Free Conspiracy Theory by Jane Haddam Page B

There would be somebody around to park the cars too. Nobody was coming in yet. The invitations said eight, but nobody would show up exactly on time, because nobody ever did. This was the part of the evening she always hated most. She wished people would grow up. All this not wanting to be the first to arrive. It was behavior unworthy of ten-year-olds.
    â€œCharlotte?” Tony said.
    â€œI just had to get out of the damned house. Look, there’s a car. Maybe it’s one of your people from Goldman, Sachs. I’ve got a headache. If he isn’t Italian, what is he?”
    â€œI told you. He’s American. He was born in—”
    â€œPhiladelphia. God, I hate Bennis Hannaford. I always did. Everybody always did. She was always such a—”
    â€œI always thought she was very beautiful.”
    â€œI’ll bet anything you want she’s shacking up with him,” Charlotte said. “It’s just the kind of thing she would do. She was in
People
magazine, did I tell you that? As if she were some hopped-up pop star pushing a record.”
    â€œShe was a novelist pushing a book.”
    â€œShe’s not a novelist. She’s not like Jonathan Franzen or Anne Tyler. She writes—well, I don’t know what you call them. Pulp. About elves.”
    â€œFantasy,” Tony said.
    The car that had been coming down the drive pulled to a stop at the curb. The man in the white gloves leaped forward to open the door in the back closest to the curb. If the car had been an ordinary sedan, driven by whoever owned it, the car-parking man would have come out to take the keys, but it was a limousine—rented, Charlotte could tell from the license plate—and the driver would take it wherever it had to go. The man who stepped out onto the drive was heavyset and tired-looking. The woman who followed him was tired-looking too, but so thin it seemed as if there was nothing at all between her skin and bone. Tony frowned. This was Henry and Delia Cavender. Tony hated them.
    â€œ
Charlotte
,” Delia Cavender said, pecking at the air the way she’d seen somebody do in a movie once. Maybe she was reading the novels of Dominick Dunne. Charlotte pasted a smile on her face and did her best.
    â€œDelia, what a wonderful jacket. You’re the first ones here, except of course for Bennis and her gentleman friend. Henry, you look wonderful.”
    â€œHenry,” Tony said.
    â€œTony,” Henry said.
    Charlotte could not, for the life of her, remember what Henry worked at. He was some kind of lawyer, but she didn’t remember what kind. It was like it was in that Hamilton cartoon. Everybody was a lawyer.
    Another car was coming down the drive, and right behind it there were two more.
    â€œI’m going into the house,” Tony said. “There’s no point standing around out here. That’s what we hired the extra help for. You ought to come in yourself before you catch the flu and lay yourself out for a couple of weeks.”
    â€œOh, for God’s sake,” Charlotte said.
    And then, everything got strange. The new car pulled up at the curve. The next two queued behind it. The sky was very clear and very black. People began getting out, women in ball gowns, men in dinner jackets. Tony turned his back to them and headed for the front door.
    Charlotte felt light-headed and sick to her stomach.
Maybe I’m coming down with something already
, she thought, and then Tony twisted backwards and he was in the air. His feet came right off the ground. One of the newly arrived women put her hand out to steady him. It was as if he had slipped on some ice and needed to be protected from a fall. Tony put his hand out too, but not to the woman, not to anybody, just out into the air and the dark and the cold and the nothing at all.
    A second later, Tony Ross’s face exploded into a mess of blood and skin and bone, and everybody started screaming.
9
    At 8:15, Father Tibor