Confessions of a Murder Suspect (23 page)

Despite all the searching,
I discovered nothing concerning Malcolm and Tamara’s alleged affair. I threw myself into Samantha’s chair, propped my feet up on her desk, and took a long look around the room.

My detecting instincts were telling me that I was missing something important here about Malcolm and Maud’s relationship.

I was, I was, I was—until I
wasn’t
.

As I swiveled in Samantha’s chair, my shoe hit the desk, which shook the egg-shaped set of Russian nesting dolls. The toy tipped over and rolled toward the edge of the desk, but I managed to grab it before it fell. Then I gave it a closer look.

Like many nesting dolls, this set was wooden, hollow, and brightly painted to look like a Russian peasant woman. It was made so that the outer doll could be taken apart to reveal the next, smaller doll inside. The largest, outermost doll had a painted red scarf. The next doll inside held a bouquet of daisies.

I kept opening the successively smaller dolls until I was holding the sixth and smallest one. I shook it and heard something rattle inside that didn’t sound like another doll. It sounded metallic. Another key?

I twisted open the smallest doll and found a folded paper. And inside the paper was a lump of gold.

I pulled out the lump and straightened out a delicate gold chain that held a heart-shaped locket with a brilliant-cut center diamond.

I turned on the desk lamp, then opened the locket.

Inside was a tiny snapshot of my mother and Samantha, both of them smiling broadly.

I had to squint to read the inscription on the back of the locket, but it was legible.

SAMMY, LOVE FOREVER—MAUD

My heart banged inside my chest like a racehorse trying to kick down its stall.

What was
this
?

Sammy, love forever—Maud.

My mother wasn’t an air-kisser. She would never say “love forever” casually. I don’t remember my mother ever telling
me
that she loved
me
.

I held the locket in my sweating hand and tried to make sense of the new shape my ideas were taking. My mother and “Sammy.” Love forever.

Was my mother actually having a love affair with Samantha? How could I not have known, with both of them living under this roof? And was this why my father might have had an extramarital affair of his own?

Or had Maud and Samantha’s bond been strengthened, even transformed, after my mother learned of my father’s dalliance with a woman young enough to be his daughter?

It didn’t matter. At that moment, all I could see was that both of them were traitors. And liars. To each other, to their family. To me.

No wonder they were both dead.

It was starting not to seem so very shocking anymore.

51

The first thing I did was
wake up Harry.

Harry didn’t like being woken up one bit, of course. He shoved me aside and pulled the covers over his head. “Go away, Tandy. Get
out
of here. I’m
not kidding
.”

“I’m sorry, but YOU HAVE TO SEE THIS!”

I yanked down the blankets and opened one of his eyes with my fingers.

He batted my hand away. “Are you crazy?”

“Look at this, then you tell me.”

I switched on the light next to Harry’s bed and gave him the locket.

I bit down hard on my lip as he opened the heart and
looked at the picture. Then Harry did as I had done; he flipped the locket over and read the inscription.

He read the engraving a second time, then handed me the locket, fell back onto his pillow, and pulled the covers over his face again.

I poked his arm. “So, what do you think?”

“Think? I can’t think anymore. I can only feel pain. What is going
on
around here? I mean, what
was
going on?”

Focus on the facts, Tandy.
“
Both
our parents were probably having affairs. Only Maud’s looks like it was going on inside our
home
.” I swallowed. “That’s pretty sad.”

“Sad? I call it sick! I call it outrageously disrespectful to every other Angel in the house.”

“Well, I call Malcolm screwing around with a girl young enough to be my sister—who is ALSO MY BROTHER’S GIRLFRIEND!—probably even more outrageously sick and disrespectful.”

“That, too,” said Harry. “Let’s face it, our ’rents were pretty despicable. No wonder they’re dead.”

My thoughts were blooming like poisonous flowers, bright and noxious and irrepressible.

“Harry, think about this. I’m just trying out a theory, okay? What if Samantha wanted to go public with the love affair? What if she wanted Maud to leave Malcolm? What if Maud refused? People have been killed for less rejection than that.”

“Be careful, Tandy. All you have to support this theory is an inscription on a locket.”

“It’s a lead. It’s a clue.”

“We’ve got to trust Samantha until we know that we can’t.”

“Trust?” I narrowed my eyes. “That’s not something that makes a whole lot of sense right now, Harry. The only person I trust at this moment”—I paused to think about it—“is you.”

“Gee, thanks for the vote of confidence.”

I pulled out my phone and dialed Samantha’s number.

“I’m right around the corner,” she told me. “I’ll be home in five or six minutes.”

Harry and I were waiting for her when she came through the door, looking oh-so-pretty in pink.

“Tandy! I’m so glad you’re back,” she said, wrapping me in a huge hug. “Are you okay? Did Philippe bring you home? I can’t imagine you trapped in that terrible place!” She finally let me go and stepped back to look at our faces. “Oh, dear. What’s wrong now?” she asked as she set her Hermès bag on the floor.

“Please join us, Samantha,” I said. “Harry and I have a question that only you can answer.”

Did you kill our mother and father?

52

Samantha had also spent the previous
night in The Tombs. She had since washed her hair and changed her clothes, but there were inky circles under her eyes, as if she’d stood with her back to the wall all night, fearing for her life.

Which was okay with me. According to what I knew of police practices and procedures, a suspect under pressure was a suspect more likely to tell the truth.

And I would accept nothing less.

When Samantha sat down in the living room, I held up the locket, letting it swing so that light bounced off the diamond.

“I found this in your room,” I said. “Recognize it? I’m sure you do. The inscription says ‘Sammy, love forever—Maud.’
That’s pretty mushy for my mother. In fact, it’s so unlike her that I’d like you to tell me what she meant.”

“I don’t like your tone, Tandy. It’s none of your business, and furthermore, it was very, very wrong of you to pry into my personal things.”

“This is one of those situations where the ends justify the means, don’t you think, ‘Sammy’?”

Samantha heaved a long sigh. She tilted her head back and stared at the ceiling over the fireplace until I said, “Well?”

“Okay, Tandy, okay. You’re right,” Samantha said. “Your mother and I… had a relationship. It just
happened
… and both of us were taken by surprise. But the longer it went on, the more we realized we loved each other.”

“There’s a difference between loving each other and being in love.” I was surprised by the authority with which I said it. Katherine had told me that once, I guess. “Which was it?”

“We were in love,” Samantha said. “We never wanted any of you kids to know.”

“I’m going to run away and join the circus,” Harry said to his shoes. “Wait—I already live in the circus.”

I pressed Samantha. “Who knew about your relationship? Did Malcolm know you were involved with my
mother,
Sammy
? Did you know anything about my father and Tamara Gee?”

“I found a great place to live,” Samantha said, changing the subject. She swept her long hair back with her hands. “It’s a studio on Ninety-second and Amsterdam. I can see you whenever you like. I can babysit Hugo. I’d like to do that, actually—”

“What were your plans before the murder?” I asked her. “Yours and Maud’s?”

“We didn’t have any
plans
. Hugo is still young. We would never have done anything to hurt anyone. Please don’t ask me any more questions, Tandy. I’m grieving. I feel gutted. I don’t expect you to understand or even to care, but please respect what I’m going through. To be quite honest, I’m the only one here who’s really lost someone they deeply loved.”

Ouch.
I resisted the strange and sudden temptation to slap her.
I know what it feels like to lose someone you love. How dare you…

Then: Deep breath in through the nose. Out through the mouth.

“Actually,” I said calmly, and the words sounded and felt strange even as they were coming out of my mouth, “I do care.”

As if on cue, Hugo came through the front door, with
Philippe Montaigne right behind him. Hugo had on the same clothes he’d been wearing when we were sent to jail: cut-off jeans and an orange
LIFE IS GOOD
T-shirt with the secondary slogan
ENJOY THE RIDE
. He also had a black eye.

Phil said, “He ran away from the unsecured detention in Midtown and went looking for Matthew. The police found him sleeping on the grass in Bryant Park.”

“I’m
starving
,” Hugo said, grinning as only a ten-year-old can. “I could eat an alligator. The whole thing. By myself.”

I had to agree with Harry. I did already live in the circus. And it was a five-ring affair.

53