My first thought was that I wished I’d brought some ear plugs. Since I hadn’t, I’d make it a priority to find the source of the music and turn down the speakers. “In the Mood” had given way to Frankie Laine singing “All of Me,” which might be pleasant if played at a normal volume instead of one that could drown out a jet engine.
In the hallway I found Michael, Dad, Ragnar, and several formally clad party guests kneeling on the floor around the plans of the house. Several other guests stood behind them, flipping through thick wads of paper.
“Transcripts from the 1988 trial,” said a familiar voice. I glanced up to see Fred Singer of the Clarion, armed with his trusty digital camera. “When I first heard about your dad’s reenactment notion, I thought it was ridiculous—but it is amazing how much information they’re able to reconstruct from all the testimony.”
It was still going to look ridiculous when it appeared in the Clarion, I thought, as I watched Fred snap several pictures of the solemn group clustered around the plans.
“They’d have been crazy to come in from the kitchen passage,” Michael said.
“Yes.” Dad nodded vigorously. “The guests wouldn’t have seen them, but with at least twenty servants going back and forth constantly with trays of food and drink—not a good option.”
“So I think they have to make their entrance from the loading dock.” Michael pulled out his cell phone, tapped on it, and spoke into it. “Roddy? Can you grab Evan and Jared and go out to the loading dock?”
“I’m here.” Evan appeared in the doorway. “Michael, we have a problem. I need to know my motivation for committing this robbery.”
“Ten million dollars in loot doesn’t motivate you?” Michael probably sounded calm enough to most people, but I could tell his patience was wearing thin. Probably not the first time they’d had this conversation.
“I just don’t read Hempel as that mercenary.”
I could have said that I’d seen Hempel and I had no trouble reading him that way. But if I did, Evan would want to stop the proceedings to question me, and it’d be a toss-up whether Michael or I finally broke down and strangled him.
“He’s not mercenary,” I said. “He needs the ten million to ransom his brother, Aaron, who’s being held by a sinister international crime overlord. If he doesn’t turn over the ten million by daybreak, the evil overlord will kill Aaron.”
Most of the people there looked at me as if I’d suddenly lost my mind. Evan looked thoughtful.
“Yes. I think I can work with that,” he said.
“Come on, then,” Roddy said. “Let’s get ready for our entrance.”
Evan, still lost in contemplation, allowed Roddy to lead him over to the elevator. To my relief, everybody managed to hold in their giggles until the elevator doors had closed behind them.
“Thanks,” Michael said.
“Meg! You can play a part! Maybe you could be Mrs. Van der Lynden.” Dad beamed at me.
A young woman in a Marie Antoinette costume looked stricken.
“No, Meg is my assistant director,” Michael said. “I need her eyes. And also her hands. For note taking.” He handed me a pen and a yellow legal pad. “Places, everyone! Get ready for a run-through.”
Everyone scurried about. Actors playing party guests swarmed into the living room—including Josh, Jamie, Adam, and Mason, who looked very serious and pretended not to notice me. “In the Mood” started up again. Actors with serving trays marshaled in the hallway. I spotted one of them filling her champagne flutes at the sink in the powder room off the foyer. The hors d’oeuvres trays each contained about a dozen neatly arranged individual Doritos. Michael and I and a few other uncostumed people—presumably representing the various tech services—clustered along one wall of the foyer.
“Action!” Michael shouted.
Laughter and chitchat rang out in the living room. The servants trooped in and began proffering Doritos and flutes of tap water to the guests.
Hollow laughter echoed through the foyer. I was the only one who started. Of course—Ragnar’s doorbell. The rest of them had gotten used to it. An actor in a butler’s outfit opened the door and admitted two more revelers.
“Cue Times Square,” Michael called.
From the living room “In the Mood” vanished, replaced by the sound of televised cheering and the voice of Dick Clark.
Two men in black tuxedos slipped out of the living room into the foyer. They looked around furtively. Seeing no one, they reached into their pockets, took out black velvet eye masks, and donned them. Then they tiptoed up the broad main stairs to the second-floor hallway and disappeared.
For a minute or so we heard nothing except for Dick Clark and the Times Square crowd. Then we heard shouting coming from upstairs.
“Bang!” someone shouted.
“Bang bang!” another voice replied.
The various robbers appeared in the upstairs hallway—the two gentlemen robbers in tuxedos and black velvet masks, the three real robbers in black sweats and ski masks, and all waving bananas, salamis, or sub rolls in a menacing manner. The real robbers were holding black pillowcases stuffed full of something. The party guests crowded in to the archway between the living room and the foyer but wisely stayed out of the action.
A gentleman robber tussled with the real robber played by Evan. “Bang!” Evan shouted, and the gentleman robber slumped to the floor. But he managed to get off a parting shot with his sub roll, and Evan collapsed much more dramatically, allowing his salami to fall from his dying grasp right at the foot of the stairs. I wondered how he was going to react when Michael broke the news that he wasn’t the one who got to do the death scene.
One of the remaining real robbers—Roddy, I think—picked up his fallen comrade’s pillowcase. Then he and Jared raced out of the main door and could be heard thudding down the marble steps. The surviving gentleman robber had flattened himself against the wall at the top of the stairs and was looking down in horror at the casualties below. Probably not too far from what the real Paul Blair had done.
Several actors—representing doctors or guests with first-aid training—rushed to the side of the fallen gentleman robber. One of them, almost as an afterthought, made a cursory examination of the dead real robber. The rest of the guests reacted variously. Several men stood in the archway and ordered the others to stay in the living room. Several people ignored them and slipped out. A few women screamed.
The actor in the butler’s uniform strode matter-of-factly across the foyer, opened the door to the closet that housed the telephone and security equipment, and mimed pushing 9-1-1 on the wall phone.
We heard a car start down in the parking lot.
“What happens when they get to the gate?” I asked Michael softly.
“They will wave their bananas at the actor playing James Washington, and he will open the gate for them,” he replied, also softly. “I think we’ve gone far enough with this rendition.” He stepped toward the center of the foyer and yelled “Cut! Everyone to the living room for notes.”
The actors swarmed back into the living room, chattering animatedly. Evan picked himself up from the parquet floor and retrieved his salami.
“I think I was a little flat in my scene,” he said. “Can we take it again?”
Michael either didn’t hear him or pretended not to.
I joined the crowd in the living room, curious to see what kind of notes Michael would be giving. But I quickly realized that the session was less about critiquing the performance than about brainstorming, under Dad’s direction, about what could have happened to Mrs. Van der Lynden’s jewels.
“Okay,” Dad said, to kick things off. “First let’s consider the theory that the robbers actually made off with the jewels. So where are they?”
As various cast members proposed increasingly more convoluted and improbable theories, everyone seemed to be enjoying the session—Dad, in particular.
But I’d already spent way too much time thinking about the jewel robbery over the last couple of days. Had already tested and rejected those few theories that seemed even halfway plausible. I felt like standing up and saying, “Wake me when you start discussing how either Archie or his mother managed to hide the jewels.”
Maybe that wasn’t such a bad idea. My eyelids were drooping.
“Is there someplace I could catch forty winks?” I asked Ragnar. “I’ve had a really long day. And I want to be fresh for the next run-through.”
“Of course!”
He showed me upstairs and down the long hall to one of the guest rooms. He lingered long enough to fuss over me, offering tea or aspirin, and pointing out that the attached bathroom had an excellent soaking tub. Then, reassured that all I wanted was a horizontal surface to become unconscious on, he hurried back to the living room.
I locked the door, nodded with satisfaction at the lock’s no-nonsense click, and fell into bed.
I woke with a start, and it took a few moments to remember where I was.
I glanced at the clock. Ten o’clock. A pity I had no idea when I’d gone to sleep, so I could know how long a nap I’d taken.
Time to take the boys home and put them to bed. I stumbled into the bathroom and splashed some water on my face. Then I left the guest room and paused for a moment to remember which way led back to the foyer.
I heard voices in distance, so I headed down the corridor toward them.
As I approached the upstairs hallway, the one that looked down over the foyer, I saw a figure just inside my corridor. It was a man, standing there with his eyes closed, doing what looked like some kind of anxiety-relieving breathing exercise.
I didn’t want to startle him, so I shuffled my feet a little as I got closer to him. He didn’t seem to notice, even when I could almost touch him.
“Good evening,” I said, keeping my tone calm and soothing.
It didn’t help. His eyes flew open and an expression of horror crossed his face.
“Oh, my God!” he exclaimed. Then he ran inside shouting, “Ragnar! Meg’s awake! Meg’s awake!”
He didn’t sound the least bit happy to see me. He sounded scared. And guilty.
Usually the only people who fled like that upon my arrival were the boys, and only when they’d been up to something they knew was going to get them into big trouble.