The Burnt Orange Sunrise (16 page)

Jase had thrown himself into the job with a manic form of abandon. He was obviously very upset about Norma’s death, yet when Mitch tried to engage him in conversation about it, Jase had purposely moved away from him, not wishing to share his heartfelt grief. Hard work was Jase’s way of dealing. He seemed tireless. Also impervious to the bitter cold. He did have on a pair of buckskin work gloves, but no coat. Merely that same heavy wool shirt he’d worn last night.

Mitch’s gloves were suitable for outdoor work. Not so Spence’s kid-leather dress gloves. Before they’d gotten started, Jase had led them across the courtyard to his cottage, where he’d fetched Spence a pair of work gloves. It was a low-ceilinged little cottage, smelling of mold and the kerosene space heaters that Jase and Jory had used in the night. Spence had seemed fascinated by the place. His eyes flicked eagerly around the cramped, dingy parlor as if he were taking in the sights of a preserved dwelling at Colonial Williamsburg.

“Well, at least you got your promotion,” Mitch reminded him as he kept on sawing, the icy air knifing in and out of his lungs.

“You’re right. I got my damned promotion.”

“You don’t sound so happy about it.”

“Right again.”

Jase halted his chain-sawing and barked out, “Okay, hold up a sec!” He jumped in his truck and used his plow blade to shove aside the heavy sycamore logs they’d produced. Then he backed up and got out, staring down the frozen, tree-strewn drive with an alarmed expression on his bearded face. “Man, it’ll take the crews
forever
to get here. And the more it blows, the slower it goes.”

The wind did seem to be picking up new strength, Mitch observed. It was positively roaring its way through the trees that were still standing, making them creak and groan most ominously under the weight of their ice coatings.

“We’ll be okay, Jase,” Mitch said confidently, even though he himself was quite unnerved to be standing out there under so many trees. He also couldn’t help noticing that the bright blue sky was starting to give way to dark storm clouds.

“I could hike my way down to the front gate,” Jase volunteered. “It’s only, like, three miles. I could make it.”

“And do what?” Spence asked him. “Where the hell would you go?

“He’s right, Jase,” Mitch agreed. “It’s another eight miles to town from there, and no one’s out on the road. Besides, it’s going to start snowing again.”

“I just, Norma wouldn’t…” Jase broke off, fumbling helplessly for the words. “Norma wouldn’t
like
this. How everything looks, I mean.”

The young caretaker seemed genuinely distraught. Mostly, it was his grief over Norma, Mitch felt. Partly, it was that Astrid’s Castle was his baby. Seeing all of this damage to its grounds was upsetting to him. Mitch understood the feeling. He felt the same way about Big Sister.

“We’re going to be fine, Jase,” he said, patting him on the shoulder. “We’ll get through this.”

Jase shook himself now, much like a wet dog, and said, “Enough jawing. Let’s get some work done.” And with that he clomped on over to the other sycamore and began attacking it with his chain saw.

“Actually, I’ve been seriously rethinking my move out to L.A.,” Spence told Mitch as they returned to their own labors. “The promotion, the whole thing.”

“Is that right—how come?”

“The young lady who I’m presently involved with has roots here in the East, and she doesn’t want to relocate out there. Not right now, anyway. It’s… kind of complicated.”

“Life can be,” Mitch said, working the pruning saw back and forth.

“It didn’t used to be. Not for me. I’ve never let any woman get in the way of my career. They’re strictly around for recreational humpage, nothing more. But now that it’s
turned
into something more—Mitch, I’m not even sure I know how to describe how much different this all is.”

“I’m partial to food analogies, if that’s of any help.”

“Okay, then here it is,” Spence offered. “It’s like the very first time you taste fresh store-made mozzarella from one of those delis down in Little Italy. Once you’ve had the real thing, there’s no way you can ever go back to those blocks of bland pale cheese food that you get at the supermarket. Does that work for you?”

Mitch’s stomach promptly began to growl. They’d eaten no
breakfast, and he was burning off a ton of calories. “Sure does. How long have you two been together?”

“We’ve known each other off and on for a number of years. But it’s only blossomed into a romance quite recently. She’s in the media.”

“Anyone I might know?”

“It’s… kind of complicated,” Spence repeated.

“Complicated,” said Mitch, who wondered why Spence was being so vague.

“I think about her day and night, Mitch. When I’m not with her, I miss her so much I can barely function. I will be miserable out in California without her—absolutely none of which was part of my plan. I never intended to get this involved.”

“Sometimes you have to come up with a new plan,” Mitch said, his own thoughts turning to Des and what he’d tried, and failed, to tell her in bed last night. He’d choked, no two ways about it.

Jase had powered his way through a massive log, the two pieces splitting apart. He paused a moment to catch his breath, the chain saw idling in his hands.

“The awful truth is that other women just don’t matter anymore,” Spence confessed. “Mind you, I’m not about to kick someone soft and warm out of bed on a cold winter night, but the whole time I’m with another woman I’m thinking about
her.”

“You dudes going to work for a living or just talk puss?” Jase growled at them.

“Keep your shirt on,” Spence growled back. “We’re working plenty hard.”

Jase let out a derisive snort, then went back at it.

Spence glanced over his shoulder at the castle, his cheeks puffed out. “Norma dying in her sleep like this, it gives you pause, that’s all.”

“It does.” Mitch’s mind paused on Maisie and how quickly he’d lost her. One day they were young and in love, everything sunshine, everything ahead of them. The next day he was a lonely widower sitting by himself in the dark. “And it should, Spence. That’s healthy.”

“Believe me, what I’m thinking about right now is not healthy.
Not career-wise. But I’m so nuts about this woman that I’m seriously considering turning it down. The very job I’ve been fighting for these past five years. Totally insane, right?”

“Not if it will make you happy.”

“But it’ll make me damaged goods, as far as the job is concerned.”

“Jobs come and go.”

“Mitch, what would you do?”

“That’s hard to say, since I don’t know the woman.” He looked at Spence pointedly. “Or do I?”

“She’s in the media,” Spence repeated stubbornly. “And it’s kind of…”

“Complicated, I got that,” said Mitch, wondering why Spence wouldn’t provide any more details about this woman. Wondering if it was because she was none other than Hannah Lane. Hannah worked in the media. Hannah was living in Washington, D.C. And Spence had known her off and on for years through the Panorama internship program. Toss in that she was presently hooked up with Aaron Ackerman and, well, that sure qualified as one hell of a complication, didn’t it?

Question: Was it possible that the talented young filmmaker was romantically involved with both men?

Answer: Hell, yes.

“T
HIS IS ABSOLUTELY THE
best cup of coffee I’ve ever had in my life,” Des exclaimed, because it absolutely was—hot, strong and flavorful. She gulped it down gratefully as she huddled there next to the stove in her big coat, both hands wrapped around the mug for warmth.

Jory had gotten two big kettles of bottled water up and boiling on the kitchen’s battered old six-burner propane stove, enough to fill a pair of Melita drip coffeemakers and a ceramic teapot for Ada’s Lemon Zinger.

“Coffee always tastes better when it’s cold out,” she said, smiling faintly at Des.

“Not to mention cold
in,”
added Hannah, who was lending Jory a hand with breakfast.

Actually, Des had barely recognized Hannah without her bright red lipstick and jaunty beret. She also had on a different pair of glasses—slender, contemporary wire rims instead of those heavy round ones she’d worn last night, when she’d seemed to Des like an effete, rather useless trendoid. But stripped of her war paint and Left Bank costume, Hannah looked a lot more useful than she’d first appeared. Narrow-shouldered, yes, but broad through her hips and flanks, with strong wrists and large, knuckly hands that were no strangers to scullery work. She also seemed a good deal younger to Des, not so much a polished young professional as a college girl with chapped lips and a pink runny nose.

“I hate being cold,” Hannah confessed, shivering in her navy-blue pea coat. She lit a match to another burner and began laying strips of bacon out in a well-worn cast-iron skillet. “I hate it more than just about anything.”

“Once a stone house gets cold, it stays cold,” said Jory, who had on a bulky ski sweater, a down vest and fleecy sweat pants. Her curly ginger hair was gathered into a top knot. She seemed very in charge of things in Norma’s absence. Her bulldog jaw jutted with determination. Her eyes were still puffy and red, though. She’d done a lot of crying after they’d found Norma. “And it’s way hard to warm it back up. I must be wearing six layers.”

“I’d settle for one pair of long Johns,” Des said.

“I can loan you a pair of mine,” she offered. “They’d be too short, and kind of huge in the waist, but they’d keep you warm.”

“I may take you up on that,” Des said, glancing around at the kitchen as she drank her coffee.

Astrid’s Castle had two kitchens, actually. There was the one they were in, a homey old tiled farmhouse kitchen, with its double porcelain sink and six-burner range. There was a long cluttered trestle table where the innkeepers grabbed their meals and did their paperwork. There were windows over the kitchen sink. Through them, Des could see across the frozen courtyard to the caretaker’s cottage. A door led directly out to the courtyard. Next to the door was a gun case.

Des went over for a closer look. There were two deer hunting rifles in it, a Remington Model 700 bolt-action with a side-mounted thumb safety and a Winchester Model 70 Classic. “Do much shooting up here?”

“We find it necessary from time to time,” Jory answered cautiously. “We get foxes and coyotes. City folks with small children don’t much care for those. A few years back we even had a bobcat. We always make sure the case is kept locked, and Les keeps the ammunition upstairs.”

“He’s the hunter?”

“No, Jase is. But Les likes to join him. It makes him feel like the lord of the manor or something.”

A mudroom was just off of the old kitchen. There was a deep work sink in there, jackets on hooks, work boots, a five-gallon bottled-water dispenser. The service stairs ran their way through the
mudroom—the narrow staff stairs up to the second and third floors as well as the steps that went down to the wine cellar.

The second kitchen, which had been added on in the past few years, was a charm-free stainless-steel restaurant kitchen designed for high-volume, high-speed output. It had multiple stoves and prep stations, a walk-in pantry and freezer, a separate entrance for kitchen staff and deliveries.

This kitchen was not in use. Not a soul was in there.

“When we just have a few guests, we do breakfast ourselves,” Jory explained, her gaze following Des’s. “The kitchen staff doesn’t arrive until later. Of course, today they won’t be coming at all. I thought we’d do a big breakfast, get some fuel into everyone. Eggs and bacon, a big pot of oatmeal, bread and jam. Sound good?”

“Like heaven,” said Des, helping herself to more coffee.

“I agree,” Hannah said as she turned the bacon, which was starting to sizzle and smell sensational.

Jory got a box of Irish oatmeal out of the cupboard and put another pot on the stove. “One good thing I can say about Astrid’s is we’re always prepared for bad weather. Plenty of food and clean dishes, plus we have gallons of bottled water. That’s all we ever pour at the table.”

“You folks have trouble with your well?”

“Not usually, no,” Jory said, filling an eight-cup Pyrex measure from the water dispenser. “But the coliform bacteria can get a bit iffy during the rainy season, and you don’t ever want to send sixty paying guests home with a dose of the trots. You can’t afford to take that chance. It’s like Norma always says…” Jory’s voice caught, the emotion welling up in her. “Every guest is our most important guest. Which reminds me. Is Mitch on any kind of a special diet?”

“Yes, he is. It’s called the I Never Get Full Diet.”

Jory let out a soft laugh. “And how does he take his eggs?

“Any way you cook them, as long as they’re good and hot. Mitch hates cold eggs, especially if they’re scrambled. He’s been known to hold forth for twenty minutes on the subject of cold scrambled eggs
and how they taste exactly like… Damn, will one of you kindly stick a fork in me? I’m starting to sound just like June Cleaver.”

“You are not,” Hannah said. “You sound sweet. I wish someone knew my likes and dislikes that well. I wish someone
cared.”

“Me, too,” sighed Jory. “That’s all I ask for. A man who cares.” She stood there with her brow furrowed, taking stock of their progress. “Let’s see… bacon’s going good, and the oatmeal won’t take long once this water’s boiling. I’ll slice up some bread. We can scramble the eggs last, okay?”

“Anything I can do to help?” offered Des.

“We’re on it,” Hannah said briskly, breaking the eggs into a bowl as she tended to the bacon.

“You seem very at home in a kitchen.”

Hannah let out a horsey bray of a laugh. “I should. I started waiting tables when I was sixteen. I’ve worked short-order, slung beers. You didn’t think I was some rich kid, did you? Because I am totally not. My dad works for the U.S. Postal Service. Mom’s an OR nurse at Bethesda Medical.”

“Is that right?” Des took a seat at the table, keeping her company.

“And do you want to talk lack of cool? When I was at Georgetown I lived at home in my same old room in my parents’ same old tract house in Falls Church. Commuted to and from campus every day in my ten-year-old Honda Civic. Even so, I’ll
still
be paying off my student loans until I’m forty. Not that I’m complaining, but nothing ever comes easy for me. Just the good Lord’s way of testing me, I guess. Like after I got
Coffee Klatch
made, you know? I figured it was all going to be lollipops and balloons. Development deals left and right. I was
applauded
at Sundance, you know? But you girls can’t imagine how hard it is out there in Movietown, U.S.A. How ambitious everybody is. How deceitful.” Hannah shook her head as she stood there turning the bacon. “When my internship ended, there was nothing. Nobody wanted me. I was desperate to stay out there, but I couldn’t afford to. Before I knew what hit me, I couldn’t even scare up my rent money. So I came home with my tail between my legs, moved back in with my folks. I honestly didn’t know what I
was going to do until I met Aaron. He’s been the answer to my prayers. Working with Ada this way is such an incredible opportunity, and Aaron’s been… you wouldn’t believe how sweet he’s been.”