The Murder of an Angel Page 11

  When time resumed, all I could manage to say was, “What does Peter have to do with this?”

  I was stunned, thunderstruck, and all my attention was on Jacob. It looked like he wanted to take back what he had said, but it was too late.

  I asked him again. “Rely on Peter? What do you mean?”

  He said, “For one of the brightest people I’ve ever met, you can be unbelievably clueless, Tandy.”

  He walked past me, heading downstairs, and I followed him down the spiral staircase. We passed Mercurio, hooked a right at Robert, and headed for the Pork Chair, which was in the open area behind the lipstick-red sofa and Harry’s Pegasus piano.

  When Jacob sat down hard in the chair, it grunted and squealed like it was being slaughtered. Any other day, I would have fallen apart, laughing at the surprised look on Jacob’s face. But not today.

  Uncle Jake recovered his angry face pretty fast and continued his totally unexpected rant.

  “Did you ever ask yourself who pays the very pricy monthly charges for this apartment, Tandy? Have you wondered who pays me and Leo, and three private school tuitions, not to mention those thousand-dollar-a-night spa days at Waterside?”

  I stared into Jacob’s eyes. They were like small twin mirrors reflecting me back to myself, making me say to myself, How could you be so stupid?

  This breaking news was far worse than I had imagined, but I wanted to make sure I understood. “When we got our inheritance, Phil bought the apartment. Jacob, you said you were rich.”

  “Right, Tandy. Phil bought the apartment with a onetime multimillion-dollar lump sum from the estate. But there are bills, plenty of them: taxes, common charges, insurance, food, utilities, salaries, and much more.

  “Your grandmother didn’t know there would be an apartment to buy or tuition or mental health care. She didn’t even know that any of you would exist. The money left in her trust for you and your siblings was a ‘just in case’ plan and, when divided up among you, amounted to about a million dollars each, to be doled out to you in monthly payments until you’re fifty-eight years old. That’s about two thousand dollars a month.

  “It’s spend-and-save money. It’s hard-times money. But if you get a scholarship to college, if you invest your stipend wisely, it will be a good safety net when you start out in life on your own.”

  I was hearing this for the first time.

  It was a shocking jolt of reality, but it made sense—except for the part about Peter.

  My mind raced forward and back and round and round as I examined our relationship with Peter over all the years I had known him. Disdain hardly begins to describe his show of feelings for us.

  Jacob was saying, “Peter is carrying you because of his love for your father. He didn’t want you to know because he didn’t want your thanks. I accepted this guardianship out of loyalty to the family, but I love all of you, Tandy. Even Matthew. I think you know this.”

  I nodded dumbly as Jacob rested his arms on his knees. I saw the shiny scars on his forearms from the burns he’d suffered while rescuing me from the “accidental” fire, the latest of the three times Jacob had saved my life at risk of his own. No questions about whether he was with us or with Peter could stand up to those facts.

  I got to my feet and he got to his, and I hugged my good uncle, who had sacrificed so much to take care of very difficult kids who totally needed him.

  But my mind was blown regarding Uncle Peter.

  If I’d been wrong about Peter, then who had been trying to kill us?

  It was what some might call a lull in the storm.

  My tutor, Jackie Rogers, a dean’s list student from NYU, wrote to Dr. Oppenheimer saying, “Ms. Angel has gotten perfect test scores, and honestly, she doesn’t need me. I recommend she be readmitted to All Saints.”

  Oppenheimer relented, so I was back at school. Defiantly so.

  I wore my old wardrobe with aplomb. I sprayed Tandoori on my underwear, and my expression said Don’t mess with me. And no one did.

  By now, thanks to C.P., my former bestie, everyone knew that I’d spent three of the last four months in a nuthouse. Kids who knew me avoided me. The ones I didn’t know stared at me from afar.

  I liked that. I wanted to be left alone.

  One day during lunch, I left school and walked a couple of blocks along Columbus. I bought a bag of chestnuts from a vendor and was heading back to school when a woman with long brown hair wearing a blue coat grabbed my attention.

  She was half a block away, facing away from me, hailing a yellow cab that was coming to a stop.

  Was that my sister?

  I called out, “Katherine. Katherine, wait!”

  I had that feeling of déjà vu as I ran toward the woman in the blue coat. But I had no chance to catch her as the cab took off, sending a wave of slush onto the sidewalk.

  Had I really seen Kath?

  Why would she be in New York and not let me know?

  Or was this a sign that my brain had gone off the rails and that I couldn’t even trust myself anymore?

  I got back to All Saints, still shaken by the possible sighting of my sister, and took a front-row seat in my history class.

  When the room was full, Mr. Conroy Brown, my twenty-five-year-old instructor, began his lecture. He was saying that New York, as part of the British imperial trading system, had acquired its mercantile character from Great Britain.

  And that was just dead wrong.

  As Mr. Brown pontificated, I muttered to myself, still jacked up by seeing a Katherine look-alike on the street.

  I was jolted into the moment when Mr. Brown called me out.

  “Speak up, Ms. Angel. We all want to hear what you have to say.”

  That snarky expression must be given out to every graduate in education along with their diplomas, but I was glad of the opportunity to speak up. And I did.

  I got to my feet and straightened my shoulders.

  “If you were factually accurate,” I said, “I would have kept quiet, but since you clearly need my help, I might as well set the record straight.”

  No one laughed, sneezed, or even exhaled.

  Even Mr. Brown seemed paralyzed.

  I went on, “So, Mr. Brown, to be fair to the class, the Dutch came to Manhattan well before the British. And they came for one reason—to make a profit. The Dutch named this city New Amsterdam and endowed it with its mercantile character. It’s part of our Dutch legacy, not British.

  “Any questions?”

  It turns out Mr. Brown did have a question.

  His face was a weird, stiff mask of high dudgeon as he asked me, “Do you want to get expelled from school, Ms. Angel?”

  “Why would that happen?”

  He said, “It would happen because you’re rude, insubordinate, and extremely disruptive.”

  The room had been as quiet as a hole until then, but now there was snickering and raucous laughter. And I’m pretty sure my classmates weren’t laughing at me.

  “Not another word,” said the instructor, addressing me and everyone else in the room.

  I didn’t crack a smile. I locked in on Mr. Brown with my deadly serious gaze—and he blinked first.

  “Go to the headmaster’s office, now,” said Mr. Brown, “and wait there. I’ll join you when class is over.”

  I sat down and said, “I’m not going anywhere, Mr. Brown. If the headmaster wants to talk to me, he can come here.”

  There were claps and even a few whistles, and Mr. Brown slammed a ruler down on his desk and demanded silence. He took his phone and went outside the classroom, where you didn’t have to be brilliant to guess that he phoned Oppenheimer and relayed to him what a scourge I was.

  When Mr. Brown returned, he gave a shaky lecture on the history of trade in Manhattan. He included the Dutch influence on trade without citing me, and finally, the bell rang.

  Students thundered out from behind their desks, and as the classroom emptied, Dr. Oppenheimer waded in.

  He was a
prim and fussy man with a pinched face who looked to me like his parents had chained him to the radiator as a child until he ate his peas. And that angry little kid had vowed that once he grew up, he would get back at everyone in the world.

  I watched his muted back-and-forth conversation with Mr. Brown, and then the two of them advanced upon my front-row desk. Their anger made me feel pretty powerful. I wasn’t used to feeling powerful anymore, but I liked it.

  “Ms. Angel, you seem bent on destroying your opportunity to attend this school,” Oppenheimer said. “You’re a smart girl, but not smart enough to make yourself small and avoid scrutiny. Why is that, do you suppose? Looking for drama is my guess. Looking for attention. Which is not a survival trait at All Saints, is it? Think about that, young lady. All Saints is your ticket to your future. This is your very last chance—”

  “I don’t want a last chance,” I cut in, realizing that I’d made a huge snap decision in the last three seconds. “And I don’t need your ticket. I’m a person, Dr. Oppenheimer. I have feelings and intelligence, and being small has never been one of my goals.

  “In the short time I’ve known you, Dr. Oppenheimer, you’ve offended me every time I’ve seen you. So I’m leaving All Saints, effective this minute. You’re fired. No second chances for you.”

  I picked up my bag, and before Oppenheimer could say, “You can’t fire me,” I stalked out of the room and into a small mob of classmates, who put their hands together for Tandy Angel, who was not small at all.

  Hugo was there, my irrepressible booster. He hugged me and said, “Way to go, T.”

  He walked me out to the street, where Harry was leaning against the wrought-iron fence in front of the school, surrounded by fans.

  Harry’s long hair was thick and shiny, and his shirt was open under his unzipped jacket. His slouchy posture and general lack of starch had taken on a sexy appeal now that he was signing autographs for jumping, squealing girls.

  He grinned and waved to me, and I waved back. It was surprising and a little bit hilarious. My twin brother was giving Harry Styles some competition.

  I ordered Hugo back to class.

  He said, “If you don’t have to go, I don’t have to go.”

  “Hugo. Go to class. You have to get into MIT one day.”

  I left my brothers at school and walked the few blocks toward home with my mind circling my major preoccupation.

  I had an enemy. A dangerous one.

  And I had no idea who that enemy was.

  The San Remo’s criminally outdated laundry room is in the vast, cavernous basement, one of many large and small rooms connected by long, dimly lit passageways leading to the stairs and service elevators.

  It was late on a weeknight. I was wearing leggings, ballet flats, and one of Matty’s winter-weight Giants sweatshirts. I was alone in the laundry room, but the smell of dryer sheets and the hum of the machinery were soothing and homey.

  I put a load of whites into a washer and was thinking of dinner as I headed toward the elevators, about forty feet away down a darkened corridor.

  I never saw the foot that shot out, tripping and sending me to the floor, or the hand that grabbed me by the back of my sweatshirt and pulled me back to my feet.

  “Get off me!” I screamed, and tried to twist away, but the crook of a heavy arm clenched around my neck.

  A male voice hissed, “Die, bitch.”

  I saw a flash of metal near my throat, the blade of a knife. I kicked behind me—a judo self-defense move—and my foot slammed into a knee. There was a yowl of pain, and I pushed away and ran like a bomb had gone off behind me.

  My slippery shoes flew off my feet as I ran along the brightest of the dim hallways, past the closed elevator doors. I couldn’t stop to push the call button. I just ran, taking corners when they appeared, afraid that my attacker would catch up with me any second, screaming for help as I ran.

  I heard footsteps behind me. I think.

  There were gigantic industrial fans in the basement ceiling, there to move the heat and static underground air. Between my screams and the whack-whack of the fans, the echoes of the pumps and furnace, and the rasp of my own panting, I couldn’t be certain I still heard footsteps. But I did see that blood was dripping from the fingers of my right hand.

  I grabbed my right shoulder as I ran and found a slash in the sweatshirt a few inches down on the outside of my right arm. That bastard cut me. I kept running, even though I was lost and confused and losing blood.

  My bare feet slapped the cement floor as I forced myself onward, yelling “Help!” all the while. I slipped and fell against a stack of empty cartons, then scrambled up and looked around. I didn’t see him, and now I realized that I had boxed myself into a dead end—the corner between the bike room and the exit door to the street.

  The exit door!

  I yanked on the handle and threw my full weight against the door, but it didn’t budge. And then I did hear footsteps, echoing against the cement walls and getting closer.

  There was nowhere left to go that wouldn’t take me directly past my attacker, so I gathered all my fear and rage and braced myself to face him. I would have to fight hard. I would have to kick at his junk, slam an elbow into his throat, use my clasped hands as a club at the back of his neck—and that was when I saw a kitchen knife lying on the ground.

  Was it really a knife? It was.

  I grabbed it up and clutched it. It was long, thin, sharp. It had to be the knife my attacker had used on me, but how had it gotten here? Had he snuck by without me seeing him?

  I was trying to catch my breath and get my bearings when I keyed into the footsteps again. The figure of a man materialized from around a bend in the hallway.

  I held the knife in front of me with both hands and screamed, “Get away from me or I’ll kill you!”

  The man shouted back, “Who’s there?”

  And then I recognized Benny, our night doorman.

  “Ms. Angel? Was that you screaming?” he asked. “What’s wrong? Did someone hurt you?”

  Was Benny my attacker? Was he trying to kill me?

  He came toward me saying, “Ms. Angel, what happened? Are you hurt?”

  Benny was only feet away, his face full of concern. He was sixty and way out of shape. He couldn’t have been chasing me.

  I held out the knife and said, “Benny, look. Someone used this on me.” I pulled at the neckline of my sweatshirt so that he could see the gash below my shoulder.

  “You’ve got blood all over your face.”

  I touched my chin and cheek, felt where the skin had gotten scraped when I fell—and then I started blubbering. Dammit. I just hate that.

  “Benny, thank God you chased him away.”

  He looked at me strangely. Like, I did what?

  I said, semihysterically, “Did you see who was after me?”

  “I didn’t see anybody, Ms. Angel. Maybe you got spooked. Maybe you fell and cut yourself on something?”

  “No, Benny. He said, ‘Die, bitch.’ He cut me with this.” Hands shaking, I showed him the knife again, and he shrank away.

  “That’s sick. Can you walk okay? Here. Lean on me. Let’s get you upstairs so your uncle can take you to a doctor.”

  Benny walked me to the elevator bank, all the while throwing nervous glances at my face and at the knife.

  As he repeatedly jabbed the elevator call button, I could tell what he was thinking. He couldn’t get this crazy girl off his hands soon enough.

  It had been a half hour since the murderous thug had slashed me in the basement.

  My pulse had slowed to about eighty, but I was still pumping adrenaline. I was panting, sweating, and pressing a washcloth to the slash on the side of my arm, which now hurt like crazy.

  Caputo and Hayes sat across the kitchen table from me and Uncle Jacob. The knife between us was spotlighted by the overhead fixture. It was six inches long, with a black handle and a narrow blade that had been sharpened to a razor edge. If I hadn’t
been wearing Matty’s thick sweatshirt, that blade might have sliced my arm to the bone.

  Caputo leaned across the table and said, “Let’s take it from the top one more time, okay, Brandy?”

  “Stop. Doing. That,” I said. “I know you’re pretending you don’t know my name to throw me off. But you’re forgetting one thing, Sergeant. I’m not a suspect. I’m the freaking victim.”

  Caputo leaned back, not quite suppressing a smirk. Both he and Hayes were treating me as if I was in the psych ward at Bellevue. Why didn’t they write up the incident report and do some detecting? Why didn’t they believe me?

  Caputo said, “Once again, Tandy. Start at the beginning.”

  “As I said before, I didn’t see him. He came from behind. He tripped me. Then he grabbed at the back of my sweatshirt and pulled me up. He put his arm around my neck. I saw the knife, so I kicked back at his knees. That’s when I ran.”

  “He said something, right?”

  “Right. Before I kicked him, he said, ‘Die, bitch.’”

  “Does that sound familiar to you? Has anyone ever said that before?”

  “No.”

  “Did he call you by name?” Caputo asked.

  “No.”

  “Unlike the guy who took a shot at you on the street?”

  That wasn’t really a question, so I didn’t answer it.

  Hayes said, “And this knife? Your, uh, attacker just dropped it?”

  “I found it, that’s all I know. And I was glad to have it. I thought I would have to use it.”

  “Too bad you held on to it with your sweaty hands,” Caputo mused. “I suppose, if you don’t mind waiting about a month, the lab can test it for DNA.”

  “You should do that,” I snapped, “and put a rush on it. I resent your implication that I would cut myself.”

  Caputo said, “It’s a valid hypothesis, Tootsie. Is that what happened? You’re desperate to get us to believe you, so you pushed the envelope a little bit—”

  I jumped up, losing it, and at the same time not.

  “How about getting the security footage from inside the basement and outside the exits? How about interviewing the doormen? Why not see if any other tenants used the laundry room tonight or went down to the garbage room and if they saw anyone they didn’t know or who looked suspicious?”