I do. It may take a while, but we’ll get there.”

  “Des, there’s something I’ve been wondering about.”

  “And that is …?”

  “Why am I still alive? Why didn’t Les’s killer murder me, too?”

  “Didn’t need to, didn’t want to.”

  “Why not?”

  “I honestly don’t know. But it’s a mistake to think that what’s happening here is some elaborate scheme to do away with all of us, one by one by one. That’s strictly out of that old movie you were talking about.”

  “You mean the one where no one gets out alive?”

  “Really wasn’t necessary to say that part out loud again.”

  “Sorry, I have a head wound.”

  “This is real life, Mitch. If somebody wants a whole bunch of people dead they line them all up in a row and shoot them down like dogs. End of story. Norma’s death was planned ahead of time. But I still say everything that’s happened since reeks of a busted play—Ada had to die because of what she found out, and so did Les. Now did he tell you anything else? Think hard.”

  “He said that the Frederick House is having financial problems. It occurred to me that maybe he intended to buy his way in with the two hundred thou Norma left him. Take Martha for his own and shove Bob Burgess out the door.”

  “Sounds like a plan,” Des concurred. “Mind you, that would point the motive finger right at Bob Burgess for killing him. Too bad Bob’s not here at the present time.”

  Which jarred something in Mitch’s head. Something significant that he’d forgotten. “Des, how do we know he’s not here?”

  She looked at him closely. “Baby, do you need another hit of ammonia?”

  “No, wait, hear me out. I just remembered something. When I got up to feed our fire in the middle of the night, I could have sworn I heard someone walking around up on the third floor. Astrid’s Castle is a huge place with millions of nooks and crannies. What if someone else has been hiding up here with us this whole time? Someone like Bob Burgess. That would explain how Les’s killer managed to slip out right under your nose—because he wasn’t under your nose. He was hiding somewhere else in the castle, waiting for his chance to kill Les. Although why Bob would want to kill Norma and Ada, too, I can’t possibly …” Mitch suddenly realized that Des was staring at him with a really strange look on her face. “You think I’ve suffered permanent head damage, don’t you?”

  “Far from it. While you were outside with Les, Carly told me that she heard footsteps up on the third floor in the night.”

  “Well, that settles it then,” Mitch said, gazing slowly up at the ceiling. “We’ve got company.”

  “Slow down, cowboy. It’s very likely that what you two heard was nothing more than the wind.”

  “Then again, it could have been Astrid.”

  “You just said what to me?”

  “There’s this thing they do for the tourists every year on Halloween,” Mitch explained. “Which is that Astrid, that she, you know …”

  “Mitch, believe me when I say this—I don’t know.”

  “She haunts the castle. Her ghost, I mean.”

  “Okay, this is your head trauma talking now,” Des said, nodding to herself. “Random gas is emitting from your person.”

  “Are you trying to tell me you don’t believe in ghosts?”

  “Are you trying to tell me you do?”

  “Well, I certainly don’t disbelieve in them. How can I? There are just too many things that happen in life which can’t be explained.”

  “Like what, for instance?”

  “Like us.”

  She stiffened at once. “Oh, is that right?”

  “I mean this in a good way, Des. Just think about it…”

  “Oh, I’m thinking about it, boyfriend. I am sitting here, thinking.”

  “We come from completely different worlds. We share no common experiences and have no earthly business being together, making each other so unbelievably happy. And yet we are happy. And that can’t be explained by any conventional wisdom, can it?”

  She let this sink in for a moment before she swallowed and said, “Well, no, you’re not wrong about that. But, Mitch …?”

  “Yes, Des?”

  “We are not ghosts!”

  “I know this, and I for one am very happy about it.”

  “Besides which, we are no longer talking about what we need to be talking about.”

  “Which is …?”

  “One of us needs to take a look around upstairs. I can’t leave this hallway, because I’m still clinging to the quaint notion that our killer is a corporeal individual, as opposed to Casper, the unfriendly ghost. Do you feel well enough to nose around up there?”

  “Try and stop me.”

  She fished a master key from her coat pocket and tossed it to him. “You’d better take this, too,” she said, handing him her heavy black Mag-Lite flashlight. “Bang it on the floor if you need me. I’ll come running.”

  He got up out of his chair and started for the stairs. “Should we establish any kind of code? Say, three knocks means trouble, two knocks means—”

  “Just smack the damned floor, will you?” she growled at him. “Hold on, there’s something else I want to tell you.”

  “What is it?”

  She came toward him, her eyes shiny and huge, an
d hugged him tightly. “When I saw you coming upstairs just now, looking the way you did, all of the air went right out of my body. I thought I was going to die. I know we can’t be explained, and I don’t care. I only care about how I feel.”

  “Back at you, slats,” he said, kissing her softly, then not so softly.

  Then she gave him a firm shove and up the stairs he went, clutching the Mag-Lite like a billy club. When he reached the top of the stairs, he encountered locked double doors that closed off the third-floor corridor entirely. Mitch used the master key and went in, closing the door behind him.

  The third floor was very much like the second. Twenty-four rooms. More photos of famous guests of yesteryear lining the walls. More floral carpeting. That same steel door to the staff stairs halfway down the hall, a “Fire Exit” sign mounted over it. The only obvious difference that struck Mitch was that there was no door out to the observation deck at the end of the hall. Just a window. The air was exceedingly still up there. Freezing cold, too. It couldn’t have been more than forty-five degrees. The room doors had all been left wide open, casting shafts of weak winter light out into the hall. Mitch stood still for a long moment, listening. He could hear his heart pounding, blood rushing in his ears. He could hear nothing else.

  He began to search, the carpeted floorboards creaking under his feet. He started in the first room on his left, room twenty-five, which was directly above the room where Norma lay dead. He found a bed that had no linens on it. Just a bare mattress. He found a bathroom that had no towels, no soap, no sterilized water glasses. The bathroom door was thrown open wide and held in place with a wastebasket. So was the closet door. Something to do with ventilation, Mitch guessed. When he shone his light around in the closet, he found only empty hangers. He went across to room 26, and found it to be virtually identical.

  From the third-floor windows Mitch could make out Big Sister’s lighthouse standing tall and proud down at the mouth of the Connecticut River. Mammoth tree trunks and chunks of ice were flowing out into Long Island Sound—the very stuff that he would find washed up on Big Sister’s slender beach when he made it back there. If he ever made it back there. It seemed as if his life out on Big Sister had been a million years ago. It seemed as if he’d always been here at Astrid’s Castle and he always would be here. Time had stopped. Life had stopped.