The Murder of an Angel Read online

  I picked up.

  “Tandy, I am sorry I didn’t say good-bye in person.”

  “No worries, Monsieur Delavergne. Thanks for sending a car.”

  “You’re welcome, mademoiselle. Also, I wanted to confide something to you.”

  He had every bit of my attention. The only sound in the world was Monsieur Delavergne’s voice in my ear.

  “What is it, Monsieur Delavergne? What’s wrong?”

  “It’s about Jacob,” he said.

  “What about him?” I gripped the phone so tightly that I snapped a photo of my knees and almost disconnected the call. “Monsieur Delavergne? Can you hear me?”

  “I am still here, Tandy,” he said in French.

  And just then my flight was announced right over my head. I asked Monsieur Delavergne to wait for the announcement to end, and when I finally had reestablished a cone of silence, I asked him again, “What about Jacob?”

  “It is not going so well for him,” Monsieur Delavergne said. “Just watch him. And if you need to call me, I am always here for you.”

  “Be more specific,” I said. “Please. What should I look for? What’s wrong with him?”

  But Monsieur Delavergne was saying, “Have a safe flight. It was good seeing you again, Tandoori. Be kind.”

  Be kind?

  “Au revoir, ma chérie.”

  “Au revoir,” I responded, to a dead phone line.

  I went to the gate and boarded my flight to New York. Then I went into my head for the next eight hours, wondering what the hell Monsieur Delavergne had been hinting at.

  Add to that my plane-crash paranoia, which had me jumping at every hum, rattle, hiss, and captain’s announcement. In between hyperlistening, I prayed that the plane would stay aloft until it landed smoothly on the runway in New York.

  I couldn’t eat or read or sleep. Instead, I watched a movie without the sound while I pondered the imponderable.

  How had Katherine found me? Why had she left in such a rush?

  Why was everything about Katherine so mysterious?

  The next morning, Jacob was making hot cocoa when I trundled wearily into the kitchen.

  “Welcome home,” he said. “Come in and pull up a chair, Tandy. I want to hear all about your trip in actual words, not bloody texts.”

  “Pictures, too, right?”

  “You bet.”

  The kitchen in our new home was airy and modern. Jacob poured hot cocoa into mugs and placed a platter of just-baked cookies on the long metal table. I thanked him. Actually, I totally needed the warmth and the sugar.

  “Start talking,” Jacob said when we were both sitting down. “Don’t leave anything out.”

  I’d been wide-awake since leaving Paris, wondering about Monsieur Delavergne’s oddly veiled warning, but I kept that part to myself and gave Jacob some highly animated highlights of the Tandoori launch party.

  “Monsieur Delavergne is nicer than I thought,” I told Jacob, showing him a selfie of me with the lawyer in the pink linen shirt, photo-bombed by a cute woman spraying perfume over our heads.

  Jacob grinned. “That’s a keeper.”

  “And I saw Katherine,” I said, scrutinizing Jacob’s face, looking for any cracks in his affect that should worry me. I saw nothing.

  I swiped my phone and showed him pics of the two of us in the bistro. “We were just having the greatest time, and then there was a deliberate car crash on the street. A second later, Katherine got a text, said, ‘I’ve gotta go,’ and then ran outside, got into one of those cars—and poof! She was gone.”

  “Tandy, was she scared? Or what did you make of that?”

  I shrugged. “It seemed like her ride called her and she had to go. Another mystery,” I said. “And how have you been, Uncle Jake?”

  “Me? Same as always. Harry stayed home from school for a couple of days, recuperating, catching up on his mail, and so on. Hugo has been steady. I haven’t heard from Matthew.”

  “How are you?” I insisted.

  “What are you getting at, Tandy? I take care of things. That’s my job. Are you done with your cocoa?”

  He took away the mug and I told him I’d be in my room. I unpacked the bags I hadn’t wanted to deal with earlier and charged up my electronics and then sat at my desk and watched the sky darken above the park. I thought about Jacob. I couldn’t even guess at what he might be hiding, but he was definitely holding something back.

  Why would he hide anything from me? I considered this question through my new, highly focused lens of paranoia.

  Jacob had been in France the day my brothers and I took Peter to court. If he had been with us, he would have lent credibility to our case. Jacob knew that Angel Pharma pills had killed people.

  Another thing—Jacob hadn’t been with us when our plane crashed on the way to Lake Placid. But after the crash, while I was in the emergency room, I’d seen Jacob speaking with Peter.

  And that led me to a long-standing mystery that had never been answered to my satisfaction. Why had Peter turned over the guardianship of the Angel kids to Jacob, an uncle we had never even known existed before our parents’ deaths?

  Was Jacob even our uncle at all?

  I was nearly overwhelmed with confusion—and I didn’t like that one bit. I flashed on the hundreds of pills I had emptied out onto the conference table at Peter’s lawyer’s office. I had more pills stashed in the apartment.

  If only I could sedate myself with a handful of Num.

  Who could blame me for wanting the clarity of a crisp, emotionless state? How else could I know up from down in my Alice-in-Horrorland existence? Was what I believed to be my life history in any way real? Or was it all a dream?

  If so, whose dream was it?

  And who was I? That was the question.

  Did anyone know the answer?

  I awoke out of a dreamless black hole of sleep to find myself staring at a star field of sleet coming straight at me, stinging my cheeks. A wet wind was blowing hard at the skirt of my nightgown; my arms were stretched out like wings in flight.

  It took a second to understand, to really get that this was no dream.

  I was standing outside on the ledge of the living room terrace with the railing behind me, my toes curled over the wet, slippery edge, sixteen stories above the street.

  I screamed and beat at the air as I started to teeter. This could not be happening—but it was.

  I made a backward grab for the railing behind me and caught it, tightening my cold hands around the wrought iron, holding on tight even as my legs shook and wobbled.

  What had happened? How had I gotten out here?

  Have I gone crazy?

  I had no memory of unlocking the French doors, crossing the terrace, and climbing over the railing, let alone making my way downstairs. I couldn’t conceive of deliberately going out to the gritty edge of the building like it was a diving board.

  But this was not a hallucination or a dream… no trick of an overactive mind. Two hundred feet below me, cars sped through the slush on the avenue.

  If I fell, I would make a snow angel like no other.

  Screw that.

  I had to get off this ledge, and there was no room for error. If I sneezed or panicked or lost my awkward backhanded grip, I wouldn’t get a second chance. I was going numb, quaking with terror, when a sober, instructive voice inside my head said, “Turn around, Tandy. Take your time.”

  With precise attention to where I placed my frozen toes and how I reversed the grip of my rigid fingers, I turned little by little, finger over finger, until I was facing away from the street, holding the railing tightly with both hands.

  I wasn’t safe yet. I still had to climb over the railing and onto the terrace. From there, I could get to a door or a window.

  Just then, as I carefully began to haul my numb and shaking limbs over the rail, things went from horrific to hellish. As if I’d been punched in the gut, I was hit with stomach cramps. I fought back the pain and nausea and pul
led myself up and over the railing. As soon as my weight was over the terrace, I let go of the railing and collapsed in a heap, retching helplessly in the snow.

  I lay there, sick and panting from fear and exhaustion. What was happening to me?

  Was I overdosing? But I hadn’t taken any drugs. Had I?

  I heard glass shattering several yards away; then Hugo’s face poked out through a broken window. “Tandy, what’s wrong?” he cried.

  I gathered myself and rolled up onto my hands and knees. Hugo was there beside me, trying to help me stand, but my legs wouldn’t hold me.

  I saw blood streaking my nightgown. Panicking, I realized it was streaming from his wrist.

  I screamed, “Hugo, you’re hurt! Go get Jacob… now!”

  I pulled myself to my feet using a deck chair as a crutch. I was still trying to get my balance when Harry came flying through the terrace doors and ran over to me.

  Jesus, he was scared. I could hardly look at him because I didn’t know what the hell to say.

  He grabbed my arm and shook it until I looked at him. “Are you hurt? What happened to you?”

  “I’m freezing,” I said.

  “Okay, okay, I’ve got you.”

  He put my arm over his shoulder and walked me carefully through the mushy snow on the terrace, through the French doors, and into the living room.

  My lips were frozen and my voice shook as I said, “Harry, Hugo is bleeding.”

  And then Jacob was there in front of us, absolute shock and horror on his face. He looked at me, at the blood on my nightgown, and I knew he thought I’d attempted suicide.

  That wasn’t true. Was it?

  I said, “Jacob. Hugo cut himself badly on the window glass. Please see to him.”

  At any other time, Jacob would have said, “It’s going to be okay. I’m here.”

  But he said, “Tandy. Take a hot shower. Then call Dr. Robosson’s service. Say it’s an emergency and make an appointment for first thing tomorrow morning. If you don’t do it, I will take you there myself.”

  I nodded numbly and headed for the stairs.

  Jacob was right to think I had lost my mind. If I didn’t get help, I didn’t know how I was going to get it back. As I climbed the spiral staircase, I watched Jacob wash Hugo’s arm in the kitchen sink. Blood ran down the drain, and Hugo screamed when the peroxide followed the soapy water.

  “Does he need stitches?” Harry asked.

  “I don’t think so,” said Jacob. “The cut is shallow. More like a scratch, right, young man?”

  This was my fault.

  What the hell was wrong with me?

  It was Saturday, the day after I had almost flown off the sixteenth-floor balcony. I had just come home from my emergency session with Dr. Robosson, who had explained that my nocturnal and unconscious trip to the ledge was sleepwalking, possibly caused by so much stress.

  If she was right, it was the first time I had ever walked in my sleep. But I had no better explanation.

  Before I had been discharged from Waterside, Dr. Robosson had given me a prescription for sleep meds and a few samples, which I had in my backpack. I hadn’t taken one of those samples, had I? Dr. Robosson and everyone else knew I was against pills. All pills.

  But I had a plan… what to do for everyone’s safety and peace of mind. It was a sickening plan, but it was necessary.

  I called Uncle Peter from the sanctuary of my pretty blue bedroom. “We need to talk.”

  “Go ahead,” he answered.

  “I want to talk to you in person.”

  “Do you wish to meet under the clock in Grand Central? I’ll wear a carnation in my lapel. Pink.”

  “That won’t be necessary,” I said. “I’ll come to you.”

  I still saw it as my life’s mission to put Angel Pharma out of business, but I wanted to buy a little time to live without fearing the sound of my name. I needed to think, to plan, rather than react. To gather myself. And I was willing to humble myself and promise anything to get Peter to give me and my brothers some space.

  I made sure my phone was charged and that I had Jacob, Leo, Harry, and the Twentieth Precinct all on my speed dial. I dressed modestly in dark trousers and a turtleneck for my meeting with my would-be assassin. Then I called Leo and asked him to bring the car around.

  I had only been to Peter’s apartment once.

  I had been in the fourth grade, and he had invited all of us to dinner. Katherine was still with us then, and as usual, all of Peter’s attention was on her. He seated her in the chair next to his at the table. He gave her a gilded book on Catherine the Great and asked her opinion on all manner of things. He was really, really nice to her.

  At fifteen, Katherine was already a mathematical prodigy and a superb athlete, and she was becoming a real beauty. Peter asked her if she would like to go to Europe with him that summer, and my parents seemed to think it was a wonderful opportunity.

  Why hadn’t they seen Peter for the monster he was?

  I now knew that this was the summer when Katherine had gone to France. I knew from Jacob that Peter had used my sister as a lure, a recruitment tool to persuade parents to sign up their children as guinea pigs for Angel Pharma.

  Jacob had introduced me to one of those sets of parents when I was in Paris last fall. I had seen pictures of their triplet sons who had taken the pills and had died before they reached their twentieth birthdays.

  Was what happened to those children happening to me and my brothers and sister now?

  Leo pulled up to the Smithfield, an apartment building at Eighty-First and Columbus, close enough to our home on the West Side of Manhattan. The doorman rang up to Peter’s apartment, and I heard my uncle’s voice over the intercom.

  “Send her up.”

  I was afraid of what was about to happen. Would Peter hear me out? Would I lose my nerve? I pushed the elevator button, then clasped my shaking hands.

  The elevator took me to the tenth floor, and the doors opened. I looked in both directions and saw that an apartment door had been left ajar at the far end of the hallway. It gave the appearance of a trap.

  I shook out my hands and thought of Leo circling the block in the car. If I didn’t call him in a reasonable amount of time, he would come upstairs looking for me.

  I walked down the long carpeted hallway to the half-open door. It swung open on soundless, well-oiled hinges. I peered into the foyer and called out, “Uncle Peter?”

  His voice came to me from the depths of his apartment.

  “Come on in, Tandoori. I’m here.”

  Said the spider to the fly.

  I found Peter sitting in front of a drafting table at one end of the room. He was working at a sleek computer but looked up when I came in and said, “Be with you in a minute. Have a seat.”

  He pointed to the other side of the room, which was furnished with two red upholstered office chairs, a square metal table between them. There were no paintings on the walls, no clue to the nature or interests or personality of the man who lived here, no signs that Peter Angel was the devil incarnate. Which he was.

  As directed, I took a seat.

  While my uncle finished what he was typing, I took in the closed doors and wondered what they led to. I smelled a faint fragrance that I almost recognized. And I noticed two cups and saucers on a tray on the kitchen counter.

  Finally, Peter pushed back his chair, then came over and sat down next to me. He stared at me through his thick glasses with the butterscotch-colored frames, which matched his messy ginger hair.

  He said, “What do you want, Tandoori?”

  I stammered as I tried to get out my rehearsed request, finally managing it.

  “I want to call a truce, Uncle Peter.”

  “Spell it out,” he said.

  “Okay. I will stop invoking your name as an enemy. I will not look for legal redress for any crimes you may have committed against me and my brothers, nor will I testify against you if I’m ever asked to. I will put that in
writing. All I want in exchange is for you to leave us alone. I especially want Hugo to grow up in complete safety.”

  Peter sat back in his chair and shook his head.

  Was he turning me down? Was he actually saying no to my proposal?

  I think I saw smoke coming out of his mouth when at last he said, “I am a ruthless businessman. I’m proud of that. Would I destroy you if you got in my way? Of course. But I’m not a murderer. I would never try to kill you, and I never have. Any other questions?”

  “So we have a deal?” I said in a squeaking voice.

  “We don’t need a deal,” he said. “Now get out.”

  Now get out was more than a slap across the face. It was like a crowbar to the side of my head. Emotionally, I reeled. I realized that I had actually expected him to shake my hand, to lay down arms, to agree to agree.

  Jamming my trembling hands into my pockets, I left my uncle’s apartment knowing that nothing had changed. Whatever he planned to do to me—to us—there was nothing I could do to stop him.

  I had stood up to Peter with all my drive, ingenuity, and determination, and I’d even come begging. Nothing had worked.

  I had never felt so completely powerless in my life.

  Leo was waiting for me outside the Smithfield. He opened the car door, and I got in. As we pulled out into traffic, he looked back at me through the mirror. He must have read the total defeat in my face.

  “Is there anything I can do for you, Tandy?”

  Leo’s hat was lying on the seat beside him, so I was looking at the lifeless eyes tattooed on the back of his scalp.

  For the first time, I asked myself if Leo was who he seemed to be.

  He worked for us, but Jacob had hired him and Jacob paid his salary. Supposedly. Or did Leo work for Peter, the mastermind of the plan to wipe out our family?

  Was pistol-packing Leo one of Peter’s plants?

  Now, that was crazy. Right?

  “Thank you, Leo. There’s nothing you can do.”

  There was nothing anyone could do.