The Burnt Orange Sunrise

by David Handler

  “Why would you think that?”

  “Because Ada said they to me,” she replied. “Last night in the ladies’ lounge. We were talking about my work, or so I thought, when out of nowhere she said, ‘They will never, ever get it.’ Meaning this castle, I think. She was so cryptic about it, I wasn’t positive. I even wondered if maybe she wasn’t completely together in the head. But now I’m thinking that she knew something. Maybe something Norma told her. Something that got both of them killed. Ada wanted to have more words with me this morning. She was quite insistent about it. And whatever those words were, she didn’t want to say them in front of Les.”

  “I wonder how come.”

  “I wish I knew. I wish I’d managed to get her alone for a few minutes. But I didn’t. And that one’s on me.”

  “Don’t go blaming yourself for this, girlfriend.”

  “Mitch, I can’t help how I feel.”

  “If Ada didn’t want to speak to you in front of Les, then we have to take a good hard look at him, don’t we?”

  “For sure. Only, what’s his motive?”

  “You said it yourself. This place—it’s worth millions.”

  “Not to Les it’s not. Aaron gets it all. Les knew that. He’s the executor of Norma ’s estate.”

  “Then that makes Aaron the prime candidate, no?”

  “Aaron has the most to gain from Norma ’s death,” Des acknowledged. “Plus he has a girlfriend and a way pissed-off wife. Hell yeah, he’s our early front-runner.”

  “Do we know exactly where he was when Ada got strangled?”

  “He went upstairs looking for Carly is all we know right now.” Des started for the stairs, then stopped. “We do know something else—we know that the first murder was planned and the second one wasn’t.”

  “And how do we know that?”

  “Because whoever killed Norma would have gotten away with it if they hadn’t gone and killed Ada, too. Most likely, there’d have been no autopsy of Norma. Now there will definitely be one. And it will definitely turn something up. Count on it. The only way something this stupid goes down is if the play is blown. I’m talking total desperation, as in Ada accidentally seeing something, maybe. Something so heavy that the risk of her spilling it outweighed the risk of exposing Norma’s death to scrutiny. Real world, that is my idea of beyond desperation. That is plain, pure loco. Because, damn, we are snowed the hell in up here. No way Ada’s murder doesn’t fall on somebody.” Des shook her head disgustedly. “All right, enough of this. I’d better go do what I’ve got to do. Watch my back, okay?”

  “Absolutely. There’s nothing in the whole world I enjoy more than watching your back—with the possible exception of watching your front.”

  She stood there looking at him as if he were the loco one.

  “Sorry, I blather when I’m knocked out of my comfort zone. I know this about myself.” He parked his generous bottom in the chair, facing the hallway.

  “You’re doing good, baby,” she assured him. “It’s going to be okay.”

  “Sure it will.”

  Des was halfway down the stairs before she abruptly stopped and returned and said, “Okay, I have to know how it turns out.”

  “How what turns out, Des?”

  “This old movie of yours.”

  “Trust me, you really don’t want to know that.”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “No, you don’t.”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “Well, okay, you asked for it,” Mitch said, clearing his throat. “No one gets out alive.”

  “Oh, that’s just great.”

  CHAPTER 10

  “WE ARE ALL VICTIMS in the end.”

  Des photographed Ada Geiger’s body from a dozen different angles with the digital camera that she kept in the trunk of her cruiser. She moved nothing as she snapped her pictures, and she touched nothing. That would be a job for the crime scene technicians when they got there—if they got there. For now, her job was to produce photos and protect the scene, even though what she really wanted to do was sit down with her 18-by-24-inch Strathmore 400 drawing pad and a piece of graphite stick. She yearned to capture the spirit of fight that remained in Ada’s ancient, intricately lined face. The absence of fear in that face despite the certainty of what was coming.

  Acceptance without surrender.

  This was the essence of Ada Geiger in death. Yes, there was the unfathomable stillness. But there were also courage, defiance. Even in death, Ada Geiger spolie. And Des felt a desperate need to listen with her graphite stick. But there was no time for that now. It would have to wait for later, when she could take heed in her studio with these photos pinned to her easel.

  Right now, she had a killer to catch.

  Des took a quick look around for the gloves that Ada’s killer must have worn, taking care not to disturb anything. She found none. She did take the time to glance under the bed for them—a ritual of hers that dated back to one of the first cases she’d caught as a rookie in uniform. She’d found an East Granby woman lying dead on the bedroom floor of her home, stabbed sixteen times in the chest and neck. Des did not see the murder weapon anywhere. She was just about to call it in when, strictly as an afterthought, she’d thought to glance under the bed. That was where she found the bloody knife. If she hadn’t done that, she would have looked like a consummate bimbo when the Major Crime Squad people got there and found it. She’d never have lived that down. So she always looked under the bed when she caught a murder. Call it a superstition.

  There was nothing under Ada’s bed.

  Des went back out in the hall now and locked the door behind her. She stretched a length of yellow crime scene tape across the doorframe, sealing it off.

  “Find anything?” Mitch asked anxiously from his guard post at the top of the stairs.

  “Not so much as a dust bunny.”

  She unlocked the room next door and went in to photograph Norma, well aware that this crime scene had already been thoroughly compromised. Les had been alone in here with her before he’d called out to them. Hell, he had been in the damned bed with her. Ada had come in to say good-bye to Norma, as had Teddy.

  When Des was done snapping her photographs, she slipped on a pair of latex gloves and had herself a closer look at Norma. Opened an eyelid, shining her flashlight into Norma’s eye. No hemorrhaging of the blood vessels. This told her that Norma had not been smothered with a pillow. Nor had she been strangled. Not that there was any obvious indication of strangulation. There was no bruising on her neck—or at least none that was visible to Des’s naked eye. An autopsy might prove otherwise, of course. She examined Norma’s scalp for wounds. Gently lifted her heavy head, fingering the back of it for welts or bruises. Nothing. There was no broken skin, no trace of blood on the pillow underneath. She examined the surface of the quilt that Norma lay under, searching for any hairs or fibers that might be foreign to her person. Nothing obvious jumped out at her. Carefully, she pulled the quilt back, followed by the blanket and sheet. Les had not neatened Norma’s flannel nightshirt when he’d tidied her. It was all bunched up around her thighs. Des pulled it up toward Norma’s neck, shining the light around on her mammoth, fleshy nakedness. A gross violation of the lady’s dignity, to be sure. But there was absolutely no way to be delicate when it came to examining the dead. Des found no obvious bruises or welts or cuts. The sheet underneath Norma appeared to be free of bloodstains. Also semen stains.

  If the medical examiner and crime scene technicians had been standing right there alongside of her, Des would have flopped Norma over onto her stomach now and proceeded to check out her backside. But she was alone, and didn’t want to disturb the crime scene any further. So she stretched the quilt back over Norma, knowing full well that she’d already done quite a bit more than a first responder was typically supposed to do. There were two reasons for this. One was that she didn’t know when the crime scene technicians would get there. The other was that Des had been in the game. Once you hav
e, it’s damned hard to pull yourself back.

  Especially when it’s not in your nature to pull back

  There was the half-empty water glass on Norma’s nightstand. Des bent down and sniffed at it. No odor. Not chlorine, not sulphur, not anything. And there was no mineral residue in the bottom of the glass. Still, she carefully bagged and tagged it. Norma’s copy of Ten North Frederick, the one that Teddy had given her, lay there on the nightstand, too. Recalling just how anxious he’d been to get it back, Des picked it up and flipped through the pages. About a third of the way in she found an Astrid’s Castle bookmark. Nothing else. Not until she glanced at the title page and found this inscription written lightly in pencil:

  TO N—MTYK—T

  Which explained why he wanted the book back. Because here it was for anyone, specifically Les, to see. Written proof of their secret love, signified by the initials of that song of theirs, “More Than You Know.” As Des stood there studying the inscription, she found herself wondering just how deeply Teddy might be involved in these deaths. She knew he had loved Norma. She knew he needed money. How did these two facts fit together? Did they fit together?

  The nightstand had one drawer. She slid it open, found an assortment of hand creams inside, also Vaseline, Vicks VapoRub, nasal spray, a couple of old wristwatches, spare eyeglasses, key chains, a deck of playing cards. Nothing, in other words.

  Norma’s prescription bottles were on the bottom shelf of the medicine chest over the bathroom sink. Here Des found the bottle of Synthroid tablets that Les had told her Norma took for her underactive thyroid. Also Norma’s two hormone-replacement drugs, Prometrium and Premarin. And her heart medication, digoxin, which was marketed under the brand name Lanoxicap. This prescription, like the others, had been filled at Dorset Pharmacy. It also came with a red flag of a warning label:

  Be sure you understand how and when to take this medication. Do not change your dosage unless your doctor tells you to do so.

  According to the label, Norma’s prescribed dosage of Lanoxicap was two capsules twice a day. The bottle had contained 120 capsules when it was full—a thirty-day supply. The label was dated twelve days ago. Therefore, Des figured, it should contain no less than seventy-two capsules. She opened the lid, poured the capsules out into her hand and counted them out, returning them to the bottle one by one. She arrived at a total of eighty capsules. Nothing out of the ordinary there.

  Still, she bagged and tagged all of Norma’s meds, then went and asked Mitch to fetch Les from room ten. Quickly, she closed the door and scampered over to the bed and listened closely. From there, she could hear Mitch’s footsteps creak on the floorboards. Hear him tap on Les’s door. Hear the door open, the low murmur of voices, the door close, footsteps approach. She could hear it all, just as Teddy had told her he had heard it all in the night.

  Les Josephson was continuing to diminish right before her eyes. The hale and hearty innkeeper looked positively ashen, his posture hunched, his movements slow and unsure as he shut the door behind him. It was beginning to dawn on Des just how much of his usual robust chestiness was sheer willpower on his part. Minus that willpower, he was rapidly turning into a sad little old man.

  “How may I help you, Des?” he asked softly, his eyes carefully avoiding the bed.

  “By telling me why you rearranged her, Les,” Des said to him, not unkindly.

  “I told you, I wanted her to look nice.”

  “And how did she look? What position did you find her lying in?”

  Les considered this carefully, his eyes continuing to steer clear of Norma. He absolutely wouldn’t look at her. “She was on her side, kind of.”

  “You mean like a prenatal position?”

  “No, it was more like she was on her back with one leg thrown over the other. And her hair was quite messy and, well, clammy. So I combed it.”

  “Which comb did you use?”

  “The one that’s there on her dressing table,” he said, pointing to the small mirrored table by the bathroom door.

  She went over to it and said, “This wooden comb?”

  “Yes.”

  Des bagged and tagged it and set it on the mantel next to Norma’s pills and water glass. She took her time doing this, watching Les shift his weight from one foot to the other, growing steadily more uncomfortable in the presence of his cold dead wife. This was not a very nice thing for her to do, but hers was not always a very nice job.

  “Is there anything else I should know about, Les? Besides you rearranging her and combing her hair, I mean.”

  “I don’t believe so, no.”

  “You didn’t dispose of anything or pocket anything?”

  Les frowned. “Such as what?”

  “That’s what I’m asking you.”

  “No, I didn’t,” he said distractedly, running a hand through his hair. “Look, could we talk about this somewhere else?”

  “Les, I know you’ve suffered a real blow today, but this is official business. Questions need to be asked. And you need to answer them, okay?”

  Les turned to face the windows, his back to the bed. “Okay,” he said dully.

  “Are you sticking to your story that you slept straight through the night? Because if you want to change it, now is the time.”

  “It’s not a story,” he protested. “It’s the truth.”

  “You honestly didn’t hear Norma go downstairs in the middle of the night?”

  “I honestly didn’t, I swear.”

  “Take a minute, Les,” she cautioned him. “It’s possible that you remember something without realizing it. Like, say, Norma getting back into bed with you, snuggling up close. She would have been real cold from being downstairs, in need of warming up.”

  “I don’t remember anything like that,” Les insisted, watching the swirling, windblown snowflakes smack against the window. Des was tired of looking out at the snow herself. In fact, she’d be happy if it never snowed again for as long as she lived. “And, quite frankly, I don’t see the point of this,” he added reproachfully.

  “I’m trying to figure out what happened.”

  “We know what happened. Norma ’s heart gave out. There’s nothing complicated or sinister about it. To suggest otherwise is a real reach. And I resent it.”

  “Les, how much do you know about Ada’s finances?”

  “I know the old girl never really cared much about money,” he answered. “She gave away most of her father’s fortune to various political causes over the years. She owned her villa in Italy, the town-house in London. And she still had a pretty steady royalty income. Those old plays of Luther’s are considered classics. They still study them in drama classes.”

  “What about this remake of Ten Cent Dreams} How was she going to make out from that?”

  “Quite well. It’s based on her original work, so they had to pay her a decent sum.”

  “Are we talking six figures?”

  “I’d imagine so, plus a percentage of the profits. Plus they’re reissuing the original. There’s a book of her photos coming out, too. There’s no question that Ada was looking at a lot of new income. I can’t tell you how much because I genuinely don’t know. But Ada did raise the subject with us the very first night she got here. She’d already been in contact with Bruce Nadel about it.”

  “And Bruce Nadel is…?”

  “The fellow in New York who handled her legal affairs. He’s on West Fifty-sixth Street. His father, Bert, was Ada’s lawyer before him. She wanted us to know that she was leaving her entire estate to the American Civil Liberties Union. She claimed that the ACLU needed the money because our government was no longer protecting the rights of individuals, only those of corporations. Her words, not mine.”

  “How was Norma with this news?”

  “Fine. She certainly wasn’t surprised.”

  “And Aaron, how was he?”

  “Predictably furious. Not because she was giving it away, but because she was giving it to a gang of failed paleo-socia
lists. His words, not mine. My own view was that it was her money and she could do as she wished with it.”

  “You weren’t worried?”

  Les frowned at her. “What about?”

  “Keeping this place afloat.”

  “When you run a big place like Astrid’s, you never come out ahead,” he answered carefully. “Your profits, assuming you have any, get plowed right back into the business. Something always needs repairing or replacing. It’s a lot like running a farm, in that sense. But we’ve been keeping our heads above water. We do okay.”

  “I know that Aaron comes into the castle now that Norma is gone,” Des stated. “As her executor, you’re in a position to know if she provided for anyone else, am I right?”

  “You are. And she did. She made provisions in her will for several others.”

  “Such as who?”

  “Well, there’s Teddy. And the kids, Jory and Jase.”

  “You didn’t mention that to Aaron this morning.”

  “I know I didn’t. It’s none of his damned business.”

  “May I ask you how much money we’re talking about?”

  “Actually, I don’t think you have a right to ask me that. The terms of Norma ’s will are confidential until it’s been filed with the Court of Probate.”

  “I have every right to ask. Just as you have every right to not answer. You’re not obligated to, but if you want to help me …”

  “I do want to help. Really, I do.” Les fell silent a moment, making up his mind. “Strictly between us, Norma left fifty thousand apiece to Jory and Jase. Seed money, so they can start up a small business or buy a home or whatever. She wanted them to be provided for.”

  “Are the two of them aware of this?”