“Right. Not all of her, you understand. Just a foot disappearing or the edge of that cape. If it had been anything more than that, anything surer, I think Candida would have told someone. The way things were, she decided to take matters into her own hands.”
“Which was stupid.”
“Not necessarily stupid.” Gregor shook his head. “Remember, Candida had based her life on taking chances. Now she had a book in process that stood to make her a great deal more money than it would otherwise if only she knew the explanation of what had happened to Jacqueline Isherwood Hazzard. And suddenly, she did.”
“Did she have to tell Caroline about it?”
“She didn’t tell Caroline about it. Caroline simply knew that she’d been seen. She thought she’d been seen but not recognized. She wasn’t taking any chances.”
“Marvelous person, Caroline Hazzard.”
“An incredibly lucky person,” Gregor said. “The first time, when she killed her stepmother—because she was afraid of what her stepmother was going to do now that Candida DeWitt was on the scene; Candida was off it by then, but I don’t think Caroline knew that—anyway, the first time Caroline just picked up the weapon that was closest to hand and went at it. The fact that there was a weapon on the wall that imitated the one she’d used was a sheer fluke. The fact that her father was the only person in the house who’d been home, and therefore the only one who’d seen, was lucky too. Caroline Hazzard set out to commit very simple crimes that ended up looking complicated because of chance—and because she always knew how to make use of chance.”
“And she killed her father because he was seeing Hannah?”
“She killed her father for money. She’d always intended to. Paul Hazzard had no idea what he was protecting in that daughter of his, and neither did Alyssa. Caroline was willing to wait for the money as long as she had her father’s exclusive attention. And she did, you know, for almost four years.”
“And then Hannah came along?” Bennis was skeptical.
“Hannah is a nice, comfortable middle-aged woman with a good deal of money who would be more than willing to spend it helping someone she loved put his life back together,” Gregor said. “Paul Hazzard was used to being a media star. He knew enough about the business he was in to realize he could be one again if he went about it the right way and spent enough in the process. I think he made a very smart move, picking up on Hannah.”
“Not for Hannah.”
“No,” Gregor admitted. “Not for Hannah. What are we going to do about Hannah? Before all this started, it would never have occurred to me that someone like Hannah could be in the market for—uh—for—”
“Sex?”
“I don’t think that’s the word I’d use, Bennis.”
“She’s only a year older than you are, Gregor.”
“I know. I know. But she seems older than that. They all do. Even Lida.”
“Lida’s still very pretty.”
“Is she? Well, maybe she is. But at least Lida would have sense enough not to get involved with someone like Paul Hazzard.”
“That’s true,” Bennis said. “What about a much younger man?”
“You have a filthy mind,” Gregor said. “For God’s sake.”
Bennis leaned forward across the booth’s table and looked out the window at Cavanaugh Street.
“What time is it?” she asked.
Gregor checked his watch. “Quarter to nine.”
“They’re early.”
“What are early?”
“The balloons.”
Gregor poured himself more coffee. “Sometimes,” he said, “in fact, most of the time, you don’t make any sense at all.”
3
THE BALLOONS WERE INDEED early, and there were so many of them, dozens and dozens of them, that Lida Arkmanian didn’t know what to say. She was in the kitchen when the doorbell rang, sitting across the breakfast table from Christopher Hannaford. She had sweat on the back of her neck and a pain in her arms that felt like the beginning of tetanus. She had never been so tense in all her life.
The balloons were big silver-and-red hearts. They were filled with helium and each carried little baskets of heart-shaped candy in a heart-shaped straw bag. Lida went into the living room to watch them come in. They came in until they filled the entire room. Lida sat on the edge of her couch and watched them come, carried in in bunches by two men in blue uniform overalls. When it was over one of the two men went up to Christopher and had him sign a sheet of paper on a clipboard. Then the two men left and shut the door behind themselves, and Lida started to cry.