And One to Die On by Jane Haddam Page A

and a lanky black man emerged wearing a gold-and-white uniform, complete with cap. He walked around the limo and opened the passenger door closest to the curb. He leaned in and gave his arm to the woman inside. Then he helped her onto the ramp with all the care a jeweler would have taken with one of the tsarina’s Fabergé eggs.
    The first thing that came to Gregor’s mind was that this woman was a walking corpse. She was too thin, too brittle, and much too frequently operated on. She had no subcutaneous fat on her at all. Her too-tightly stretched skin covered the bones of her face the way a sheet of Saran Wrap would have covered a skull. The veins in her hands looked like a system of tributary rivers suddenly sprung to life on the dead white surface of a desert.
    “My God,” Bennis said under her breath. “When I get old, I’m going to let myself get wrinkled.”
    The next thing Gregor noticed was the clothes. Hannah Graham was wearing navy blue silk trousers—ordinary enough, except that there were a series of heart-shaped holes running up the sides of each leg, exposing more blue veins and dead white skin. Then there was the top, a tunic arrangement entirely covered with sequins in fifteen different colors, making a pattern across her high, bouncing chest of a male and female symbol intertwined. Then there were the dark glasses, which had sequins too. Bizarre.
    “Saline implants,” Lydia Acken told Bennis in a whisper. She was staring at Hannah Graham’s chest.
    “Nose job,” Bennis whispered back.
    The driver had gone around to the back of the limousine and begun to unload Hannah Graham’s luggage. There was a lot of it—at least three large suitcases and two suit bags, a cosmetics case, a jewelry case, a portable shoe tree with a dozen pairs of shoes in it, an overnight case, and a pair of hatboxes. Hannah watched it being unloaded, then walked away from it. Gregor noticed that even the hatboxes were leather and part of a matched set. Every piece had the initials HK on it in flowing script, like the signet of a monarch.
    “The HK is for ‘Hannah Kent,’” Carlton Ji whispered to Gregor. “She won’t use Marsh because she despises her father.”
    Hannah Graham walked up the ramp to the boardwalk, put her sunglasses on top of her head, and squinted at the assembled company. She’s blind as a bat and those sunglasses are prescription, Gregor thought. Hannah Graham settled her attention on Lydia Acken.
    “Are you all waiting to go out to Tasheba Kent’s island?” she asked. Her voice, like her body, was brittle.
    Lydia Acken was the soul of politeness. She couldn’t help herself. “Yes, yes,” she said. “Of course we are. And you must be Hannah Graham. I’m Lydia Acken. I’m your father’s lawyer. And Miss Kent’s, too, of course.”
    Hannah Graham looked out to sea. “When is the next boat expected to arrive?” she asked.
    For a moment, they were all nonplussed. It was such a silly question, and she had asked it with such calm certainty.
    “I’m afraid it isn’t like that, Miss Graham,” Lydia said apologetically. “There isn’t any regular boat service from Hunter’s Pier to the island. Miss Kent and Mr. Marsh keep a boat, and they’ll be sending it over to ferry us across very soon, with their handyman driving or maybe Miss Dart. I called as soon as I got here and that was half an hour ago. I’m sure it won’t be long now.”
    Hannah walked back and forth on the boardwalk, still looking out to sea, a thoughtful expression on her face. She was wearing wedge-heeled, cork-soled sandals, but she was perfectly steady on her feet.
    “Do you mean that there’s no way to get out to that island unless my father and that woman send a boat for you?” she asked.
    “Well, I’m sure you could hire a boat at this end,” Lydia Acken told her, “but why would you want to? If you’ve been invited, you can get over absolutely free.”
    “You might want to surprise them, though,” Hannah