Confessions of a Murder Suspect (13 page)

“I’m sure they did, Mrs. Hauser,” I said. “They were very forgiving. Please just tell me what my mother said.”

“Maud called Malcolm a
boob
, Tandy. That’s exactly what she said.”

27

“
No, please, Mrs. Hauser.
I can find my way out. This has been really helpful. Thank you.”

I left Mrs. Hauser sitting in her silky purple cloud under the springbok so that she didn’t have to battle her arthritis just to walk me to the door.

But her words accompanied me, and although I didn’t doubt her, it was hard to picture my parents fighting in public. And even harder to imagine my mother calling Malcolm a
boob
.

If I were a normal girl, it might even have made me laugh just a little. It sounded so…
immature
. Malcolm was one of the smartest men in the western hemisphere. Even when he was wrong, every decision he made was well
thought out and reasoned. My mother must have been truly furious. So the word
boob
was nothing more than a clue that didn’t lead anywhere.

Next I spent some time turning over the phrase
rearranging the finances
.

Had my parents’ fight centered on Royal Rampling, the man who was suing my mother for fifty million dollars? His name gave me serious twists in my stomach. I can’t even begin to explain why. But the fact is, if my father thought that we might lose the lawsuit, “rearranging the finances” could have been a way to protect the family from a crushing financial blow.

Then I had another thought.

Did this have something to do with Uncle Peter and the company he and my father owned? I thought about what Caputo had asked Samantha:
Who stands to benefit from the deaths of these people?

Samantha didn’t know, and even if she did, she would die before she would discuss my parents’ private business. But honestly, it was obvious that my uncle Peter had the most to gain. With my father’s death, he would become the sole head and major stockholder of Angel Pharma. That would
not
be small change.

As far as I knew, Uncle Peter didn’t have a key to our apartment. And if he had come to the apartment late that
night, Maud would have thrown him out of her room, not knocked back a shot of poison.

I closed Mrs. Hauser’s door and pushed the elevator call button. The doors opened immediately, and inside the elevator was another of our neighbors.

His name is Morris Sampson, and I hate him.

I don’t use the word
hate
lightly. In fact, I can’t think of another person I hate as much as Morris Sampson.

If hate could kill, Morris Sampson would be
dead
.

28

Despite the obvious excuse
I could have used to avoid Mr. Sampson—that I was traveling back up to my apartment instead of down to the lobby—I stepped into the elevator and said hello. I knew I couldn’t miss an opportunity to interview another one of our neighbors, no matter how distasteful I found him.

Sampson looked good for a man of forty, and I would have expected nothing less than an impeccable presentation from a twenty-four-karat-gold narcissist who got paid sums of money for telling lies in the most pedestrian prose imaginable.

He said, “Hello, Tandy,” and jabbed at the button for the ground floor.

I hate Morris Sampson because he is a somewhat famous mystery writer who wrote a roman à clef, a novel that is obviously based on true events and real people. The villain in his book was a character called Maeve Engle, and, like my mother, she was a hedge-fund manager. The “fictitious” Maeve Engle was arrogant, cruel, greedy, and unethical, and she was murdered for it.

After Sampson’s book came out Maud sued his publisher, and in order to settle the suit and quiet the bad publicity, the publisher had the books removed from the shelves and then put it out of print.

But the damage had been done.

People who had never questioned my mother’s honesty suddenly did. It was probable, in fact, that the only reason Maud was being sued was because of the cloud Morris Sampson had hung over her head.

My mother became even more distant than she had been before—more removed from the world, and more removed from us.

Not long after the book scandal, I’d gone to Sampson’s apartment and we’d exchanged quite a few angry words. It had been a nasty fight. I told Sampson that he was not only a very bad person, but a bad writer, too. That his books couldn’t compare to the works of Ruth Rendell or
James Ellroy, and that he wasn’t even fit to tie Elmore Leonard’s shoes.

He knew I was right, and I knew that I’d hurt him.

But for this encounter I had to show him a different side of myself. I thought hard and put on a sad expression, the face people would expect to see on a girl whose parents had been killed just thirty-six hours before.

“Can you spare me a few minutes, Mr. Sampson?” I said as the elevator settled with a thump on the ground floor.

Sampson gave me a fleeting look, then stepped out of the elevator, holding open the doors as he said, “I don’t have time for your games, Tandoori. Are you really sad that your parents are gone? Really?”

“That surprises you?”

“Surprised that you have feelings? Ha! Well, your parents were perfectly acceptable people, I suppose, and yet, I don’t think the Residents’ Committee will be honoring them with a plaque in the courtyard.”

“Nice use of sarcasm, Mr. Sampson. A-plus.”

“I dislike you, Tandy, but good luck,” Sampson spat. “And give my best to your siblings—especially Harrison. He’s the nice one.”

Sampson turned away and let the doors go. Before they
closed, I found myself shouting, “You’re a fleabite, Sampson! An
infected
fleabite!”

I heard him laugh; then I was alone in the elevator car.

I’d lost my temper. And that meant Morris Sampson had won.

Sampson was despicable, and he hated us, too, but hate alone didn’t create poison in bedside water tumblers. If he had killed my parents, I couldn’t imagine how he could have pulled it off.

If he had done it, it was the crime of the century. Morris Sampson wasn’t smart enough for that. To be honest, he wasn’t as smart as any of us Angels.

Not even close.

29

So what do you think so far,
reader? Am I missing any clues? Am I doing a good enough job in my investigation? Would Malcolm and Maud be proud of my work?

That last question is an easy one. No. They wouldn’t be proud until I had achieved my goal, and I was still so far from it.

Nathan Beale Crosby lives next door to us. In fact, his duplex apartment is an absolute mirror of ours. The big man with the red-framed glasses is a documentarian of note, making him one of the more famous residents of the Dakota. He has made a number of shocking and successful films, including
Meat Cage
,
Terror on the Street Where You Live
, and
Party Animal
. His work has won him an
Oscar, a bunch of Emmys, and some other awards that I don’t pay much attention to. (I don’t like most movies. I’m a reader. I read a lot. In my humble opinion, the prescribed story structure, the limited length, and the other restrictions inherent to film cause the truth to be treated as a handicap. Manipulating the audience is considered good form. But that’s neither here nor there; my focus was on murder, not movies.)

Nathan Beale Crosby comes across as a very nice man, but he actually isn’t. Unlike Morris Sampson, though, Nate pretends to be friendly.

A year ago he had a quiet dinner with my parents. He said he wanted to make a film about them, and he assured them that it was going to blow up the perception of wealthy entrepreneurs as predators and show the Angels as “American heroes.”

Malcolm had said to Maud, “Sure, I believe Mr. Crosby. And Sarah Palin should believe Michael Moore if he tells her he wants to interview her for a puff piece on the Tea Party.”

So, in other words, my parents declined the opportunity to be the subjects of a Nate Crosby film. Some time later, I found a film treatment on Crosby’s website. A sketch, really. It was called “Filthy Rich.”

It was about the Angels, to be sure, but I couldn’t tell if
Crosby was going to savage us or if the title was a setup designed to seduce viewers before overturning their preconceptions.