The Burnt Orange Sunrise

by David Handler

  “You’d better join us in the kitchen, Teddy,” Les said.

  “I’m playing the piano,” Teddy insisted. “You’ll know where I am—you’ll be able to hear me. Hell, Des will be able to hear me all the way upstairs. So what the hell difference does it make?”

  “Fine, go ahead,” Mitch said, because there was no stopping him. Teddy’s need to play was too urgent.

  He and Les headed into the kitchen, where Les sat at the big trestle table with his shoulders slumped, staring at nothing. Mitch wiped the cold grease out of the bacon skillet with a paper towel, added butter and a little milk to the egg pan. Then he fired up the two burners under them with a kitchen match. While he waited for the pans to heat back up, he chomped on some of the French bread, which was rapidly taking on the character of biscotti.

  In the Sunset Lounge, Teddy launched into a slow, heartfelt rendition of “More than You Know,” the same song he’d been playing earlier that morning. Mitch felt quite certain that he would never, ever hear that song again without thinking of being stranded up here at Astrid’s Castle in the middle of this ice storm with those two dead women.

  “That was their song,” Les mentioned to him quietly.

  “Whose?” asked Mitch, gazing out the kitchen windows at the snow. It was coming down so hard he could barely see across the courtyard.

  “Teddy and Norma. They loved each other for years and years. They thought I didn’t know. But you always know, Mitch. Love can’t hide.”

  The pans were getting good and hot now. Mitch laid the cold cooked bacon strips back in, then went to work on the eggs, stirring them into the sizzling butter and milk. “Yet she married you, Les,” he pointed out.

  “That’s right, she did. And we were happy together. Or as happy as any married couple can ever really be, which is not very.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Because the love goes away, that’s why. If you’re lucky, you can maintain a degree of affection. Not wake up every morning hating each other’s guts. But the love can’t last. Never has, never will. That’s a myth.”

  “I don’t know that I agree, Les. It doesn’t stay the same, I’ll grant you that. But it can grow.” Not that Mitch had ever put this theory to the test. Maisie had died on him before their second anniversary. Maybe her endearing little eccentricities and foibles would have grown to annoy him. Maybe his endless hours in a screening room would have driven her into the arms of some alpha go-getter with wavy blond hair and a functioning set of social skills. Maybe Les was right, and they would have ended up hating each other.

  But Mitch refused to believe this.

  The bacon was sizzling and the eggs were hot again. Mitch found plates and forks and served them heaping portions. They dived in like starved field hands. It all tasted remarkably like school cafeteria chow, but Mitch was in no mood to be fussy. “If two people end up unhappy,” he said, munching, “it simply means they didn’t belong with each other in the first place.”

  “You’re still a young man, Mitch,” Les responded as he ate. “Listen to someone who has a few years on you: The longer any couple stays together, the worse it gets. You let each other down too many times, shatter each other’s dreams. Believe me, I’ve seen it happen. My first wife, Hildy, dumped me less than three years after we got out of college. That’s how long it took her to realize I wasn’t going to become the next Stephen Sondheim, just the next Lester Josephson. As for my second wife, Janice, that was my doing.”

  “What happened?” Mitch asked as Teddy continued to serenade them from the Sunset Lounge.

  “Nothing, really. I just woke up one morning and realized that all she and I had to look forward to in life was growing old and sick and scared together. I couldn’t deal with it, so I fled. Left her to raise our little boy, Tyler, on her own. Tyler’s in his junior year of high school now. Hates my guts even more than Janice does. Never so much as speaks to me. Down the road, when he has kids of his own, he’ll never let them meet me. And when I’m lying on my deathbed in some hospital somewhere, tubes sticking out of my nose, he won’t come to me. I know this. And I can’t blame him. Hell, I abandoned the poor little bastard. But I couldn’t help myself, Mitch. You see, I have this crazy idea that I’m supposed to be happy. Spent too damned many years in advertising, I guess. Writing TV commercials about impossibly happy people leading impossibly happy lives—all thanks to that brand of miracle fabric softener or toilet bowl cleaner they’re using. If you do that long enough, Mitch, you start to believe in it. Hell, you have to believe in it if you want to be good at your job. The downside is that you can’t help measuring your own life against the one that you’re creating. You start expecting your own forty-two-year-old housewife with her forty-two-year-old butt to look like a twenty-year-old fashion model, because, damn it, that’s who plays forty-two-year-old housewives in TV commercials. Everything’s enhanced, prettified, fake. Mind you, on Madison Avenue, we don’t call fake. We call it aspirational.”

  Mitch cleaned his plate with a chunk of bread, studying Les. “What will you do with yourself now—stay here or get back in the game?”

  “Short-term, that’s Aaron’s call,” Les replied. “Long-term, I’m a sixty-two-year-old man in a young person’s game. They don’t want someone like me anymore. They want the MTV crowd. Edgy, outrageous. Kids selling to kids. Being candid, I’m not even sure I understand what they’re selling anymore. I saw a commercial on TV the other night for this new palm-sized communication thing and I swear I didn’t know whether they were pushing the thing or the software inside of the thing or the satellite provider that hooks your thing up with somebody else’s thing. I’ve been out of it for too long, Mitch. I’m a dinosaur.” Les finished his breakfast and gazed around at the quaint, roomy old kitchen. “My time here with Norma has been like an escape from reality for me. Right now, I can’t imagine what I’ll do if I have to leave. Maybe I’ll just stay right here in Dorset.”

  “And do what?”

  Les didn’t say. Instead, he groaned, “God, I wish that man would play something else.” Teddy was still working his way through a seemingly endless series of riffs on that same song, their song. “Have you had enough to eat, Mitch?”

  “No, never. But this will hold me.”

  “We’d better go get that firewood.”

  Des had put yellow crime tape over the dishwasher, so Mitch made do with putting their dishes in the sink while Les grabbed work gloves and a storm jacket from out of the mudroom. Mitch had stashed his own outer gear in the entry-hall coatroom when he came in from logging duty. Les tagged along with him while he fetched it.

  “Teddy had better come with us,” Mitch said as he got into his down jacket. Its outer layer was still wet from working out in the ice. The same went for Spence’s jacket hanging next to it. “We’re supposed to stick together.”

  They headed into the Sunset Lounge, where Les called out, “Grab your coat, Teddy. We’re going out for firewood.”

  Teddy smiled thinly at them from behind the keyboard, but did not respond. Or stop playing.

  “Des wants us to stick together, Teddy,” Mitch added. “Let’s go.”

  “This piano is all that stands between me and a total meltdown,” Teddy said in a firm, quiet voice. “If you try to pry my fingers from it, I will die. I am not exaggerating.”

  “You need to come with us, Teddy.”

  “That’s not going to happen, Mitch. Kindly leave me be. I’m not a danger to anyone. I’ll be fine right here, just as long as I can keep on playing.”

  “You know, I really can’t deal with this right now,” Les huffed impatiently. “Let’s just leave him.”

  “Fair enough,” Mitch agreed, because there was truly no point in discussing this any further with Teddy. The man wasn’t budging.

  He and Les returned to the kitchen and charged out the back door into the stormy outdoors. It was so cold in the castle that it didn’t even seem that nasty out, even though the wind was howling and the sn
ow stung their faces. It was a wet, heavy snow. At least four inches had fallen so far on top of last night’s ice. The footing was poor, the walking excruciatingly slow. It went something like this: First Mitch’s right foot sank down through the fresh snow, then held for a brief moment, then crashed through the icy crust with a kerchunk down into the older snow underneath. No sooner would he yank it up and out, then, kerchunk his left foot would crash on through.

  The simple act of putting one foot in front of the other had never been so arduous.

  The woodshed’s barn-style doors opened outward. It took both of them, with an assist from a snow shovel, to horse them open through the crunchy snow cover. Inside, a wheelbarrow sat on the hard dirt floor next to cords of stacked, seasoned hardwood, maple and hickory mostly. Tools hung everywhere from nails driven into the wall joists—an ax and maul, hatchets, pickaxes, shovels, forks, loops of garden hose. A riding mower waited there patiently for spring, which right now seemed so far off into the future as to be unimaginable.

  Les immediately started loading up on firewood, the logs landing with a thundering crash in the empty wheelbarrow. “Mitch, you asked me what I’d do with myself if I stayed here in Dorset,” he said, sounding a bit uneasy. “Confidentially, I do have something of a romantic attachment. I’ve been seeing someone else for several months. She’s a local woman, married.”

  Mitch dropped an armload of logs into the wheelbarrow. “Is that right?” he said, keeping his voice neutral.

  “I’m afraid so. I wasn’t totally candid about it with Des. I should have been, but it was very difficult for me. You see, Norma was right there in the room with us. And I just couldn’t make myself say the words out loud. Not in front of Norma. I couldn’t betray her to her face that way. I knew, I know that she’s dead, and couldn’t hear me. But I didn’t want to admit it to myself—that she wasn’t there anymore, I mean. I just couldn’t. Does this make any damned sense at all to you?”

  “Yes, it does.”

  Les dropped another armload in the wheelbarrow, his chest heaving. “Dumb move on my part, really, because Des is bound to find out the truth once she starts nosing around. In Dorset there’s no such thing as a secret. Not when it involves sex between two consenting adults. Would you mind telling her, Mitch? Would you do that for me?”

  “If you’d like,” Mitch replied, loading more wood. “Mind you, she’ll want to know who this other woman is.”

  “Naturally,” Les acknowledged. “But will it be necessary to involve the woman in this? What’s your opinion?”

  “How should I know, Les? I’m totally in the dark. I don’t even know why Des needs to know any of this.”

  “Because it speaks to motive, that’s why.”

  “Whose motive?”

  “Mine,” Les said replied. “For murdering Norma.”

  “Are you saying you did?”

  “No, of course not. But I do come into a certain amount of money now. Two hundred thousand, to be exact. That’s not a fortune, but it’s not chopped liver.”

  “What are you planning to do with it?”

  “Set up a trust fund for Tyler, I imagine. But I don’t really know for sure. I haven’t given it much thought.” Les paused from his labors, swiping at his uncombed silver hair with a gloved hand. “Oh, hell, it’s Martha Burgess, okay? Martha’s who I’m involved with.”

  Mitch knew the woman. Martha and her husband, Bob, operated Dorset’s quaintest little inn, the Frederick House. Mitch had stayed there when he first came to town, as had Des when her house was being renovated. It was a nice place, and the Burgesses seemed like nice, hardworking people. Martha was maybe forty-five, thin, plain, kind of on the mousy side. Hardly Mitch’s mental picture of a steamy, two-timing wife, which ran more along the lines of Barbara Stanwyck in Double Indemnity.

  “The two of us got to know each other through the Chamber of Commerce,” Les went on. “Martha and Bob have been having their problems, marital and financial. They’re in a real hole. Weekend tourism is way down. People just don’t seem to have the money anymore for high-end romantic getaways.”

  So the high-end innkeepers had the getaways themselves, Mitch concluded, thinking about what Les had just said to him in the kitchen: I have this crazy idea that I’m supposed to be happy. And thinking about something else—Norma’s $200,000 could go a long way toward helping the Frederick House out of its financial hole. So possibly Les did have an exit strategy. Possibly he was planning to ease Bob Burgess out and move in on Martha, securing himself a new innkeeping berth in the bargain. It sure sounded like a plan to Mitch. He wondered if Bob Burgess had the slightest idea of what might be going on. Or if he cared. Hell, maybe Bob was busy working on an exit strategy of his very own. “Not that it’s any of my business, Les,” he said, “but did Norma know about you and Martha?”

  “If she did, she didn’t let on. But my best guess is no. She detested the village hens and their gossip. And Martha and I have been very discreet. We meet up in Higganum at her sister Susie’s apartment. Susie’s single and travels a lot on business.”

  “What about Ada? Is there any chance she found out?”

  “I can’t imagine how,” Les replied. “Not unless Norma knew and told her, and she and Ada weren’t that kind of tight. The old girl never really felt much love for Norma, in my opinion. She didn’t even bother to fly in for our wedding. Can you imagine that? A mother not coming to her own daughter’s wedding?”

  “Has Martha heard the news yet? Have you phoned her about Norma?”

  “I haven’t so much as thought about it. Of course, now that I’m a widower, I’ll probably scare the poor woman right back into the arms of her husband.”

  Then again, maybe not. Maybe Martha was already well aware that Norma was dead. Maybe she and Les had joined together to bump Norma off and ease Bob out. Maybe.

  They each dumped another armload of wood in the wheelbarrow, nearly filling it.

  “We should stop right there,” Mitch cautioned. “If it’s too heavy, we’ll never be able to push it back through that snow.”

  “Agreed. We’ll come back for a second load.”

  Les started to maneuver the loaded wheelbarrow toward the barn doors. A couple of logs worked loose from the top of the pile and rolled onto the dirt floor. Mitch bent over to pick them up. When he stood back up, he discovered that Les was studying him with a worried look on his face.

  “Mitch, I’ve just told you something in the absolute strictest confidence. I’m counting on you to tell Des and no one else.”

  “No problem, Les. You can count on me.”

  “Considering the circumstances, I probably shouldn’t have told you this at all,” Les added, swallowing. “You see, there’s one more little wrinkle that I’m not especially proud of. And I … I guess it might be pretty necessary for Des to know about it.”

  Mitch turned and put the stray logs back on the woodpile. “What is it, Les?”

  Les didn’t tell him.

  Instead, there was a sudden flurry of movement behind Mitch and before Mitch could whirl around to see what it was, he felt a tremendous crack on the back of his head—an awful, blinding blow that sent him pitching forward. And now the cold dirt floor was rushing right up toward him. And now he was smacking face-first right down into that dirt, of that dirt, going, going …

  Gone.

  CHAPTER 12

  “I’M SO SORRY ABOUT what’s happened this morning,” Des said to Aaron Ackerman. “You must be feeling totally blown away.”

  “I don’t know how I’m feeling, quite honestly,” Aaron responded softly. “I’ve had no chance to absorb it yet, let alone grieve. I only know that I’ve lost the only family I had left in the world.”

  “You still have Carly,” she reminded him, thinking that he hadn’t mentioned Teddy either.

  Aaron said nothing in response. Not one word.

  The two of them sat facing each other at the top of the stairs, Des’s chair positioned so that she was able to
eyeball the corridor as well as Aaron. No one could leave any of the second-floor rooms without her seeing them.

  Downstairs, Teddy had been drawn back to the piano. The sweet, sad strains of “More Than You Know” resonated throughout the castle’s cavernous entry hall. Des felt certain that she would never hear that melody again without associating it with Teddy and Norma. She also felt certain that she would not want to hear it again for a really long time.

  A bruised quiet had descended upon Aaron. He seemed humbled by the deaths of his mother and grandmother. When Des knocked on his door she’d found him at the desk tapping away at a battery-powered laptop, so lost in thought that he’d scarcely heard her. When she told him she needed to take his statement, his response wasn’t the least bit arrogant or petulant.

  “Whatever you wish,” he sighed defeatedly. “I want to do what I can to help.”

  Which intrigued Des. Why was Aaron suddenly acting so unlike himself? Was this simply his honest human grief showing itself, or was it something else? Something like, say, guilt? Because Des had by no means forgotten who stood to gain the most from Norma’s death. It was this man who sat facing her now.

  “I have to ask you some questions that may seem insensitive at a time like this,” she began. “Believe me, I’m not trying to cause you any extra pain. But it’s important that we go over this while it’s still fresh in your memory.”

  “I understand,” Aaron said. “You may begin.”

  “For starters, let’s run through where you were when Ada was attacked. Jory had just come into the taproom to say breakfast was ready. As I recall, Carly took off upstairs, and you went up after her. Is that about right?”

  “It is,” he said. “She was rather steamed, apparently. I was trying to calm her down.”

  “And how did that work out for you?”

  Aaron fell silent for a moment. “I’ve been going about things the wrong way,” he said, gazing not so much at Des as through her. Briefly, she felt as if she weren’t even there. “I should be trying to follow Grandmother’s example, I now realize. What I mean to say is, her death has shone a light on my true mission in life.”