The Burnt Orange Sunrise (4 page)

Now she was back in America for the first time in fifty years.

Back in Dorset, actually. It turned out that Ada had a local connection and that connection was Astrid’s Castle, the colossal, turreted stone edifice that had been erected back in the Roaring Twenties as a love shack for Ada’s father and his longtime mistress, Astrid Lindstrom, a leggy Ziegfeld Follies girl. Eventually, the mountaintop castle became an inn. Now it belonged to Norma and her second husband, Les.

Ada’s return was proving to be a triumphant one. America had “discovered” her. Steven Soderbergh had just finished the principal photography on his stylish remake of
Ten Cent Dreams
with Julia Roberts, Kevin Spacey and George Clooney. A digitally re-mastered print of her original film was due for theatrical release in March. And a retrospective of her tabloid crime scene photos was slated for April at the International Center of Photography on Sixth Avenue, accompanied by a lavish coffee-table book.

It had been Les’s idea to host a small tribute for Ada at Astrid’s Castle upon her arrival. When the innkeeper had contacted Mitch
about it a few weeks back, Mitch was thrilled to participate in the event. He’d always wanted to meet the great lady. And Les had promised him that it would be a dignified, low-key symposium for a select group of film scholars, critics and authors. However—and here was the really big surprise—Les hadn’t been totally straight with Mitch. It turned out that he had much, much bigger plans for Ada’s tribute. An entire delegation of Panorama Studios heavy-hitters was en route to Astrid’s Castle for a weekend-long blitz of cocktail parties and testimonial dinners, accompanied by Soderbergh, his starstudded cast and a bevy of celebrated Geigerphiles like Quentin Tarantino, Oliver Stone, Martin Scorsese and the Coen Brothers. The likes of Jodie Foster, Meryl Streep, Susan Sarandon and Tim Robbins were coming. So were assorted supermodels, rap music stars and high-profile professional athletes. Camera crews from every media outlet in America would be on hand. This was going to be a major, major celebrity gala—everything short of velvet ropes, klieg lights and Joan Rivers standing at curbside, hissing at all of the skanky outfits.

And it was just the sort of event Mitch hated. He was furious. But he was also trapped. By the time he’d found out what Les’s true intentions were, it was too late to back out. Which was, without question, exactly what Les had counted on.

“Honestly, Mitch, this weekend completely got away from me,” Les apologized profusely. “The studio took control. It’s their money, their publicity machine and you know how they like to make everything splashy. I was powerless to stop them. You can understand that, can’t you?”

“Well, yes,” Mitch allowed, because it did sound plausible. Just not wholly true.

“You must let me make this up to you,” Les pleaded. The man seemed genuinely upset.

Mitch wondered why. Was Les afraid he’d bad-mouth him around town? Or was something else going on here?

“Norma and I would love to have you up for dinner this evening, if you can make it. Just a low-key family meal, word of honor. Ada
will be there. And Norma’s son, Aaron, is up from Washington with his wife. They’re staying through the weekend. Do you know Aaron?”

“I know
of
him. Kind of surprised he made the trip.”

“As was I,” Les agreed, nodding his head of hair vigorously. “But I suppose family ties are stronger than their… differences. Shall we say six-thirty?”

“I’ll be there,” promised Mitch, who was not going to pass up this opportunity.

“That’s terrific, Mitch!” Les said excitedly. “And I hope you can bring your lady friend along. Any chance she can get free on such short notice?”

“A good chance, yes. Things are very slow for her right now. She was saying so just the other day.”

W
HEN THE RACCOON LET
out a screech and came charging right at her across the garage floor, Des opened fire. Her first shot tore through the rabid animal’s chest. The damned thing kept right on coming, snarling with crazed fury, leaping at her as Des put two more rounds into its snout, her shots echoing loud in the enclosed space. It landed at her feet, where it scrabbled and twitched before it died, emptying its bladder directly onto her black lace-up boots.

Des kicked it aside, holstered her SIG-Sauer and checked herself over thoroughly to make absolutely certain the raccoon hadn’t managed to penetrate her uniform trousers. There was no torn material, no broken skin. Her thick wool socks were good and dry. She was fine, unless you counted her ruined boots.

She shoved her heavy horn-rimmed glasses up her nose and covered the dead animal with a tarp. Then Dorset’s resident trooper strode back out into the weak late-afternoon sun, leaning her body into the mighty wind that had blown in around lunchtime.

The lady of the house, Gretchen Dunn, was watching her from the kitchen window, eyes wide with fright. Des smiled at her reassuringly as she headed across the snow-packed driveway to her cruiser, where she radioed Jane Shoplick, Dorset’s Animal Control officer. It was Jane who had called Des about a possible rabid raccoon sighting at Dunn’s Cove Landing. Jane was up near Devil’s Hopyard at the time and couldn’t get there for at least an hour. That had left it up to Des.

She got there in five minutes, although she’d needed directions from Jane on how to get there. Dunn’s Cove Landing was not on any local map. Des hadn’t even known it existed. She was discovering that there were quite a few such hidden blue-blooded compounds in
Dorset. Unless you knew the people, or had business with them, you would have no idea where they were. This was something entirely new for Des, who came from the outside world where those who had it, flashed it. Not so in Dorset. Here, they did not wish to be found, period. No street sign. No mailboxes. Just a turn-in on Route 156 up by Winston Farms with a tiny, discreet wooden placard that said “Private.” And a long, narrow driveway that twisted its way back through old-growth forest, where she saw half a dozen wild turkeys and a family of deer, then across a ten-acre meadow blanketed with snow. A stone bridge took her over a frozen river. There must have been a patch of open water because she spotted a mighty pair of bald eagles circling the river in search of food. Finally, Des had arrived at a cluster of a dozen Revolutionary War-era mansions and cottages that overlooked the Connecticut River.

The house she wanted was a rambling shingled place with a Subaru wagon parked in the driveway. A big golden retriever was locked inside it, barking furiously. The detached two-story garage had once been a barn. There were two big doors for vehicles, both closed. Also a people door, again, closed. This one had a cat door in it.

Gretchen Dunn had come out to greet her, wearing a duffel coat and stretch pants. She was a young mother with tiny girlish features and a blond ponytail.

“Is everyone okay?” Des asked as she climbed out of her cruiser.

“Just a little shaken,” responded Gretchen, who seemed pretty calm under the circumstances. “Make that a lot shaken. Ginny, my ten-year-old, was out in the garage putting down food for Herbert. He’s our outdoor cat—real tough guy, won’t come inside no matter how cold it gets. And Ginny walked in on this great big raccoon eating Herbert’s kibble. It screeched at her and chased her right on out of there. Fortunately, Casey was on the porch and he chased it back inside. He has a mighty big bark, and he’s real protective of the girls. I called Jane right away, then checked every single pore on Ginny’s body. She hasn’t got a scratch on her. She’s just fine. We’re having cocoa now.”

“I can see Casey. Where’s Herbert?”

“He took off across the meadow. What do you think, is it rabid?”

If a raccoon showed itself during daylight and behaved aggressively, then it most likely was rabid. Everyone in Dorset knew that. Just as Des knew what to do as soon she got the call from Jane.

“I think we can’t afford to take any chances. Please go back inside now.”

And with that, Des had moved stealthily into the garage, her SIG drawn and her eyes searching for the animal. She didn’t have to search for long—it came right at her from behind the trash barrels.

“Is it dead?” Gretchen Dunn asked her now, when Des was finished reporting in to Jane.

“It won’t bother you anymore.” Des popped her trunk, donned a pair of latex crime scene gloves and untied her ruined boots, which she bagged and tossed into the trunk along with the gloves. Then she stepped into her spare boots and laced them up. “Jane will be along soon. She’ll take it in for tests. Is Herbert up-to-date on his rabies shots?”

“I just double-checked my records. He had his last vaccine over the summer.”

“That’s good,” Des said, since the raccoon had been eating out of the cat’s dish. Rabies could be transmitted from one animal to another through their saliva. An alarming number of local people didn’t know this and didn’t bother to inoculate or, for that matter, neuter their outdoor cats—thereby explaining why Des and her friend Bella Tillis were constantly rescuing so many sick, sad kittens from the Dumpsters behind nearby markets and restaurants. They tried to find good homes for the ones they managed to nurse back to health. Presently, eighteen bright-eyed imps were bunking in Des’s garage and basement. “I’d throw out Herbert’s food and water dishes. And change his bedding, too.”

“I absolutely will,” Gretchen promised, wrinkling her cute little nose. “Can I offer you a cup of cocoa? We’re making ginger snaps, too.”

“Yum, sounds wonderful. But I have to be somewhere.” The Troop F Barracks in Westbrook, to be specific. Anytime she discharged her weapon, she had to file an incident report immediately.

Two grave, adorable little blond girls were waving to her now from the kitchen window. Des waved back at them.

“I should have been able to handle this myself,” Gretchen confessed, gazing at them. “But Shawn and I don’t like having guns around. I felt so helpless.”

“Don’t second-guess yourself. I’ve been trained to handle this kind of deal. You haven’t. Say you did have a gun, okay? Chances are, that raccoon would have taken a piece out of you by the time you got your shot off. And you’d be on your way to the emergency ward right now. You did right, Gretchen.”

“Well, thank you. And thanks for being such a, you know, good neighbor.”

This was the ultimate compliment in Dorset—to call someone a good neighbor. It was a compliment that no one had paid Des before. Gretchen Dunn was her very first.

Beaming, Des climbed into her cruiser and started her way back down the private drive to Route 156, positive that she could smell raccoon piss on her, although she could not imagine how this was so. As she lowered her front windows, freezing air be damned, it did occur to her that she’d just experienced her first genuine action of the entire winter. Until now, about all she’d been doing was filing one-car accident reports—weather-related, alcohol-related or both. Crime was way down from the peak summer months, when she’d had her hands full with bar brawlers and shoplifters. In fact, winter was so quiet here that Dorset scarcely needed a resident trooper at all. But it did need one, of course. Home break-ins would be rampant if she were not around. And the drug dealers would set up shop. And then Dorset wouldn’t be Dorset anymore.

It was past four now, and the sun had already passed behind the trees, leaving puddles behind on Route 156 where the sunlight had warmed the plowed, salted pavement. Those puddles would freeze back over real fast, so Des took it nice and slow, her hands light on the wheel, foot steady on the gas. She was a patient, humble driver when she was around ice. She did not tailgate. Did not make sudden stops or starts. She respected the ice.

But she hadn’t gone a mile down the narrow, shadowy country road before she came upon yet another fool who didn’t respect it. No, he’d been too busy listening to those TV commercials instead of his own common sense. And now he and his super-duper, manly-man’s Jeep Grand Whatever had gone skidding off the road into the ditch, where he was trapped inside a three-foot ice bank, his wheels spinning furiously as he tried to power his way out of there, pedal to the metal. God, how Des wished those damned commercials would stop showing SUVs conquering Mount Everest in third gear. In the real world, SUVs performed no better on ice than any other vehicle. But their dumb-assed owners flat-out refused to believe that. And so they disrespected the ice. And so Des spent half of her time rescuing them. In addition to the jumper cables and spare fuses that she carried year round, she had a winter ditch kit consisting of extra scrapers and blankets, two jugs of sand and a pair of eight-pound Snow Claws with hardened-steel teeth to slide under those spinning rear wheels. As she pulled over and got out, squaring her big Smokey hat on her head, she decided she just ought to go ahead and become a tow-truck operator. She’d make a lot more money.

He was young and burly and absolutely positive that if he just pressed down a little harder on that gas pedal, he’d be able to blow his way out of there. As she approached, he rolled down his window, glowering at her.

“Well, you’re good and stuck, aren’t you?” she called to him pleasantly over the angry whine of his spinning wheels. “If you’ll just ease off of the gas, I’ll see if I can help you—”

“Just leave me be,” he snapped at her irritably. “I already called Triple-A on my cell. I’m fine, okay?”

Des had encountered this before. A certain species of young male who refused to be helped by a woman, especially one of color. A point of pride with them or some fool thing.

“Suit yourself, sir,” she said, hoping the auto club was all backed up and he had to spend the next two hours sitting there. “But please put on your flasher, okay? We wouldn’t want anyone to plow into you.”

She climbed back in her cruiser and continued on to the Westbrook
Barracks, reflecting on just how far she had managed to come in so short a time. It seemed like only yesterday that her smile had lit up the cover of
Connecticut
magazine. Back then, she had been the state’s great non-white hope, youngest woman in state history to make lieutenant on the Major Crime Squad, and the only one who was black. Within a year she’d moved right on up to homicides. Always, she had produced.