Confessions of a Murder Suspect Read online

  I looked away and didn’t answer.

  22

  And that’s just what I did this time, too, as Harry’s earlier question echoed in the room: Have you forgotten, Tandy? Have you?

  I looked away and didn’t answer.

  I lay next to Harry in his bed, watching the changing light reflect on the painted angels peering down from the ceiling. Harry had been inspired by Michelangelo’s timeless masterpieces in the Sistine Chapel, and had invented his own special effect so that the angels’ wings seemed to shimmer in every color against a lightning-struck pink and gold sky.

  My mother found Harry’s work sentimental. Maybe it was, but like his music, I found his paintings evocative, endearing, and curious. I didn’t really connect to them in the way I think Harry hoped I might, but that was just a genetic issue. He and I had talked about how odd it was that we were called “twins” when we were really nothing more than siblings who happened to grow in the womb together at the same time. Fraternal twins come from two totally separate eggs, and the differences between us were obvious: I got all the scientific genes, and Harry got all the artistic genes.

  Which made me wonder: Was Maud or Malcolm really an artist at heart? Were the Angel children their sculptures, their canvases, their creations to be put on display for all the world to see and admire?

  Almost any other parents would have been proud of Harry. It was a mystery to both of us why his painting wasn’t valued in this family. Maybe because it represented something missing from our lives. Or at least my life. Magic… soul… light?

  Or love? Yes, maybe that was it. The experience of true, passionate love that had been snatched away from me just when it had been in my grasp—

  Nil satis nisi optimum, interrupted my father’s voice, booming inside my head. Crushing the thought as if it were vermin.

  Nothing but the best is good enough.

  He meant no one but the best is good enough.

  It doesn’t matter anymore, I reminded myself. Only one thing matters now.

  “I’m going to find out who killed them,” I said to my sleepy twin.

  Harry laughed. “I was wondering when you’d decide you were the most qualified person to solve the crime. And that you could do it without a forensics lab.”

  “There were detectives before there were crime labs, you know.”

  “Fair point.”

  “Furthermore, I believe that Maud and Malcolm were poisoned.”

  “In your opinion.”

  “In my opinion,” I said. “Based on my research.”

  Harry sighed and looked at me with his big, searching eyes. “You know, Tandy,” he began. Then he stopped.

  “What?”

  “Even though you were the last one to get the Big Chop, I don’t think you could have killed Malcolm and Maud. And I don’t think you have to prove it wasn’t you by solving the murder.”

  Did no one in this family understand me? I wasn’t trying to prove my innocence. I was trying to bring whoever committed this crime to justice, even if it turned out to be me.

  “The chop wasn’t so bad,” I said. “You just concentrate on the good times, like your Grande Gongos, and get through it.”

  I immediately regretted my words.

  Harry had never been awarded the Grande Gongo. The rest of us had won it at least once—even Hugo, who was six years younger than Harry and I. He’d won it three times already. Hugo had also gotten one of the biggest chops in the history of the family, but that was another story.

  As I was thinking about Hugo, he came into Harry’s room and did a flying leap onto the bed, almost bouncing us out of it.

  “You’ve got to get dressed, Harrison Weepyface.”

  Harry groaned and turned over, pulling his pillow over his head.

  “He’s got to get dressed,” Hugo said to me. “He’s going to be late.”

  I went to the closet and took Harry’s tuxedo out of the dry cleaner’s plastic. Then I half coaxed, half badgered him out of his bed and into the shower.

  I left Harry in Hugo’s care and called Samantha and Matthew on the intercom. Then I called Virgil, our driver and sometime bodyguard. He was fifty, and he was huge. Almost as big as Matthew. He wore a diamond in his ear. He was a poet who wrote raps in his spare time. Virgil was also very kind to all of us kids.

  “I’m very sorry about the terrible news, Tandy. I’m very, very sorry,” he said when he saw me. He was a big bear of a man who didn’t think twice about offering me a hug in the face of this tragedy. I accepted it awkwardly. Not because I didn’t appreciate Virgil’s gesture, but because hugs were a rather strange and rare phenomenon in our house.

  “I’ll bring the car around in about five minutes,” he said.

  Only moments later, I was wearing a black dress and heels, and Harry had been transformed from a waif in baggy clothes to the smartly dressed boy prodigy that we knew him to be.

  My three brothers and Samantha rode down in the elevator with me. I held Harry’s hand. He could have canceled, but even he knew that he would feel better once he poured himself into his work and was applauded for it.

  It was a big day for Harry. He was playing a piano concerto at Lincoln Center.

  23

  Avery Fisher Hall was packed with music aficionados—more than two thousand of them. Harry was one of Mischa Dubrowsky’s advanced students and was playing two pieces that day. He was the headliner, performing after six other gifted young pianists.

  The hall is nothing like what you’d expect from seeing concert halls in the movies. There’s no red velvet or chandeliers; instead, it’s a magnificently simple place, the walls and ceiling paneled in light wood, to showcase the performance and the performer.

  My brother Harry, my twin. Even after seeing him play in such magnificent spaces so many times, I still got excited for his moments in the spotlight.

  There was an excited whisper in the hall as Maestro Dubrowsky came onto the stage in his tux, with his long mane and mutton chops. I got chills as he introduced my brother and said that he would be playing Bach’s “Partita no. 1 in B-flat.”

  Harry strode confidently out from the wings, looking so handsome I could hardly believe he was the same boy who’d been staring up at his ceiling, wracked with grief, only an hour before.

  Harry took the bench at the Steinway grand and paused for a moment with his fingers on the keys. Then he started to play. The audience was silent. In awe. Transported. I don’t know very much about music—I’m the only one in the family who can’t sing or play an instrument—but even I knew that what I was listening to was sheer magnificence.

  Harry had told me all about Bach. He’d explained that Bach’s music has a measured grace, an inherent tranquility and lightness, and that it is precise, almost mathematical. “That’s why you’d like Bach, Tandy,” he’d said. “He’s not bombastic like Brahms, or romantic like Chopin.” At which point I probably kicked him in the shins. But he was right.

  Bach was a kind of expression I could connect with.

  Harry had told me that Bach should be played very softly, and very loudly, to exaggerate the phrasing, because the pieces themselves are so ordered that the emotion needs to come through in the playing.

  I listened for these elements as Harry lost himself in the music. I lost myself, too, as the music captured me in the way that only great music can.

  I thought I felt a catch in my throat, and I caught myself.

  And I thought of Harry as a little boy of three, sitting at the huge piano in the bay window of the living room, his legs too short to reach the pedals and his hands too short to span a chord. And still, he practiced. Four or five hours a day, every single day, without fail.

  I was brought back to the moment by the man sitting to my left, who seemed overcome by Harry’s rendition of the piece. His eyes were wet and he tapped his fingers on his knees and moved his head in time to the music.

  I looked back to the stage. I knew that the climax of the piece came on wit
h the gigue, the lively, fast-paced finale, and Harry was rendering it perfectly and faithfully, but with the brilliant accenting that the critics had always acclaimed as uniquely his.

  As the last notes of Harry’s performance rang through the auditorium, the man to my left turned to me and exclaimed, “That Harrison Angel is a true genius! Perhaps our greatest pianist. And he’s only a young boy!”

  I said, “I know. I know.”

  I stood up to applaud, along with two thousand other admirers. Harry dipped his head in a bow, and then again when the audience continued clapping.

  It’s possible that my twin was the brightest of all the Angel kids. The one of us with the most potential. Why couldn’t my parents see this? What was wrong with them?

  And was that why they had been murdered?

  24

  We were feeling exhilarated after Harry’s magnificent performance, and we were also starving.

  The five of us rode up in the north elevator, taking turns listing the goods stored in our pantry by food group. Whoever named the fewest foods would have to cook. This is the way we Angels play.

  “Get ready to make dinner, Sam,” I told her. She didn’t know the pantry like we did. Most kids from a family like ours wouldn’t know the first thing about the kitchen, either, since it was usually the territory of the cook or housekeeper, but Malcolm had us all regularly cooking from the age of seven.

  “You’ll be sorry if I do,” she said. “You know me. I’m the microwave queen.”

  “Never too late to learn to be great,” Hugo said, and we all laughed. Another quote from our father.

  We exited the elevator on the top floor and found the front door to our apartment wide open.

  Samantha got out her phone and said, “I’m calling nine-one-one.”

  Matthew’s chest, arms, and forehead seemed to expand, and the muscles in his neck thickened. “Stay here, all of you. I’m going to see who’s in there.” His bluer-than-blue eyes blazed like guide lights on an airfield at night.

  He was heading through the open doorway when Sergeant Capricorn Caputo stepped into view. He put out his hands to stop Matthew from bulling into the apartment.

  “You don’t have to call the police, Ms. Peck. We’re already here. We still have a search warrant, and we’re executing it.”

  The police had entered our house when we weren’t there. It was another scandal in a day of many.

  Uncle Peter was sitting on the red couch, his cell phone in hand. When he saw me, he covered the mouthpiece and said to me, “They’re authorized, Tandy.” Then he went back to his phone call.

  The uniformed cops inside the apartment ignored us, coming and going through the kitchen and using the service elevator, taking cartons of foodstuffs with them.

  “What the hell are you people doing here?” Matthew shouted.

  I ignored Matty’s outburst. “Have you gotten back the medical examiner’s report?” I asked Caputo as calmly as possible. “There’s only one conceivable option: My parents were poisoned.”

  “There’s a backlog of bodies at the morgue, Tookie. So save us some time, why don’t you. What poison did you use?”

  “I did some research and found that a black tongue is caused by arsenic and by heparin,” I said. “That help you any?”

  “Arsenic poisoning is very painful,” Caputo said. “It was probably a very bad death. Do you understand me? The killer showed no mercy.”

  No mercy. The words echoed in my mind. And that’s when a very strange thing happened.

  I suddenly felt as though my head had filled with helium. Caputo went in and out of focus. I felt Matthew’s hand at my back. And then I heard people calling my name.

  I opened my eyes and I realized that I was flat on my back on the floor. I recognized the pattern on the carpet. It was definitely our carpet. I had fainted.

  I had passed right out in front of the cops.

  I had totally disgraced myself.

  Mother, Mother, I’m so sorry.

  Please forgive me.

  25

  Samantha was only an inch or so from my face. “Tandy, say something, please.” She offered me a glass of water, but I shook my head.

  “I’m… okay. I don’t know what… It’s nothing. I’m fine.”

  Caputo’s smirking features loomed in my vision. He squatted down next to me and said, “Let me tell you something, Tootsie. This could be your best chance to get ahead of what you did by confessing.”

  “Do you have any other suspects?” I asked him, getting to my feet. “Or is it the Angel kids and no one else?”

  “We like the direction the case is going. Based on my conversations with your uncle, I think your parents might have had an inkling about which of you was out to get them,” said Caputo. “Not to mention that I hear from multiple sources that you’re the smartest kid in the family. I think that you thought you could get away with it. Why? Did you want their money?”

  If I were a different person, I would have pointed out how absurd that last part was. What did I need money for? I was practically born in a bank vault. From day one, I had access to as much money as I could ever want.

  Just not as much access to light, air, and freedom.

  I ignored the impulse to berate him, because more than anything, I wanted to hear what Caputo knew. As Harry had pointed out, I didn’t have a crime lab at my disposal. Right now, Caputo was my best source of information. I would have to draw him out. This was my Q&A, not his.

  I said, “Sergeant, what prompted this new search? You’ve already torn the penthouse apart.”

  “We found a bottle in the trash room, Sassy. Inside that bottle was a trace of poison that matches the poison we found in a water glass we took from your parents’ bedroom.”

  The cops had forensic evidence; that was news. I knew the glasses he was referring to—the handblown Venetian-glass tumblers Malcolm and Maud had kept beside their bed.

  “So are you saying that someone made them drink the poison, then threw the bottle in the trash? That’s absurd.”

  “Absurd? I call it stupid, but you’ve got a better education than I do.”

  “You know what I mean,” I said. “Why would someone leave a bottle with poison in it where the police could find it?”

  “Criminals make mistakes all the time,” Caputo said.

  Samantha interrupted us. “Come on, Tandy.” She took my arm and led me to a chair. Then she said to the sergeant, “If you’re not arresting anyone, we’d like you to leave.”

  “Yeah,” said Hugo. “ ‘We’re done here.’ Isn’t that what they say on all the police shows?”

  “We’re done for now. But I’m telling you again,” Caputo warned, “don’t go anywhere.”

  “If that’s what we’re being ordered to do, then I guess you’ll be giving us a note excusing us from school.”

  “The noose is tightening,” Caputo said. “You feel a little short of air, Snazzy?”

  The funny thing was, I still did.

  26

  Okay, so how am I doing so far? I’m trying so hard to tell the story as objectively as I can, but it’s not easy. I know I keep getting a little bit off track and letting my emotions about this—about them—get in the way, but I’ll try to stick to the facts. That’s what Malcolm and Maud would want me to do.

  I got up early the next morning, ready to begin my own investigation in earnest. I was going to beat Caputo at this. He was barking up the wrong tree—no Angel kid would try to kill Malcolm and Maud. No way.

  I stopped in the living room and fed canned clams to Hugo’s sharks, then had a breakfast of cold leftover spaghetti and root beer. After I ate, I took the back stairs down one flight to Mrs. Hauser’s apartment, which is right under ours.

  Dakota residents are a very private clan. We don’t want anyone to know our business, and if you don’t believe me, google the Dakota and read about us for yourself. We don’t talk to strangers, and we’re certainly not keen on talking to the police. But as a r
esident, I have special access to my neighbors.

  I’m also capable of behaving sweetly when I need to.

  Mrs. Hauser’s doorbell was made from a gold Sovereign dating back to the reign of King Edward IV. I pressed it. Chimes rang, and then I heard faint and irregular footsteps tapping on a parquet floor, coming toward the door.

  When the door opened, our little bent-over downstairs neighbor, Sigrid Hauser, was standing there in a gauzy lavender-hued peignoir.

  Her face crumpled when she saw me.

  “Tandy, dear Tandy. Come in, come in.”

  Even though I really don’t like to be touched, I let Mrs. Hauser hug me. It was surprisingly calming. Then I followed behind her at a very creaky pace until we were in her parlor, the décor of which was even older and mustier than she was.

  “Mrs. Hauser, if you don’t mind,” I said, sinking into the ancient brown-velvet sofa. A stuffed springbok with horns and glassy amber eyes stared at me from over the fireplace, and for a moment I forgot what I was going to say.

  “Anything you need, Tandy, just ask. Do you have enough money to get by?”

  “That’s all taken care of, Mrs. Hauser. Thank you. I just wanted to ask you if you know why or how someone could have gotten into our apartment? The doors were all locked that night.”

  Mrs. Hauser is a widow, and although she seems to be a frail old lady, I know she’s shrewd; she’s a very smart—though old and crumbly—cookie.

  “Those policemen asked me the same thing, Tandy, and I cannot imagine how anyone could have entered your apartment without a key. I’m stumped on that one.”

  I nodded. “So am I, Mrs. Hauser.”

  “But there was something that I didn’t tell the police, because it is none of their business,” Mrs. Hauser said. She paused, slightly uncomfortable. “Can I get you anything? Would you like some herbal tea?”

  “What didn’t you tell the police?” I pressed, even though I completely understood why she wouldn’t want to tell them something. I thought of my occasional impulse to leave out facts, like the ambassador’s visit.