The Paris Mysteries Read online

  I have a track record of solving crimes, starting with the deaths of our parents and continuing from that day, so that I even get respect from the NYPD.

  So I say this not as a snotty teenager, but as a proven investigator: Uncovering the mystery of Katherine’s death would be the most important investigation of my life.

  That was my last conscious thought before I dropped into a black hole of sleep.

  I had to swim up from the depths of my slumber to finally understand that Jacob was knocking frantically on my door.

  “Tandy! Open up. It’s an emergency.”

  “What time is it?”

  “It’s late. Get dressed, Tandy. Harry is in trouble.”

  I bounded out of bed in my borrowed peignoir and threw open the door.

  “What is it? What happened?”

  “Someone is dead. Harry has been arrested.”

  Monsieur Morel surprised me.

  I was slammed against the backseat as he floored the Mercedes, cutting through early-morning traffic and whizzing through intersections against lights, without incident or accident.

  Hugo clung to me in the backseat as the car lurched and swayed and shot through the streets of Paris.

  We couldn’t go fast enough for me.

  My heart ached for Harry. Was he terrified? Had the police already decided he was guilty of something heinous? It had happened before, to Matty when his girlfriend had been found stabbed to death. The media had played judge and jury before the trial even started.

  Before I could get swamped in bad memories, Monsieur Morel braked the car outside the Commissariat de Police. Car doors flew open, and with Jacob in the lead, Hugo and I nimbly skirted a long row of bike racks and iron fencing, edging through a line of police cars at the curb.

  The police station was gray brick, lit from within with a stark, bluish-gray light, looking quite ominous under the circumstances.

  Jacob held the glass doors for Hugo and me, saying, “Don’t worry, kids,” in a way that sounded like he was worried sick.

  The police station looked like every one I’ve ever seen. There were community notices on the walls and long counters around the perimeter for filling out forms. There was a bank of folding chairs in the middle and one in a corner, and another all the way at the back of the room; a desk was manned by two uniformed officers, a big clock on the wall behind their heads.

  In front of the desk were two staggered lines of drunks and thieves, and also parents and loved ones making inquiries.

  As I stood in the entrance taking all this in, a man approached from the edge of my vision. He was chubby, bald, and wearing jeans, a gray plaid sports jacket, and a scowl. That was when I recognized him. It was Gram Hilda’s senior attorney, Monsieur Delavergne.

  He shook hands with Jacob, nodded hello in the direction of Hugo and me, and then walked us to the cluster of folding chairs in the corner of the room.

  Jacob asked him, “Where do things stand?”

  Delavergne spoke mainly in English but stopped every now and then to look for the correct word.

  “Put simply, Harry went to a party, what I would call an out-of-control bacchanal with no adults on the premises. The girl who invited him to the party, Lulu Ferrara, overdosed and died in a bathroom.”

  Jacob expressed his shock, then asked, “Did Harry give drugs to this girl?”

  “He says not,” said Delavergne, “and there are no witnesses to the contrary, but the two of them came to the party together, and that makes Harry a person of interest—at the least.”

  I shouted, “Harry went with someone to a party? That’s what he did? That’s IT?”

  Ignoring me, Delavergne went on. “Mademoiselle Ferrara’s father is deputy foreign attaché to the Italian Consulate. Obviously, Monsieur Ferrara is pulling out—how do you say?—the ‘big guns.’ ”

  Jacob said, “Big guns be damned. What are the charges against my nephew? If he’s not charged, they have to release him, isn’t that true in this country?”

  Delavergne said, “At present he is being held as a—”

  Even as Delavergne said “Témoin important,” I said, “Material witness.”

  I knew the drill. Where I come from, material witnesses can be held for forty-eight hours, enough time to break down a hardened street thug into a sobbing baby. Harry was no hardened anything. With enough skill, a cagey cop could get him to confess to something he didn’t do.

  I was sweating and chilled at the same time.

  I was about to start shouting again when Delavergne turned his head toward the intake desk. He said to Jacob, “One moment. I’m being called.”

  Delavergne went over to the desk sergeant, who took him through a side door. The door closed behind them, and a few minutes later, the sergeant returned to the desk alone.

  We waited.

  Hugo was crying softly. “This isn’t right. Harry didn’t kill anyone.”

  I grabbed my brother and held him tight.

  I said, “Jacob, do you trust Monsieur Delavergne?”

  “He’s a good lawyer. In fact, he’s very good.”

  Of course I noticed that Jacob hadn’t answered my question.

  Jacob, Hugo, and I hunkered down in plastic chairs in the police station’s lobby for three endless hours.

  My uncle and I took turns pacing. Sometimes we spoke to each other in screaming whispers, then went dead quiet so we didn’t wake Hugo, who was sleeping on the floor at our feet.

  Finally, as sunlight pierced the front windows, Monsieur Delavergne came through the metal door with his arm around Harry’s shoulders.

  I jumped to my feet, stepping on Hugo’s hand.

  “Owwwwww!”

  “Sorry, Hugo.”

  I looked at Harry coming across the room with Delavergne. Harry was free—right? He looked terrible—both weak and pale, like he’d spent the night running on a treadmill. I’m sure the all-night interrogation must have felt exactly like that. But all that mattered now was that we had him back.

  Hugo called out to Harry and started running to him. Jacob and I were only steps behind. We all hugged Harry really hard, but he hardly hugged us back.

  “Are you okay?” I asked. “What did they do to you?”

  “I’m really mad,” he said. “Does that count for anything?”

  Delavergne said, “You’ll be all right, mon fils. Jacob, you can take this young man home. There may be more questions until Monsieur Ferrara accepts the facts of his daughter’s death, but right now, Harry is free.”

  Delavergne had fought for my brother, and he had won. I felt a little explosion of intense love for the man, until Delavergne said to our uncle, “Jacob, you and I have to meet. The board will have to be informed of this situation. On the other hand—they may already know.”

  I whipped around, looked out through the front windows, and saw a pack of people jostling for position behind the short iron fence on the median strip.

  My heart, already exhausted from today’s workout, sank.

  The press had found us. Mega-press. And then we were out on the street with Harry.

  From the insignias on their caps, jackets, and satellite vans, the reporters were French, American, German, and English, both TV and print journalists, all of them shouting.

  “Harry Angel. Harry!”

  “Harry. Over here. Look this way.”

  “Did you give drugs to Lulu Ferrara?”

  Monsieur Delavergne, Jacob, and Monsieur Morel formed a wall of muscle, and I followed right behind them with a brother under each arm.

  Harry hissed to me, “I didn’t hurt anyone. You know that’s the last thing I would ever do.”

  I said, “I know that. Who knows you better than me?”

  We were only steps away from the safety of the car when Harry’s knees buckled. He gasped, his eyes rolled back, and then my brother dropped to the pavement.

  I screamed, “Harry! Harry, what’s wrong? Jacob, help!”

  Harry was shaking horribly, twit
ching and foaming as the press jumped the median strip barrier. Oh my God, what was wrong with Harry? Had he been poisoned with whatever had killed Lulu?

  Was he dying?

  Hugo threw himself on top of Harry, covering him as best he could, protecting him from the clicking cameras and the rolling tape. I pulled at Hugo. “Hugo, no. He has to breathe.”

  I heard Jacob directing Delavergne and Morel to lift Harry into the car. It was all happening too slowly.

  I pushed Hugo into the backseat after Harry, then scrambled in behind him and closed the door. Harry was moaning, still shuddering and twitching.

  “We’ve got to get to the hospital. Fast!” I shouted.

  Jacob said to us, “Buckle up.” And to Morel, “Let’s go.”

  The American Hospital was to hospitals what the Plaza is to hotels. It was an awesome place with famous doctors and the best medical services on the Continent. And then there were the bonus amenities like Wi-Fi; gourmet meals; and hairdressers, pedicurists, and masseuses by appointment.

  It was almost like a resort where you could have brain surgery and get a high-fashion haircut at the same time.

  Hugo kept Harry company while Harry’s doctor met with Jacob and me outside the closed door. Since Dr. West is a highly regarded cardiac surgeon and I’m a sixteen-year-old girl, needless to say, he spoke over my head.

  He said to my uncle, “Harrison’s symptoms: breathlessness, dizziness, and the syncope—that’s fainting—the fluttering in the chest and sudden weakness—these all are indications of tachycardia. It’s generally not very serious, and I’ve seen a lot of this in teenage boys.

  “But you should know that tachycardia can be brought on by using energy drinks—either alone or as a mixer. Stimulant drugs like cocaine can also bring on tachycardia. Given that Harrison had been at a party, followed by the stress of the police interrogation, it all makes sense. I’m not concerned with the tachycardia—”

  I interrupted. “So is he going to be all right?”

  The doctor ignored me. “As for the arrhythmia, this is an irregular heartbeat that can be life threatening…”

  Dr. West went on, saying that arrhythmia, or fibrillation, was potentially more serious, and that pretty much infuriated me.

  Because I wasn’t convinced that any of my brother’s heart issues were caused by congenital defects or energy drinks mixed with booze or recreational drugs.

  A different idea had occurred to me. A bad one.

  I pushed open the door to Harry’s hospital room. It was a big, bright corner room, furnished with a supercomfy sit-up bed and a reclining chair currently occupied by Hugo, who was enthusiastically thumbing his Nintendo 3DS.

  I saw a couple of huge, ostentatious flower arrangements and a garish bouquet of metallic balloons tied to the footrail. Who had sent them? Harry had arrived just hours ago.

  Behind the balloons, Harry was sitting up in bed, talking on his phone. He had good color in his face, an open laptop on his knees, and papers littering his blanket. The papers looked legal. Like contracts. In fact, my brother looked less like a heart patient and more like a whiz-kid businessman.

  He held up a finger to me, the universal gesture for “just a minute,” and said into the phone, “Yes, I can make it to the audition tomorrow at three. Thank you. Thank you very much.”

  He clicked off his phone and grinned.

  “Who was that?” I asked. “What kind of audition?”

  “Haven’t you heard, Tandy? I’m a musical genius. I’m about to take Paris by storm.”

  I sat on the edge of the bed. It felt like I was in a convenience store and a live deer had wandered inside. And when that happens, you want to approach it very carefully so that it doesn’t go nuts and break up the place before leaping through the plate glass window.

  “Dr. West said you have heart problems, Harry. You know that?”

  “I heard him. I guess maybe I did party a little too hard. But it was no big deal, Tandy. I don’t know what Lulu ‘ingested’ because I lost sight of her the second we walked through the door. All I had was a couple of beers—”

  I cut him off because he was seriously scaring me. I said, “Do not lie to me. I have to know. Are you taking the pills again? Are you having a reaction to our illegal, non-FDA-approved pills with whatever you ‘ingested’ at that party?”

  “I’m not taking the pills,” he said. “I stopped taking them when you did. When our supply was cut off.”

  “Harry, if you’re lying, if you’re mixing pills and other things, you could die.”

  He shook his head. Like he couldn’t accept that I didn’t believe him. Well, there were boxes of pills in our father’s office when he died. Harry had had plenty of opportunity to stash some away for the future.

  I had done it. Maybe all my brothers had, too.

  Our drugs had their advantages.

  Hugo looked up from his 3DS. He said to me, “He keeps them in a vitamin C bottle inside his suitcase. A big bottle.”

  Harry glared at Hugo, then turned an even angrier glare on me. “I said, I’m not taking any pills, Tandy. Don’t worry. The Harry you’re seeing is all me. Something huge is about to happen, and I can’t afford not to be one hundred percent.

  “Finally, it’ll be my time to shine.”

  When I peeked in on Harry that night, he was cross-legged on his bed, scrawling on music sheets, humming to himself and counting off beats on his fingers. He looked good. He didn’t see me open and close his door.

  Across the hall in his own room, Hugo was surrounded by pillows on the floor, intensely involved in a football game on the giant TV, shouting out to Matty, who was on Skype watching the game with him from thousands of miles away.

  Meanwhile, downstairs in the dining room, Jacob was having coffee and cake with Monsieur Delavergne. After my sunburst of love for Gram Hilda’s lawyer, I now had to see things as they actually were. And reality sucked.

  Harry had left home without permission.

  He’d gone to a wild party, where his “date” had died of an ecstasy overdose. And probably even more disgraceful—the press had videotaped Harry Angel’s arrest, his release, and his fall in front of the police station. Now everything that had ever been said, filmed, or written about our family was being regurgitated for a whole new audience.

  Most of our recorded history was pretty disgraceful, to say the least.

  I went to the kitchen and washed the dinner dishes, soaking them in hot water and scrubbing vigorously while the meeting that might turn Harry’s inheritance to crap rumbled along out of earshot. I was totally terrified for Harry.

  On the other hand—and wasn’t there always another hand?—I understood why Harry was rebelling.

  Harry’s paintings, in my humble estimation, were brilliant. He also composed music and could really, really play the piano.

  Our parents hadn’t appreciated these talents; they thought his brand of creativity was weak. Or they didn’t see a financial advantage to painting and music. Or they really didn’t like Harry, which was his opinion. He was the unloved child.

  Whatever, because of Harry’s epic press coverage, reporters had learned of his debut at Carnegie Hall and that he’d written music for other musicians.

  They’d figured out their angle, which was also the truth: Harry was an oppressed musical giant. Now there was interest in Harry, all right. Big-money interest.

  I took a few swigs of cooking sherry, nearly dropping the bottle when my phone suddenly rang.

  Could it be James?

  I leapt for my phone, which was on the kitchen table a mile away. I grabbed it and eyeballed the caller ID.

  It wasn’t James.

  But a thrill shot through me anyway.

  I was almost as excited as if James was actually calling me. I clicked the phone, put my mouth to the speaker, and screamed.

  She screamed, too.

  She was Claudia Portman, aka C.P., my best friend from school—really my only friend from school. C.P. is
a bold dresser, a loud talker, and like me, she tends to color outside the lines. I’m her “only,” too.

  When I last saw C.P. a week ago, my family was fleeing New York, probably for good. We were about to cab it down to the docks and within hours board the Queen Mary 2 and sail to France, our future unknown. I also hadn’t known until C.P. told me on the street that day that she had spent the night in Harry’s room.

  Why did this feel bad? I don’t know, but I’d made her promise to never, under any circumstance, even if we hated each other, even if I pointed a gun at her head, tell me about having sex with my brother. Vom.

  So I don’t know anything about that, and I buried this tidbit under a wrinkle in my cerebral cortex and moved on.

  Now—C.P. was screaming into my ear, and then she said, “Tandy! Why didn’t you call me back?”

  “You called?” I said. “When?”

  “Yesterday. And—two days ago. And the day after you left me in New York—all by myself!”

  I laughed loud and hard. God, it felt good to laugh from my belly, especially great because she was laughing now, too.

  I gasped for air. And then I said, “Sorry, C.P. I didn’t have the satellite hookup when we were on the ship, and then I was at school—no phone, and then Jacob took all our phones away, and then Harry was in the hospital—”

  “Hospital? What’s wrong with Harry?”

  I skipped the part about his date with Lulu Ferrara—Harry could tell C.P. about that if he wanted to—but I did say he’d had some heart palpitations and that he was okay.

  But I wasn’t done. I had to backtrack to tell C.P. about Gram Hilda’s “gifts and challenges.”

  “It’s like, ‘Don’t disgrace the family, or bread crusts for you.’ And you know, C.P., my brothers and I do tend to ruffle feathers.”

  C.P. laughed again and said, “I think it’s still hashtag lucky bitch.”

  “Maybe, but I’m talking too much. What’s up with you? Any new guys to fill me in on?”

  “Nooooooooo, don’t stop now. What happened with James? Did you ever hear from him?”

  Whomp. C.P.’s question was a huge gut punch, one that just about laid me out. I swallowed a few times, took in a lot of air and let it out, and then said, “Better than hearing from James, C.P. I saw him.”