The burnt orange sunrise

CHAPTER 13

Les 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.

“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.”

“Maybe that’s it. Ada did tell you they wanted this place.”

“That she did,” Des acknowledged. “What were you and Les talking about before you got knocked out? Did he give you any news we can use?”

“He may have. It turns out he was getting it on with Martha Burgess.”

Des raised her eyebrows in surprise. “From the Frederick House? Well, well…”

“She doesn’t exactly seem like the type, does she?”

“Mitch, there is no type. Wives who sleep around on their husbands are just normal everyday women like Martha. Although she is awful quiet, I’ll give you that. Her husband, Bob, is the talker of the pair. A real Mr. Outgoing.”

“Somewhat like Les in that regard, don’t you think? Not that I mean to speak ill of the dead. He told me he couldn’t admit it to you out loud in front of Norma, even if she was dead. He was ashamed, I think.”

“Well, I can buy that. Do you think Norma knew who it was?”

“If she did, she never let on. Les did say that they’d been ultra-discreet. If I had to guess, I’d say neither Norma nor Bob knew about the two of them. Actually, Les said maybe he shouldn’t have told me, under the circumstances.”

Des frowned. “What circumstances?”

“Apparently, there’s another little wrinkle he thought you should know about.”

“What little wrinkle?”

“Des, I wish I knew. But that’s when everything went black. I’m afraid we’ll never find out.”

“Oh, we’ll find out,” she vowed.

“You think so?”

“I do. It may take a while, but we’ll get there.”

“Des, there’s something I’ve been wondering about.”

“And that is…?”

“Why am I still alive? Why didn’t Les’s killer murder me, too?”

“Didn’t need to, didn’t want to.”

“Why not?”

“I honestly don’t know. But it’s a mistake to think that what’s happening here is some elaborate scheme to do away with all of us, one by one by one. That’s strictly out of that old movie you were talking about.”

“You mean the one where no one gets out alive?”

“Really wasn’t necessary to say that part out loud again.”

“Sorry, I have a head wound.”

“This is real life, Mitch. If somebody wants a whole bunch of people dead they line them all up in a row and shoot them down like dogs. End of story. Norma’s death was planned ahead of time. But I still say everything that’s happened since reeks of a busted play-Ada had to die because of what she found out, and so did Les. Now did he tell you anything else? Think hard.”

“He said that the Frederick House is having financial problems. It occurred to me that maybe he intended to buy his way in with the two hundred thou Norma left him. Take Martha for his own and shove Bob Burgess out the door.”

“Sounds like a plan,” Des concurred. “Mind you, that would point the motive finger right at Bob Burgess for killing him. Too bad Bob’s not here at the present time.”

Which jarred something in Mitch’s head. Something significant that he’d forgotten. “Des, how do we know he’s not here?”

She looked at him closely. “Baby, do you need another hit of ammonia?”

“No, wait, hear me out. I just remembered something. When I got up to feed our fire in the middle of the night, I could have sworn I heard someone walking around up on the third floor. Astrid’s Castle is a huge place with millions of nooks and crannies. What if someone else has been hiding up here with us this whole time? Someone like Bob Burgess. That would explain how Les’s killer managed to slip out right under your nose-because he wasn’t under your nose. He was hiding somewhere else in the castle, waiting for his chance to kill Les. Although why Bob would want to kill Norma and Ada, too, I can’t possibly…” Mitch suddenly realized that Des was staring at him with a really strange look on her face. “You think I’ve suffered permanent head damage, don’t you?”

“Far from it. While you were outside with Les, Carly told me that she heard footsteps up on the third floor in the night.”

“Well, that settles it then,” Mitch said, gazing slowly up at the ceiling. “We’ve got company.”

“Slow down, cowboy. It’s very likely that what you two heard was nothing more than the wind.”

“Then again, it could have been Astrid.”

“You just said what to me?”

“There’s this thing they do for the tourists every year on Halloween,” Mitch explained. “Which is that Astrid, that she, you know

…”

“Mitch, believe me when I say this-I don’t know.”

“She haunts the castle. Her ghost, I mean.”

“Okay, this is your head trauma talking now,” Des said, nodding to herself. “Random gas is emitting from your person.”

“Are you trying to tell me you don’t believe in ghosts?”

“Are you trying to tell me you do?”

“Well, I certainly don’t disbelieve in them. How can I? There are just too many things that happen in life which can’t be explained.”

“Like what, for instance?”

“Like us.”

She stiffened at once. “Oh, is that right?”

“I mean this in a good way, Des. Just think about it…”

“Oh, I’m thinking about it, boyfriend. I am sitting here, thinking.”

“We come from completely different worlds. We share no common experiences and have no earthly business being together, making each other so unbelievably happy. And yet we are happy. And that can’t be explained by any conventional wisdom, can it?”

She let this sink in for a moment before she swallowed and said, “Well, no, you’re not wrong about that. But, Mitch…?”

“Yes, Des?”

“We are not ghosts!”

“I know this, and I for one am very happy about it.”

“Besides which, we are no longer talking about what we need to be talking about.”

“Which is…?”

“One of us needs to take a look around upstairs. I can’t leave this hallway, because I’m still clinging to the quaint notion that our killer is a corporeal individual, as opposed to Casper, the unfriendly ghost. Do you feel well enough to nose around up there?”

“Try and stop me.”

She fished a master key from her coat pocket and tossed it to him. “You’d better take this, too,” she said, handing him her heavy black Mag-Lite flashlight. “Bang it on the floor if you need me. I’ll come running.”

He got up out of his chair and started for the stairs. “Should we establish any kind of code? Say, three knocks means trouble, two knocks means-”

“Just smack the damned floor, will you?” she growled at him. “Hold on, there’s something else I want to tell you.”

“What is it?”

She came toward him, her eyes shiny and huge, and hugged him tightly. “When I saw you coming upstairs just now, looking the way you did, all of the air went right out of my body. I thought I was going to die. I know we can’t be explained, and I don’t care. I only care about how I feel.”

“Back at you, slats,” he said, kissing her softly, then not so softly.

Then she gave him a firm shove and up the stairs he went, clutching the Mag-Lite like a billy club. When he reached the top of the stairs, he encountered locked double doors that closed off the third-floor corridor entirely. Mitch used the master key and went in, closing the door behind him.

The third floor was very much like the second. Twenty-four rooms. More photos of famous guests of yesteryear lining the walls. More floral carpeting. That same steel door to the staff stairs halfway down the hall, a “Fire Exit” sign mounted over it. The only obvious difference that struck Mitch was that there was no door out to the observation deck at the end of the hall. Just a window. The air was exceedingly still up there. Freezing cold, too. It couldn’t have been more than forty-five degrees. The room doors had all been left wide open, casting shafts of weak winter light out into the hall. Mitch stood still for a long moment, listening. He could hear his heart pounding, blood rushing in his ears. He could hear nothing else.

He began to search, the carpeted floorboards creaking under his feet. He started in the first room on his left, room twenty-five, which was directly above the room where Norma lay dead. He found a bed that had no linens on it. Just a bare mattress. He found a bathroom that had no towels, no soap, no sterilized water glasses. The bathroom door was thrown open wide and held in place with a wastebasket. So was the closet door. Something to do with ventilation, Mitch guessed. When he shone his light around in the closet, he found only empty hangers. He went across to room 26, and found it to be virtually identical.

From the third-floor windows Mitch could make out Big Sister’s lighthouse standing tall and proud down at the mouth of the Connecticut River. Mammoth tree trunks and chunks of ice were flowing out into Long Island Sound-the very stuff that he would find washed up on Big Sister’s slender beach when he made it back there. If he ever made it back there. It seemed as if his life out on Big Sister had been a million years ago. It seemed as if he’d always been here at Astrid’s Castle and he always would be here. Time had stopped. Life had stopped.

But Soave hadn’t steered Des wrong-the snow really did seem to be letting up.

As he moved on to the next empty room, Mitch thought he sensed movement behind him in the corridor. But when he turned around, there was no one and nothing. Just the deserted hallway. He was spooked, that was all. It couldn’t be anything else-anything like, say, Astrid’s spirit wafting through the air. Not a chance. No way. Mitch steadied himself, breathing in and out, and continued his search. He found more open doors, more bare mattresses, more nothing. There was no evidence that anyone was hiding up here. He was sure of this.

Until he went in room 31, that is. And once again sensed movement, heard movement-and then Mitch saw something out of the corner of his eye and he whirled and an immense pure white Maine coon cat leaped off of the dresser right into his arms, where it began to dig its front paws into Mitch’s chest and purr and purr, just as friendly as can be.

“Well, hello there,” Mitch said, standing there stroking it while he waited for his resting pulse rate to dip back down below 185. It was a beautiful cat with startlingly bright blue eyes and the longest, softest fur Mitch had ever felt. A she, by the look of things. “What are you doing up here all by yourself, girl? You must be the lone-somest pussy cat around.” He put her back down on the dresser. Or tried to. She immediately jumped right back into his arms, scrambling up on top of his shoulder now, with her front paws thrown over onto his back.

Together, they moved deeper into the room. The mattress in here was bare, just as in the other rooms. But there was more than one bed in room 31. On the floor next to the bathroom doorway Mitch found a cat bed lined with blankets and chock-full of rubber mousy toys. The bathroom did not smell particularly fresh-the litter box in there needed emptying. Kibble and water dishes were positioned on a rubber bath mat. There were plastic storage tubs of kibble and kitty litter, a litter scoop.

There were also two hand towels on the towel rack. Both towels were damp, Mitch discovered. Somebody had been up here recently. Somebody had used these towels.

He moved back out into the bedroom with the cat in his arms and his wheels spinning. So this explained the footsteps that he and Carly had heard in the night. Someone must have been up here feeding this cat, which was living up here on the unheated third floor all alone because… well, why was she living up here all alone?

She was starting to wriggle around in his arms, so he put her down. She promptly began rubbing up against his leg and yowling at him.

“Well, you’re quite the little talker, aren’t you?”

In response, she darted toward the open closet and went inside. Mitch followed her, shining his flashlight around in there. Nothing. Just another empty closet. And yet the cat kept circling around and around in there, eager with anticipation.

“What is it, girl?”

She let out another yowl and began sharpening her claws on the carpet, her excitement mounting. The carpet in the closet was not the same as in the bedroom. It was newer and cheaper, made of some kind of synthetic material. Something that hadn’t been installed particularly well. Sections of it lifted away from the floor as the cat’s claws grabbed hold and pulled.

In fact, the far corner over against the wall hadn’t even been tacked down at all.

Mitch knelt there with the flashlight for a closer look. Strips of one-inch wooden molding were tacked in where the floor met the walls, anchoring the carpet in place. Or at least in theory. In reality, Mitch discovered that the molding strips were tacked to the wall but not to the floor-because the carpet slid right out from under them.

The big white cat was all over him now, most anxious to get into whatever he was getting into.

Mitch turned back enough of the carpet to expose a three-foot-square section of old, unpolished wooden flooring. Here he found a trapdoor with a recessed thumblatch. The trapdoor was about twenty-four inches square and reminded him very much of the one that was in the floor of his sleeping loft at home. His was there for ventilation. Why was this one here?

He grabbed on to the thumblatch and slowly lifted the trapdoor open, revealing utter darkness down below. He pointed his flashlight down there. He was looking into the closet of the room directly below this one. Its door was closed. Whose closet was it? He couldn’t tell. He could make out a couple of jackets hanging there, but from this angle he couldn’t determine if they belonged to a man or a woman. Briefly, he tried to count out where room 31 was in relation to the occupants of the second-floor rooms, but that just made his head start to throb again. So he flicked off the light and stuffed it in his jacket pocket.

Tongue sticking out of the side of his mouth, Mitch gripped the edge of the floor with both hands and dropped down through the open trapdoor, hanging there in mid-air by his fingers, his legs waving wildly. Now all he had to do was let go. Which had sure looked a lot easier when Burt Lancaster and Nick Cravat did it in The Crimson Pirate. Those two had landed with nimble, effortless grace. Just as that damned show-off of a cat proceeded to do while Mitch continued to hang there and hang there, wondering what in the hell he had been thinking. Then he said his silent “Geronimo!” and let go, touching down with a colossal, well-padded thud.

At the sound of him crashing to the closet floor the door immediately flew open, flooding the closet with natural light. Someone stood silhouetted there in the doorway, hands on hips.

Mitch scrambled to his feet and dusted himself off. Checked to see if his head had started to bleed again. It hadn’t. Then he smiled and said, “Hey, Spence, how’s it going?”