The Burnt Orange Sunrise (26 page)

“No chance at all,” Carly answered crisply. “I was awake all night hashing over my new life plan. I’ve come up with my three top priorities. Number one is to rid myself of my humiliating, debasing marriage.”

“And the other two?”

“Quit smoking and start researching a new book. I need to sink my teeth into some solid work. Work is the best man cure I know. Other than starting over with another man, of course. And that’s not going to happen. Not for a good, long while. This time, I’m taking care of me.”

“Carly, did you happen to get up in the night? Perhaps slip out for a quick smoke?”

“Not a chance. I couldn’t. I’m afraid of the dark, you see. Always have been.”

“Did you hear anyone else slip out? Footsteps out here in the hall? Doors opening or closing? Because if you were awake all night…”

“I was, I swear.”

“Then you’re in a real position to help me. Think hard, please. This is important.”

Carly considered this for a moment, her eyes lingering on the sealed doors to rooms one and three. “You’re wondering about Norma, I imagine. If Norma got up, I didn’t hear her. But her room is right here next to the stairs. We’re over in five.”

“Ada was right next door to you. Did you hear her get up?”

“I’m sorry, no. I can’t help you with that.”

Des wasn’t sure whether to buy this or not. While it was true that she herself had easily heard Les open and close the door to room ten from room one, it was also true that Les had not been making any effort to keep quiet. In the middle of the night, Norma and Ada doubtless would have.

“But I’ll tell you what I did hear.” Now Carly lowered her voice. “I heard somebody moving around upstairs.”

Des frowned at her. “What do you mean, upstairs?”

“I mean, up on the third floor,” she said, gazing up at the ceiling. “I heard the floorboards creak in the night. Someone was up there.”

“Doing what?”

“Besides walking around? I truly can’t imagine.”

“But there’s no one staying up on the third floor, is there?”

“Not a soul. During the off-season, they close it off to save on fuel.”

“Any idea what time it was when you heard these footsteps?”

“Two, possibly three in the morning.”

Des weighed this, baffled. Why would anyone have been wandering around up there in the middle of the night during a power outage? “And you sure you weren’t dreaming?”

“Positive,” Carly insisted. “My ears could have been playing tricks on me. It was a stormy night, and old places like this creak like crazy in the wind. Maybe that’s all it was. Or maybe it was mice. But you asked me what I heard …”

“And you heard creaking floorboards.” Des glanced up at the ceiling doubtfully. “Anything else?”

“No,” said Carly, the tip of her tongue flicking delicately at her lips. “Not unless you count the lovemakers.”

Des cleared her throat, well aware that she and Mitch had gotten more than a little bit busy last night. “Which lovemakers?”

“The ones next door in Spence’s room.”

“Spence had a woman in his room last night?”

“I’m assuming it was a woman. I don’t think he’s gay. Mind you, one never knows for sure.”

“Well, who was she?”

“I have no idea.”

Des had very little doubt. It had to have been Hannah. After all, she and Spence had known each other for years from the studio’s internship program. The only question was whether they were longtime lovers or if this was something new. And it was a mighty important question, because if the two of them went back a ways, then it was entirely possible that they were the ones who were behind these killings. Only why would
they
take out Norma and Ada? What was in it for them? “Exactly what did you hear, Carly?”

“The usual moaning and panting. I don’t have to act it out for you, do I?”

“Not necessary. You’re sure this was coming from Spence’s room?”

“Positive.”

“Had you heard the woman go into his room sometime earlier?”

Carly stared at her blankly. “Now that you mention it, no.”

Downstairs, the piano had fallen silent. The sudden quiet that descended upon the castle was almost eerie.

“But she could have gone in there while everyone was getting settled in for the night,” Carly suggested. “Plenty of doors were opening and closing, plus the furnace monkey was making firewood deliveries.”

“His name is Jase,” Des growled at her, hearing raised voices down in the entry hall now. “Did she stay the whole night?”

“Well, I didn’t hear her leave.”

Des searched her memory of early that morning, when Les found Norma dead in bed beside him and cried out for help. They’d all come spilling out into the hall. Hannah had come out of her own room. Spence had been alone in his. She was quite certain. “Are you sure about that, Carly?”

“I’m sure.”

Now Des heard heavy footsteps behind her on the stairs, someone heading back up. “And you’re sure you didn’t fall asleep for a few minutes?”

“I
told
you, I was awake all night.”

“Well, then how on earth did she—?” Des never got the rest of her words out.

It was Carly. Her big blue eyes were bulging with fright. “Oh my lord!” she gasped, gazing over Des’s shoulder at the stairs.

And that’s when Des whirled and saw him standing there.

L
ES WAS STUDYING HIM
very, very intently.

The innkeeper’s face was extremely close to Mitch’s. No more than a foot away.

He’s checking to see if I’m awake
, Mitch supposed.

Although, quite frankly, Mitch was finding it hard to suppose much of anything just yet. He felt dazed and confused, the world around him a vague, befuddling fog. Slowly, as Mitch began to emerge from that fog, he became aware that the back of his head ached. And now he recalled that Les … Les had
hit
him, knocked him out cold. That’s why he was presently lying on the frigid dirt floor of the woodshed. And that’s why Les was watching him.

Not saying anything. Just watching.

With great difficulty, Mitch tried to formulate a coherent sentence out of the words that were tumbling around in the cotton batting inside of his head. He wanted to ask the man a simple, straightforward question: “Why in the hell did you hit me, Les?” But he couldn’t seem to get the words out. His vocal chords were too far away. And yet his brain
was
beginning to clear. And it was starting to dawn upon him that Les was lying on the dirt floor, too, one ear pressed to the ground as if he were listening for the thundering onrush of Choo-Choo Cholly. And not so much studying Mitch as he was staring at him. Not even blinking. Just staring and staring and …

Les is dead.

This realization came to Mitch like a splash of ice water in the face. When it did, he immediately let out a strangled yelp of shock and scrambled away from the man, the back of his head throbbing.
He put a hand to it and he came way with blood. Someone had definitely hit him. But not Les. It wasn’t Les.

Les is dead.

The innkeeper lay on his stomach with a hatchet embedded deep in the back of his skull. Blood and brain matter were splattered everywhere. It was a truly horrible sight to gaze upon. Mitch willed himself to dab a finger in the puddle of blood on the ground next to the man’s head. Still warm despite the freezing cold of the woodshed. Les had been dead only a few moments.

No one has corne looking for us yet. No one knows.

As he knelt there, the wind and snow swirling outside the open barn doors, it suddenly dawned on Mitch that Les’s killer could still be there in the woodshed with him. Drawing his breath in, he flicked his eyes around at the clutter of tools, searching every dimly lit recess. But no one else was there. Just he and Les. The killer had fled.

A hickory log the approximate thickness of a Louisville Slugger lay on the floor at Les’s feet. It had blood on it. Mitch guessed that it was his own, that this was the weapon that had knocked him out. Whoever killed Les had wanted him out of the way. And yet, apparently, not dead.
Because I’m not.
Which seemed like a highly selective form of mental processing for someone who had to be a psychopathic crazy. Not that Mitch was complaining. He just didn’t get it.

Why am I still alive?

He realized he didn’t know. And, as he climbed slowly to his feet, he realized he had spatters of Les’s blood and brains all over his Eddie Bauer goose-down jacket. His stomach did an immediate flip-flop and he lost his skillfully reheated breakfast onto the ground. Dizzy and sick, he staggered over to the tool bench, found a rag and swiped at his jacket with it, knowing that he truly did not belong here. He belonged in the Film Forum watching a nice, harmless Martin and Lewis double bill, maybe
The Caddy
and
Jumping jacks.
With maybe a jumbo-sized box of hot buttered …
Okay, forget the hot buttered popcorn
, he commanded himself as his stomach flip-flopped again.
But do what you have to do. Go after Less killer. He
can’t have gone far. Les is still warm, remember? Go on, get your plump heinie out of here…
.

Mitch’s legs felt like a pair of wobbly broomsticks. And he was still as dizzy as hell. But he also felt a focused alertness coming over him. He had a job to do. He made it over to the open doorway, swaying there like a young sapling, and squinted out at the snow, his eyes searching for movement of any kind, a dab of color from someone’s jacket. He saw no movement, nothing. Now he turned his faltering attention to the snow. There were no footprints leading from the woodshed off toward the woods or the parking lot. Only the footprints he and Les had made on their way out here from the kitchen, still deep and fresh. But as Mitch studied their prints more closely, he realized that there were in fact
three
sets of prints heading out here—
and
another set that originated in the shed doorway and led back toward the castle’s kitchen door. Translation: Whoever killed Les had come and gone from the castle. And was probably back in there right now with Des and the others.

“Des!” Mitch called out, his voice straining against the howling wind. “Desss …!”

No use. The looming castle was too far away, its walls made of solid stone. She would never be able to hear him in there.

Flashbulbs suddenly started popping right before his eyes. He felt as if he might pass out again. He dropped to one knee in the shed doorway, breathed deeply in and out. He grabbed a handful of snow and rubbed his face with it, feeling its wet, stinging cold.

Slowly, he got back up and started his way back across the courtyard, making sure to avoid the killer’s footprints, his own feet clumsy blocks of wood beneath him in the crunchy ice and snow. With each gust of wind he could feel himself start to pitch over. Twice in the first ten steps he took, Mitch did go down. But he got back up both times, spitting snow out of his mouth. He had to get back up. If he stayed down, he would end up like Les. So he kept walking, one foot in front of the other, left foot, right foot… He was going to make it. Mitch knew this. He knew it because he had prepared for it—marched his way across the frozen tundra of Big
Sister each and every morning. He could do this. He
would
do this. Even if he did keep falling over. Even if this was starting to remind him less of his morning rounds than of Omar Sharif’s epic trek across Siberia in
Dr. Zhivago
… Left foot, right foot… Zhivago trying to get back from the front lines to his beloved Lara, to Julie Christie … Left foot, right foot… Once again, Mitch pitched over into the snow. This time, he really, really wanted to stay down. The snow felt so soft, like a pillow. He could sleep. He wanted to sleep. It was so hard to stay awake. But no, he had to get up. He must get up. Chest heaving, he climbed back onto his feet and resumed … Left foot, right foot… Left foot, right foot…

Now he was closing in on the kitchen porch. He’d nearly made it. It was slushy there under the overhang. Many wet shoe prints, none leading off anywhere else. Les’s killer had come this way.

Mitch threw open the door, immediately hearing Teddy and that damned piano. An old Ellington song. The kitchen floor was dry. The killer had taken off his boots before he came in. And done what, hidden them somewhere? Where was the killer now? And how on earth had he gotten in and out when Des was watching the hallway? Was everyone upstairs dead, too? Was
Des
dead?

He called out her name. Once, twice, three times. Heard the piano stop, heard footsteps.

And then Teddy came rushing across the kitchen toward him, looking pale and frightened. “My God, Mitch, what’s happened?”

“Des,” he groaned. “Have to see Des.”

And now he was staggering past Teddy out into the entry hall, groping his way blindly up the stairs, blinking from all of those flashbulbs that kept popping, popping … “I’m
ready for my close-up, Mr. DeMille
…” Teddy was calling after him, panic in his voice. But he was doing okay. He was making the climb on his legs of Silly Putty, getting there, getting there, almost there …

Only it wasn’t Des whom he encountered at the top of the stairs. It was Carly. She let out a horrified gasp at the sight of him, and Mitch could feel himself starting to pass out. His head was a balloon on a very long string, bouncing up, up, up against the ceiling. One of the
people way, way down below was Des. Alive, thank God. He saw her jump to her feet.

Heard her cry out, “What happened to your head?”

And,
whoosh
, there went the air right out of Mitch’s balloon. As he came
zoom-zooming
all the way back down from the ceiling, he croaked, “Les … the woodshed …” And then the hallway floor suddenly tilted to a forty-five-degree angle and headed right for him and he was gone again.

When he came to this time, Mitch was lying on the hallway floor with everyone standing over him looking terrified. All except for Des, who wasn’t around. And Hannah, who was kneeling on the carpet beside him, waving something stinky under his nose. Ammonia. It was ammonia.