Confessions of a Murder Suspect Read online

  “How come you’re the only Angel kid who seems upset?” Caputo said to Harry.

  “I’m… damaged,” he said, quoting what Malcolm had said to him many times. “My emotions are getting the best of me. I’m sorry.”

  “Do you want to tell me something, Harrington?” Caputo said, putting his face inches from Harry’s nose. “What do you want to tell me?”

  “What do you want me to say? I hurt all over,” Harry cried, “inside and out. This is absolutely the worst thing that has ever happened to me!” I put my arms around Harry and he burst into tears against my chest.

  Nice-guy Hayes took it upon himself to step in with a smile and a “there, there” for Harry. I could tell without a doubt that he was about to give us the good-cop routine.

  And I would be ready for it.

  9

  “Do you want to go to your room, Harry?” Hayes asked. Harry nodded vigorously. “Go ahead. I’ll stop in and talk to you privately in a few minutes.”

  Harry shot out of his seat and ran to his room, bawling like a baby. Caputo looked dumbfounded, like he’d never seen a teenager cry before. Which was strange, because just minutes earlier he had been acting like we were all murderers for not crying our eyes out.

  After a moment passed, Detective Hayes sat next to me on the red leather sofa. “Tandy, tell me your movements of the last six hours. We have to do a complete report, you understand. It’s necessary for us to know where everyone was when your folks were killed.”

  “They weren’t folks,” I said. “Trust me on that.”

  I sketched the details of my evening for the detective, telling him about my homework and the time I’d spent doing research on the effects of radiation on shellfish in the Pacific. I talked about dinner, but mostly just to say that my father, an expert cook, had made the meal himself. I had watched. He had been teaching me how to cook, although I had yet to be allowed to touch anything he was going to serve. “Watch me and learn my movements to perfection so that when you first attempt to do it, you can’t fail,” he’d said.

  I was about to give Detective Hayes the ambassador’s name and number when his phone rang and he excused himself. When he returned, he asked me, “And how did your parents seem at dinner?”

  I had thought Maud seemed a little off, maybe preoccupied, but I didn’t say so. I also skipped over any mention of the ambassador, and I felt fine about the omission. I’d been in the same room with the ambassador every minute that he was in our house, and besides, that overstuffed, freeloading bureaucrat was too self-involved to ever commit murder.

  I had just made a mistake I would pay for later.

  “The food was excellent, as usual, and we all had a good time at dinner,” I told Hayes. “I said good night to them before I went to bed at eleven.”

  “Your bedroom is right under theirs,” Hayes said. “Did you hear any strange sounds, anything we should know about, Tandy?”

  He was working me softly, trying to get to me to open up, but I had nothing for him. I had nothing for my own investigation, either.

  I said, “I was asleep by eleven fifteen. And I sleep like a stump.”

  “How does a stump sleep?” Hayes asked with a smile.

  He was patronizing me. To be fair, sometimes I look younger than I am. I’ve got small bones and features. I rarely use makeup. Girls’ size-eight clothing fits me. As a result, people often underestimate me—which is how I like it.

  “I sleep deeply,” I said, “but my brain works overtime, organizing everything I’ve learned during the day,” I told him. “I do some very good work in my sleep.”

  Hayes said, “All right, Tandy. Duly noted. Works in her sleep.”

  He had run out of questions for me, but I had a few questions for him. And as long as he answered them, I didn’t care if he patted me on the head while he did it. It takes a lot to set me off; I’ve been thoroughly trained to control my emotions.

  “As far as I could tell, Detective Hayes, no gun or other murder weapon was found. There was also no forced entry into the apartment. Valuables are still in my parents’ room: a two-hundred-thousand-dollar work of art and several pieces of jewelry. This wasn’t a robbery, correct?” I said. “So what is your theory of the crime?”

  Sergeant Caputo had been watching Hayes interrogate me, and he was not amused. He certainly didn’t want to cede control to a teenage girl wearing dinosaur pajamas.

  Caputo bent so close to me, I could count the hairs in his unibrow, and the ones curling out of his nose, too.

  “Tessie, I think you know a lot more about what happened to your parents than you want to say. Help us understand what happened here. Take a deep breath and tell us what you know. The truth feels really good when you just let it go.”

  I pulled back and said, “I told you the truth. I was sleeping. Like a stump. And I didn’t wake up until I heard sirens. After that, you were pounding on the door.”

  I flashed what Harry calls my Anne Hathaway smile at the cops and said, “Thank you for your help in our time of need.”

  “Are we being dismissed?” asked Detective Hayes.

  “Ah, finally, the right question,” I replied.

  “And the answer to that question is no,” Caputo said. “We’ll go when we’re done, and for your information, Child Protective Services is on the way.”

  Samantha jumped up then. “Mr. and Mrs. Angel elected Peter Angel to be the children’s guardian in case of an emergency. Peter just texted me to say that he’ll be here shortly.”

  Uncle Peter? Despite the fact that he was now our closest living relative, he was the last person I wanted to see—a busybody who had once proved to me he was not to be trusted. But that’s a story for another time.

  10

  Have you noticed that time seems to slow down unbelievably during any emergency situation? Maybe not. I’m sorry to say this isn’t the first emergency situation I’ve ever been in. So I knew this feeling of eternity all too well.

  Though it felt like an hour, only about ten minutes passed before I found myself opening the front door to Uncle Peter, who stalked in like he owned the place. He was wearing a rumpled plaid suit, and his wispy hair had been finger-combed and wouldn’t lie down. It looked to me like he’d been drinking.

  He didn’t quite meet my eyes when he said, “This is sad, Tandy. I’m sorry to hear the news.”

  I thought I could get more sympathy from a stranger on the street, but never mind. Peter was an Angel, after all.

  “It’s sad, all right,” I said to my uncle, successfully quelling the wave of grief that surged up from my heart.

  Directly behind him stood Philippe Montaigne, our family’s attorney. We’d known Phil since we were young; he was actually Hugo’s godfather.

  He looked handsome and impeccable, even at three in the morning. His hair was shaved close to his scalp, and he smelled of Vetiver. His jacket was Armani, and he wore a white shirt that was open at the neck and hanging out over his dark trousers.

  He held out his arms to me and I went to him for a hug. He said, “I’m sorry, Tandy. So very sorry. Are you all right? Do you know what happened?”

  I whispered against his cheek, “No. And the police are clueless, Phil.”

  Uncle Peter conferred with Hayes and Caputo, and I heard him say that he had hosted a dinner party at his apartment from eight PM until only moments ago, and that he had eighteen guests who could vouch for his whereabouts.

  As Hayes took down names and phone numbers, I brought Philippe up to the minute on everything I knew.

  “All right. Now, don’t talk to the police again unless I’m with you, Tandy.”

  “We only said that we were sleeping when it happened.”

  “That’s fine,” said Philippe. “Keep in mind that the police are allowed to lie. They can say anything to you. Set any kind of trap.”

  “Gotcha,” I said.

  “Good. And don’t worry.”

  But it looked as if our fifteen-hundred-dollars-an-hour a
ttorney was worried himself. I could tell he was wondering what would happen to us, the superfreak Angel kids, without the protection of our gargoyle parents.

  Philippe approached the cops and I followed right behind him. “Is anyone here under arrest?” he asked.

  “Not yet,” said Caputo. “But we haven’t excluded anyone as a suspect, either.”

  “Tandoori, Harrison, and Hugo are all minors. You had no right to interrogate them without a parent or guardian ad litem present.”

  “Their parents had checked out, for Christ’s sake,” Caputo said. “They could be witnesses to a double homicide. You think I should have made them hot chocolate and told them to watch cartoons? We had dead people here.”

  Phil ignored him and kept going.

  “I’m going to file a complaint with the chief of Ds in the morning. Right now, I’m advising my clients not to speak with you unless you charge them, and even then only if I’m present. I’m also advising them all to go to bed. That includes Matthew, if he wants to stay, and Samantha Peck, too.”

  Caputo said, “The Angels’ bedroom is a crime scene. We’re leaving uniformed officers at the top of the stairs. I wouldn’t mess with us if I were you, counselor. Be advised of that.”

  And with that, Caputo and Hayes finally left our apartment.

  Uncle Peter stood in the center of the room, watching and saying nothing. He hadn’t hugged me, or asked where my three brothers were so he could go to see them. He’s made no secret of the fact that he doesn’t like children.

  He especially doesn’t like us.

  Why, you might ask?

  Because, he has said, I know you.

  He looked around the apartment as if he were sizing it up for sale. I knew for a fact that the apartment could fetch twenty million, and that was without the art and the furnishings. Uncle Peter would probably get my father’s half of Angel Pharma, but would he inherit our apartment as well?

  Uncle Peter said to me, “I’m moving into the guest room for now. After the reading of the will, we’ll see what the future will bring to the Angel family.”

  My jaw dropped. We didn’t have a “guest room.” And that could only mean one thing.

  I watched as Uncle Peter went into the bedroom right next to mine. Oh, man, I could not believe it. If my parents had been alive, they might have killed Peter for using Katherine’s room.

  And I’m not exactly using kill as a figure of speech here.

  CONFESSION

  I saw Maud cry once.

  I know you probably don’t believe that’s possible, but it’s true. I need to prove to you that my parents really were human. That they could feel pain.

  I can’t place the memory specifically in time; I imagine this is one of those traumatic moments that Dr. Keyes worked so hard to help me forget, but somehow it still lingers.

  I remember that I’d come home early that day because lacrosse practice had been canceled unexpectedly. So I know it was before the accident with Robert that landed me in the hospital with fifty stitches.

  As I entered the apartment, I heard a strange, strangled noise coming from the direction of Maud’s study.

  Others might have sprinted toward the sound to make sure there was no foul play, or maybe called out, asking if everyone was all right. But I think I’m a born investigator. When I hear something unusual, it’s my nature to get quiet and observe, to study. So I took my shoes off, the Angel family rule, and padded quietly down the hall.

  When I reached the door to the study, which was cracked open, I heard Samantha’s voice. “Of course you had to do it. A mother’s role is to prepare and protect her child. Period. You knew what he would do to her.”

  There was brief silence, then a gasp, then a wail. “We did something much worse, Samantha.” It was Maud’s voice, twisted with emotion. “What we did… the consequences are final. I have never failed so spectacularly in my life.”

  “You didn’t fail. The person who you hired to do the job failed.”

  “I shouldn’t have trusted him.”

  “But it was an accident.”

  “Accidents are the very definition of failure. Pure, complete failure.”

  “Maud, the past can’t be changed. You can only let yourself think of the future. Of what’s next. Let’s discuss what can be done to… clean up. Let’s discuss how I can help.”

  “Malcolm is taking care of that part. The person who did this will be taken care of. Permanently.”

  Permanently taken care of? Fired, I reassured myself. That must be what she means.

  The person who did… what? Were they talking about someone working for the hedge fund? Or the man driving the vehicle that had killed Katherine?

  Or the boy who had tried to steal their precious Tandoori away from them?

  The boy I think I loved… once?

  I’m so sorry, reader. I can’t go on thinking about that right now.

  11

  Our apartment suddenly felt completely empty.

  The police were gone, except for the oversized and overweight patrolman putting great stress on an antique armchair outside our parents’ room.

  The CSIs were gone.

  Hugo had, for obvious reasons, not been able to sleep, and had followed Matty back to the living room. He was now quietly feeding squid-burger to the sharks while Matty paced. Harry had also returned from his room and was sitting at the piano with his head in his hands.

  Philippe Montaigne was gone, and Uncle Peter had shut himself up in Katherine’s room and locked the door. Shortly after the sounds of furniture being moved had ceased, the bar of light showing under the door had also gone out.

  And, of course, our parents were gone. They’d left a gigantic vacuum. I never realized until that moment how much they’d filled this apartment. Our world. With all the silence around us, I wondered for a moment if they had been the Angel family’s entire life force.

  Matthew shattered the silence by whistling loudly, shrilly, and long.

  “Attention, everyone,” he shouted, putting on his sunglasses. “It’s time for a family meeting, and Samantha is invited to attend.”

  Matty had our attention. Harry sat up at the Pegasus, his fingers on the keys. Samantha and I shared the sofa, and Hugo lay on the carpet with a couple of forty-pound weights in his hands. He curled them to his chest as his idol and mentor talked.

  “Here’s the thing, sports fans, and you, too, Tandy. United we stand. Divided we fall. Don’t talk to the police without Philippe. Don’t speculate on what could have happened, or why. That only muddies the waters. Let the police do their work. We stand on the sidelines.” He slid his sunglasses down his nose and looked around the room at us. “Anybody have anything to add to this?”

  Well, yeah. I did.

  “Matty, it’s obvious that we’re all suspects,” I said. “The police didn’t believe our alibis, and why should they? No one else had access to the apartment. The doors lock automatically. The elevator requires a key. It’s pretty clear to them that one of us murdered Maud and Malcolm.”

  “That’s what I’m talking about, Tandy, that’s the exact thing. They don’t know if it was one of us. Maybe you gave a key to a boyfriend—”

  “You know I don’t have a boyfriend.” That was cruel on Matty’s part. He knew we did not speak about boyfriends in this house. At least mine… Because they weren’t allowed.

  This, dear friend, was the paradox of my life. Even though I’d traveled the world—more than once—you might say I didn’t get out much. At all.

  Matty was still talking. “Or maybe Sal hired a hit man.”

  “Our doorman Sal? Are you crazy, Matthew? Why would Sal do that? Malcolm liked Sal. He gave him free chill pills. I’m sure the cops will give him a good turn on the spit, but you have more of a motive to kill our parents than Sal has. Why are you so quick to shut us up?”

  Matthew pushed his sunglasses to the top of his bird’s nest of hair. He gave me the double-barreled blue-eyed all-American stare. Now
the gloves were coming off.

  Yes, I thought. Everyone should defend themselves in the safety of the living room now, because sooner or later, we will have to do it for real.

  “Don’t look at me, Tandoori,” Matthew said. “Even if I am fast enough to circle the block before the smell catches up with my fart, I still wasn’t here last night, and I still haven’t even visited this insane asylum since Christmas.”

  Harry was running his fingers over the piano keys in a dramatic thrumming riff, either Chopin or Liszt—I wasn’t sure which.

  Then he stopped playing and said to Matthew, “Who even knows if that’s true, Matty? You could have used the service elevator, and you could still have a key. No one would have known you were here. And, Hugo—your room is right at the foot of the stairs. You had easy access to the penthouse.”

  Hugo put down the weights and jackknifed to his feet.

  “I’m just a kid! I couldn’t kill my own parents. What am I supposed to do without them? Get a job? I’m four-foot-eight. I’m in the fifth grade.”

  Then he spun on his heels and pointed his huge index finger at me.

  “Tandy’s got motive, too. She’s the one who got the last Big Chop.”

  12

  Are you ready for the story of the last supper? My last dinner with Malcolm and Maud, the evening they died? I’m about to tell you the whole truth and nothing but. Far more than I told the cops. I’m really starting to trust you, reader.

  The fact is, that night I got in trouble big-time, and I was punished. And it just so happens that punishment was Malcolm and Maud’s specialty.

  As I mentioned earlier, my father had prepared a private dinner for the UN’s ambassador from the Kingdom of Bhutan. His name is Ugyen Panyor, and he believes himself to be directly descended from Ugyen Guru Rinpoche, who brought Buddhism to Bhutan thirteen centuries ago.

  Father had prepared ema datshi, the national dish of Bhutan. He substituted feta cheese for the yak cheese in the recipe because yak cheese is very hard to come by, even in Manhattan. But the rest of the meal was authentic, including the excess of chilies combined with tomato and garlic, and the side dish of traditional red rice.