Red/orange light moving low across horizon stops, smaller light drops down, both disappear .

Feb 24 at approximately 9:20 pm, my wife and I were walking to the house from an out building.  I noticed a red/orange light on the southwest horizon.  I thought it could be Mars (not knowing its position this time of year).  It was slightly larger than I remember though.  I looked at it again, it was steadily moving in a North East direction.  I thought aircraft.
When we reached the front of the house, I looked again realizing an aircraft should have a blinking light,  I thought perhaps something in orbit.  At that point I stood and watched, it traveled around 45 degrees from when I first noticed it and started to fade in the clouds. About the same time it came to an abrupt stop, dropped a smaller red/orange object that left a small trail, then both completely disappeared.
I have never seen anything in the night sky do anything similar to what I witnessed, so I watched the news cycle and Internet for more information and found nothing.