The Murder of an Angel Read online

  But on the stage, Harry absolutely shone. After the first piece, he played three more in a series of four stunning compositions made famous by four pianists who had started out playing acoustic piano, only to move later to pickups, plugs, and amps.

  The audience applauded their approval. I grinned at Jacob and shouted into his ear, “I can feel the vibrations through the soles of my shoes.”

  After intermission, Harry went to the electric piano and played a second piece by each of the four composers. Again the audience went crazy. Harry bowed deeply, then walked into the wings, and of course, the almost three thousand people packing Carnegie Hall demanded an encore.

  I had thought the concert was over, but when Harry returned to the stage for another bow, I saw that he had a microphone in his hand.

  He said into the sudden hush, “I want to close with a song I wrote for my sister Tandy. I call it ‘We Will Always.’”

  Sitting back down at the grand piano, Harry moved quickly into a catchy bossa nova tune. With its upbeat melody and distinctive beat, it surprised and delighted everyone.

  I had wanted to be in disguise tonight. I wanted no attention at all, but I blushed as the whispers swelled and heads turned and people smiled, wiped away tears, and dipped their heads toward me as Harry played and sang his sweet and loving song about the two of us growing up together.

  There’s a place I remember,

  One my heart won’t surrender.

  We could go there tomorrow.

  You could lead, I would follow.

  You’ve been with me for ages,

  Stumped the wits and the sages,

  Held my feet to the fire,

  Raised my sights a bit higher.

  We’ve known Paris in autumn.

  We grew up in New York.

  We recall the Dakota—

  Everything that we lost.

  I will never forsake you,

  Force or remake you.

  You’ve been one of a kind, dear.

  You’re my twin and my sister.

  There’s a place I remember,

  Somewhere east of September.

  We will someday return there,

  We will always belong there.

  There’s a place I remember.

  There’s a place I remember.

  At eleven thirty PM, just after Harry’s concert, I boarded a Delta flight from New York’s JFK Airport to Charles de Gaulle in Paris.

  I never wanted to get on another airplane. Ever. But despite my stamping and pouting and the impressive, self-indulgent fit I threw, Jacob remained firm.

  “Pack something nice to wear. Don’t lose your passport. And try something new, why don’t you? Trust me.”

  And now I was sitting in a window seat in first class with a glass of orange juice and a cup of warm nuts. I opened the note Jacob had slipped into my coat pocket curbside and read it again.

  Tandy,

  Life goes on. It just does, whether we’re ready for the next chapter or not. Embrace it.

  Love,

  Uncle Jacob

  I folded the note, placed it back into my pocket, and stared at the seat backs and the curtain drawn across the front of the cabin. The other passengers were asleep, but not me.

  I would never forget the sickening sensation of gravity on a falling plane, knowing that I was about to die—and that the person responsible was going to get away with it.

  Now, in the body of a big jet, I gripped the armrests so hard, I broke a nail. Peter wouldn’t dare bring down a commercial airliner with hundreds of passengers just to get me out of his way. Would he?

  I swear, I think he would.

  That thought occupied me for hours. I sat upright, listening to air hissing through the vents and the snoring of the man in the seat beside me. I hummed “We Will Always” under my breath, and somewhere over the enormous Atlantic Ocean, I must have fallen asleep, because I was suddenly awakened by the bright sun in my window and an announcement. “Ladies and gentlemen, we will be landing shortly…”

  I had traveled light, so I cleared customs quickly and emerged on the other side of the arrivals door to see a blond-haired man in livery holding up a sign with my name.

  Georges greeted me in heavily accented English, took my bag from me, and led me out to the car. I asked him where he was taking me.

  “The hotel is very nice, mademoiselle. At six this evening, a friend of yours will come to pick you up.”

  A friend of mine? Would it be my sister, Katherine?

  “He is Monsieur Delavergne,” said my driver.

  Monsieur Delavergne is my deceased grandmother’s head lawyer and director of her estate. What did this mean? Why was I meeting with Monsieur Delavergne?

  I checked into Hôtel le Bristol on Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré, hung up my clothes, and slept as though I’d never been in a bed before. And sometime around six that evening, in the middle of the day according to my sleep cycle, Monsieur Delavergne rang up to my room.

  “I’ll be right down,” I told him.

  I’d been having a dream. I could still feel James’s hands on me as we lay together in a small bed with moonlight coming through the window. We’d been looking into each other’s eyes. He’d told me he loved me.

  That bastard.

  I showered and dressed in my new peaches-and-cream silk dress, which felt like clouds wafting around my legs. I stepped into a new pair of strappy pumps and finger-combed my hair. I slicked on some pale lip gloss and gave my eyelashes a hit of mascara.

  Then I casually threw on a pale cashmere coat and scarf, softer than soft.

  I checked myself out in the beveled pier glass.

  I looked good. Actually, I looked my best. I snapped a selfie and texted my brothers:

  This is me before my surprise evening with Monsieur Delavergne. What will happen next?

  I pressed send. I grabbed my room key.

  Ready or not, a new chapter was beginning.

  Showtime.

  Short, balding, about sixty years old, with hair sprouting on his knuckles and creeping out of his shirtsleeves, Monsieur Delavergne is not gorgeous, and in my experience, not exactly fun, either. So I was surprised to see him behind the wheel of a shiny blue Mercedes-Benz in a sport jacket, pink linen shirt, no tie, loafers, no socks. And he was smiling at me.

  “Tandy, are you feeling well?” he asked me in French.

  I thought of all the possible answers to that one and decided to lie.

  “Bien,” I said. “Je suis très bien.”

  He smiled.

  He also looked very pleased with himself, and that was good. The Angel kids really needed Monsieur Delavergne on our side. But as the car slowed to navigate the très charmantes winding streets of Paris’s Le Marais district, I started to enjoy the lawyer’s cheerful side. It felt like I was leaving the scary past behind.

  When the car stopped in front of the powder-blue-and-gold building that housed the perfume company my grandmother had founded so many years ago, the attorney said, “This is a very big event. I’m pleased for you to be the flower of Parfumerie Bellaire. I hope you are ready for your close-up, yes?”

  “What is it? What is happening?” I asked.

  “It is your perfume,” he said. “It is, how you say, rolling out today, worldwide.”

  My perfume?

  Beautiful people in gorgeous clothes were spilling out from the store onto the adorable shop-lined street. There was a huge banner over the entrance to the shop that read INTRODUCING TANDOORI, THE SCENT OF LOVE.

  I clapped my hands to my mouth. This was the reason I’d flown all this way. That a fragrance named for me was being introduced to the world, and this was the launch party. No wonder Monsieur Delavergne had been so lighthearted, pulling off such a stupendous treat.

  But that was only the beginning.

  The driver opened my door for me, and as the soles of my strappy shoes touched the street, a wonderful man who had loved my gram Hilda came out of the store, opened his
arms, and embraced me. His name was Guillaume Laurier; he’d been with this company since my grandmother’s time and had been the president for many years.

  He had to be the one who had named a fragrance for me.

  “You look beautiful,” he said, kissing both my cheeks. He lifted two glasses of champagne from a tray, handed me one, and toasted me, saying, “To the original Tandoori.”

  I returned the toast. “I am so honored, Monsieur Laurier. I can only say, thank you so much.”

  “You wish to smell ‘Tandoori, the scent of love’?”

  “Oh, of course I do.”

  My silk skirts swirled around me as we parted the crowd and went into the shop. The walls were hung with huge, luminescent photos of flower fields in the French countryside: lavender and roses, and tall grasses backlit by the setting sun. There was a video playing on monitors: a gorgeous commercial for Tandoori.

  Monsieur Laurier brought me to a table near the center of the store. A pinlight in the ceiling lit a rounded bottle of frosted glass with my name etched in the center.

  My grandmother’s old love lifted the bottle, tipped it gently, righted it, and removed the stopper. Then he touched the stopper to the inside of my wrist.

  All the people standing around us, the celebrities and the executives and the factory workers and the media, inhaled as one, their eyes filled with hope and sweet expectation.

  I raised my wrist and let the scent of love come to me. It was floral and luxurious, spicy with striking notes of freesia, mandarin, bergamot, orange blossom, and orchid. It was simply delicious.

  “How do you like it?” Monsieur Laurier asked me.

  “Parfait,” I said. “It is so absolutely perfect.”

  He took my hand and twirled me around as Monsieur Delavergne and all the other guests clapped their hands.

  A man with a violin appeared and, unbelievably, played “We Will Always.” My twin’s song to me.

  It was perfect.

  But will it surprise you if I say that in that perfect moment, I couldn’t help thinking of love lost?

  I missed James.

  I was having a lucid dream.

  I knew that I was dreaming and that I could control the whole story and even the ending—but I didn’t want to change anything. I wanted the dream to spool out from my subconscious just as it was doing.

  You see, I’d had this dream before.

  In it, James and I were in bed together. Even though my eyes were closed, I saw him look at me in a special way. He reached out and touched my hair. Then he got out of bed and walked naked across the frayed carpet to the rickety old desk beside the armoire. There he wrote a note on a sheet of hotel stationery. I could read it as if I was standing behind him and looking over his shoulder.

  Dear Tandy,

  My father will seriously hurt you if he finds us together and I can’t stand for that to happen. Don’t ever think that I don’t love you. I’m sorry.

  James

  In this dream, so much like the way it had actually happened, James dressed while standing in a fine beam of moonlight. Then he dropped the note onto the bedcovers, pulled on his leather bomber jacket, and left the room. The door closed behind him with a sharp clack.

  When the door closed in my dream, I opened my eyes. I might have been able to manipulate the outcome of the dream: I could have made love to James, listened to him tell me he loved me over and over again.

  But I preferred the truth… that James had firmly, decisively, closed the door.

  I awoke in my huge bed on the top floor of the Hôtel le Bristol with its perfectly framed view of the City of Light. As I returned to the real world, I recognized the fragrance in the air as the perfume I had sprayed on my pillow last night.

  Tandoori, the scent of love.

  What a joke that was, linking my name to love.

  To lift my despondent mood, I thought of Uncle Jacob. He had been emphatic: “Enjoy your time in Paris,” he’d said. “Take it all in.”

  It was good advice. I needed a mental health break, and I was in the haute couture capital of the world and in need of smart new clothes to make my nasty schoolmates jealous.

  And I would be going back to school.

  But first, shopping.

  A few hours later, I was in a cab to Rue Montorgueil, a walking street lined with sidewalk cafés and shops in the Châtelet–Les Halles district in the center of Paris.

  I paid my driver and had just stepped out onto the street when a woman’s voice called my name.

  This time I ducked first, then looked for the gun.

  Meanwhile, my taxi zoomed off, leaving me exposed on all sides to the traffic whizzing past—and I heard her call me again.

  “Tandy. It’s me. It’s Katherine.”

  I looked around. Was it really my sister? Or was this a trick? Then, through a break in the traffic, I saw her waving to me from across the street.

  Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God. It was her. Katherine was wearing a blue shawl-collar wool coat and high boots. Her dark hair flowed over her shoulders, and sunlight limned her in a halo from shining head to polished toe.

  She looked angelic.

  I jumped up and down and waved, and she waved back, yelled my name again, and made her way to me. She dropped her bag to the street and hugged me hard.

  “I love you, love you, love you so much,” she said.

  I said into her shoulder, “I love you so much, too, and, Kath, in the future, will you give me a heads-up, please? So I don’t go into cardiac arrest every time you just appear.”

  She laughed. “Okay. If possible.”

  I’d last seen Katherine here, in Paris, and it had been absolutely heart-stopping to see her alive when I had long believed her to be dead.

  She’d explained how she had survived the fiery accident that was no accident, but a deliberate attempt on her life. She revealed that she’d been rescued by a stranger who was hiding her in a mysterious location—secret even from me. She had told me then that we might never see each other again. It was much too dangerous, because of Uncle Peter.

  But here she was.

  Now, at this radiant, unexpected second meeting, Katherine said, “I went to your hotel, but I’d just missed you. Oh, I love your perfume. It must be Tandoori.”

  I said, “Good guess,” and grinned like a fool. Then I asked, “Kath, how did you know where I’m staying? How do you always know how to find me?”

  “The less you know, the better, Tandy. Come. Let’s walk. We shouldn’t stand together in one place for too long.”

  I was strolling again with my wonderful big sister on a gorgeous avenue in this inimitable city, but instead of feeling content, I was watching everything and everybody, ready to scream, “Gun!”

  We went to a bistro called Café du Centre at the end of the street. It’s a wide-open restaurant with red awnings and lots of tables and chairs outside, with the best views of historic pastry, hardware, shoe repair, and tobacco shops.

  “I saw Beyoncé here once.” Kath laughed. “Really.”

  We took seats inside for privacy, and over cafés au lait and Niçoise salads, Kath showed me pictures of her little boy. He was adorable and looked so much like Kath, but I couldn’t get her to tell me about the baby’s father, if she was married, or even what continent she called home.

  She was saying, “When I heard about the launch of your perfume, I knew you would be there. I booked a flight, but it was delayed, dammit. Sorry I missed the party. Look at what I was going to wear,” she said. She opened her bag wide and showed me a blond wig and big wraparound shades.

  “You were going to go in disguise?”

  “Nothing has changed, Tandoo. Be careful. Watch everything around you and maybe, one day…”

  Just then, I saw a gray car, a Peugeot, speeding past the café. It cut off a blue Renault, and I watched the T-bone collision accompanied by the blare of car horns.

  The cars were still rocking from the impact when Katherine’s phone pinged. S
he glanced at it, then said to me, “Sorry. I have to take this.”

  She texted a message, read another, and typed a second text, then apologized again and called for the check.

  “I have to go right now,” she said. “I love you, T.”

  I said, “Kath, are you serious? What’s wrong? I can’t believe you’re leaving already.”

  Katherine said nothing.

  She kissed me on both cheeks, then held my head with her cheek pressed to mine as if she was saying good-bye forever. When she released me, she put money down on the table, then fled. Baffled, I watched her run directly toward the dusty gray Peugeot that had caused the accident. By now it had backed away from the other car and was readying to take off in the opposite direction. I couldn’t make out who was driving.

  I was out of my chair, knocking into the waiter as I ran after my sister. I called to her from the doorway.

  “Katherine, wait! I’ll come with you!”

  She waved and blew me a kiss before getting into the passenger seat of the Peugeot and closing the door. And then my beautiful, mysterious sister was gone. Again.

  That night, I sat by myself in the first-class lounge with my new, oversized Gerard Darel handbag, Marie Claire Paris, and a glass of Perrier, waiting for my flight to be called.

  I wasn’t actually reading the magazine. I was replaying my meeting with Katherine. Having felt for a short while that we were closer than ever before, I now began to question all of it.

  How had Katherine found me after I had left the hotel? I hadn’t told anyone where I was going. Who was driving the gray Peugeot? Why had he caused that crash? Had that driver and my sister been following me? They must have been—but why?

  These thoughts circled in an endless loop as I sat alone in the timeless vacuum of the flight lounge. Then my thoughts were derailed by an incoming phone call from Monsieur Delavergne.