“Maybe she’s the one who took the black feather boa,” Richard Fenster said.
Mathilda ignored him. “Because if this is one of your periodic bids for attention,” she told Hannah, “I swear to God, this time I’m going to slap your face.”
Hannah Graham gave Mathilda Frazier a tight little smile. “I was taking a nap,” she said. “I had all my doors locked just like the rest of you probably did, to make sure I was safe. Why don’t you all come into my room and see what happened while I was all locked up tight and fast asleep.”
A ripple of unease went up and down the hall. Hannah Graham was a world-class bitch, but she wouldn’t pull something like this unless she had something to show. They had all been lying down in their rooms with their doors locked. Gregor could practically hear them thinking: Now what?
Gregor came forward—it was obvious that nobody else was going to; they were all waiting for him—and presented himself to Hannah Graham.
“So,” he said. “What is it?”
“Go in and look,” Hannah Graham told him.
Gregor went down the hall to Hannah’s room and stepped inside. He was expecting to find a mess—drawers pulled out, luggage turned upside down, clothes scattered across the floor. But the drawers were still neatly in their bureaus and the luggage was still intact and exactly where it belonged. That did not, however, mean that the room had not been tampered with. It had been tampered with in a distinct and elaborate way. It had been decorated for a birthday party.
Helium-filled balloons in six different colors bounced against the high ceiling. Crepe-paper rosettes the size of basketballs were tied to the backs of chairs and the foot of the bed. Crepe-paper streamers were wound around the window frame and left to dangle from the tops of the closet doors. A pile of popper party favors had been left on top of the chest of drawers. A tall layer cake with white icing topped by three fat candles (a one and two zeros, making 100) was on the glass top of the vanity table in front of the mirror. The candles were lit, and the wax was dripping down.
Hannah Graham came in and put her hands on her hips. “So what do you think?” she demanded. “Is this enough for me to start screaming about?”
The rest of them had followed her inside—or almost inside. They made a tight little knot now in the doorway.
“Oh, my God,” Mathilda Frazier was saying. “Oh, my God. Just look at all this.”
“This couldn’t have been done while you were just asleep,” Richard Fenster said. “You’d have woken up.”
“Maybe somebody slipped me whatever they slipped Cavender Marsh last night,” Hannah retorted.
Gregor Demarkian was looking over the crepe-paper rosettes and the crepe-paper streamers and the cake on the vanity table.
“Geraldine?” he asked.
“I’m right here,” Geraldine Dart answered in a shaky voice.
“Do you know where all this stuff came from?”
Geraldine Dart nodded vigorously. “Oh, yes,” she said. “I made that cake myself. It’s been in the big refrigerator in the kitchen since the day before yesterday. And the other things have been in the pantry. Except that the balloons weren’t blown up, of course. There were just little plastic packages of them and a big tank full of helium to fill them with.”
“Mmm,” Gregor said.
He looked around the room a couple of times. Then he got down on the floor and looked under the bed.
“Uh-huh,” he said. “Just as I thought. Mr. Fenster?”
“What is it?”
“It’s not a body I’m asking you to touch this time, just a large metal tank. I’m a little too old to go hauling that sort of thing around by myself. Would you mind getting it out where we could all see it?”
Richard Fenster got down on the floor, reached under the bed, and began to tug something toward them. A moment later, the top of a large metal cylinder emerged into view. Richard Fenster tugged again; the rest of the tank came out from under the bed. Then he got to his feet and set the thing upright.
“There,” he said. “And there’s paint on the side that says ‘helium,’ too.”
“Is this the tank you were talking about?” Gregor asked Geraldine Dart.
“Well, it must be,” Geraldine said. “I mean, there couldn’t be two of them, could there? You have to get them over from the mainland by boat, and it isn’t easy. I know from experience. This isn’t the kind of thing one of you people could have sneaked over in your luggage.”
“No,” Gregor agreed, “it’s not that.”
“I don’t think all this happened while Hannah was taking a nap,” Kelly Pratt said. “I don’t think it’s possible. I think she must have been prowling around in the house somewhere and she doesn’t want us to know what she was doing.”