The Burnt Orange Sunrise (27 page)

“What’s your name?” she barked as she shone a flashlight into his eyes.

“I’m Mitch,” he replied hoarsely. “We’ve already met, haven’t we?”

“Do you know where you are, Mitch?”

“Uhh … on the floor.”

“On the floor
where?”

“Astrid’s. Hannah, do you have to shine that light right in my eyes?”

“Mitch, you’ve taken a blow to the head and you’ve lost consciousness. I’m checking to see if your pupils are equal and reacting to light—which they are, so there’s no indication of brain damage. Good, good.” Hannah flicked off the light and gripped his hands tightly with hers. “Can you feel this?”

“Yes.”

“And what am I doing now, Mitch?”

“You mean, besides squeezing the hell out of my ankles?”

“Okay, this is all good. Can you sit up?”

“I can try.”

“Here, give me your hand, big guy,” Spence said, reaching his own hand down to him. The others just stood there, pie-eyed and mute.

Mitch grabbed hold and Spence pulled him up to a sitting position.
Hannah pressed something cold against the back of his head. It was a wet washcloth. A bloodied one already lay discarded on the rug next to him.

“Where’s Des?” he wanted to know.

“She’s checking out the woodshed,” Spence said. “She’ll be right back.”

“You got yourself quite some smack on the bean,” Hannah observed, examining his wound. “The bleeding seems to have stopped, but you should keep applying pressure for a little while longer. We can put some gauze over it later if it starts oozing. I don’t think you’ll need stitches.”

Mitch pressed the cold compress against the back of his head, peering at her. “Have you done this before?”

Hannah let out a big bray of a laugh. “When your mom’s a nurse you learn first aid before you can read and write.”

“Why don’t you let me see what I can do with that, Mitch?” Jory offered gently. She meant his blood- and brain-spattered jacket.

Mitch unzipped it and she helped him out of it and took it into one of the rooms.

“How long was I gone?” he wondered.

“Thirty seconds,” Carly answered in a trembly voice. “No more than that.”

“No, I mean outside. How long were we out there?”

“A few minutes,” Teddy said. “Ten, tops. And I was just sitting there playing the piano like a damned fool. I had no idea that anything out of the ordinary was going on, Mitch. I just figured you guys were loading up on wood.”

“We were,” Mitch said. “Until somebody hit me.”

And murdered Les. But Mitch didn’t need to say this part out loud. They already knew it. He could tell by the looks on their faces. By how they kept glancing around at each other. They were not safe. None of them was safe. They knew this. Because, somehow, the murderer in their midst had just managed to take out Les despite Des’s best efforts.

But how?

Mitch could not imagine. They had all been tucked inside their individual second-floor rooms, hadn’t they? Except for Carly, with whom Des had been eyeball to eyeball, and Teddy. But if Teddy had stopped playing the piano for even a few seconds, Des would have noticed that, right? Besides, Teddy’s trouser cuffs were dry, Mitch observed. They’d be soaking wet from the snow if he’d plowed his way out there and killed Les, wouldn’t they? Mitch’s certainly were. And yet Teddy’s were dry. Actually, everyone’s legs were dry, he realized, looking around at them. No one was wet. And yet one of them had just knocked him unconscious and killed Les.

But how?

Jory returned with his jacket, scrubbed reasonably clean of blood and brains. “Good as new,” she said, mustering a faint smile.

Mitch took it from her and thanked her.

Then he heard footsteps on the stairs and Des returned, her hooded shearling coat caked with fresh snow. “Are you okay, baby?” she asked, kneeling next to him with a fretful expression on her lovely face.

“I’m fine, totally okay. In fact, I’m going to get up off this carpet now.”

“Careful, you’ve suffered a concussion,” Hannah warned him.

“I don’t think so, actually,” Mitch said, slowly getting to his feet. “If I had, then I’d be experiencing short-term memory loss, and I’m not. And, believe me, I wish I were.”

Des clamped a hand around his arm just in case he felt teetery, which he didn’t. She said, “Okay, I’m going to have to ask you all to go back to your rooms.”

“What the devil for?” Aaron demanded.

“Because I said so.”

Aaron gaped at her, incredulous. “There’s a homicidal lunatic loose among us and that’s the best you can offer—go to your rooms? What are we, ill-behaved children?”

“He’s right,” Spence said. “It’s not as if we’ll be safe in our rooms. Or anywhere else in this damned place.”

“Just please go to your rooms.” Des kept her voice steady and firm. “You’ll all be fine.”

“No, we will not,” Aaron argued. “It is blatantly obvious that a fresh approach is called for. I say we stay together. As long as we’re all together, we’re safe.”

“I’m with you,” said Spence. “Let’s stick together in a group.”

“Gentlemen, we need to get something straight right damned now,” Des responded, drawing herself up to her full six-foot-one-inch height. Make that six-three in her boots. “This is not a consensual type of situation. I am in charge here.”

“And you have been a spectacular failure,” Aaron informed her. “Three of us have lost our lives so far on your watch. Believe me, when this nightmare is over I shall demand a full investigation of your conduct by the proper state authorities.”

“You go right ahead,” Des encouraged him, staying remarkably calm.

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.

“Anything?” 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.”