Confessions of a Murder Suspect (7 page)

12

Are you ready for the story
of the last supper? My last dinner with Malcolm and Maud, the evening they died? I’m about to tell you the whole truth and nothing but. Far more than I told the cops. I’m really starting to trust you, reader.

The fact is, that night I got in trouble big-time, and I was punished. And it just so happens that punishment was Malcolm and Maud’s specialty.

As I mentioned earlier, my father had prepared a private dinner for the UN’s ambassador from the Kingdom of Bhutan. His name is Ugyen Panyor, and he believes himself to be directly descended from Ugyen Guru Rinpoche, who brought Buddhism to Bhutan thirteen centuries ago.

Father had prepared
ema datshi
, the national dish of Bhutan. He substituted feta cheese for the yak cheese in the recipe because yak cheese is very hard to come by, even in Manhattan. But the rest of the meal was authentic, including the excess of chilies combined with tomato and garlic, and the side dish of traditional red rice.

The ambassador was polite but not effusive in his praise, and I took offense. My father was a serious foodie. He cooked; he savored; he even named me Tandoori, after West Indian cooking that is prepared in a clay stove called a tandoor. We had a restaurant-grade tandoor oven in our own kitchen, which I’d leaned against as I watched my father prepare that night’s meal.

So when the ambassador didn’t make mention of the obvious perfection of my father’s meal, I decided to bring up a topic that had been expressly forbidden by my parents before the ambassador arrived: the refugees living in UN-supervised camps in Nepal.

Insurgents had sprung up in these camps, and some believed that they were the intelligence behind the bombings that had pounded the country before the parliamentary elections.

The ambassador refused to answer my questions about the lack of progress to repatriate the refugees; he just said,
with a cheeky smile, “And when did you get your degree in the foreign service, Miss Angel?”

It was nervy of him to take me on.

I said, “You don’t behave like an ambassador, sir. You behave like a politician.”

The look on my father’s face said everything.

13

After the ambassador had been escorted
to the elevator, with apologies, my parents marched me right into their study—a library with a high vaulted ceiling and bookshelves lining every wall. Two glass-topped desks stood in the middle of the room, facing each other. Samantha’s amazing framed photos of the family decorated the mantel above the fireplace, the only other available surface.

My mother’s desk held not one, not two, but
six
computer monitors, which she used to track every burp and giggle of domestic, European, and Asian markets so she could trade in nanoseconds.

My father’s übercomputer had one enormous screen. It
operated at warp speed and had massive storage capacity so that he could mine the scientific world on every front, synthesize the data, and adapt it to his needs. But neither of them was sitting at their computer that night. Instead, they stood in front of them, arms crossed, staring me down as if they could crush me with their gaze.

When my father finally began yelling at me for disgracing him in front of an important guest, Harry started banging out Wagner’s
Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg
on the Pegasus to drown him out.

Punishment in our house was called the “Big Chop,” and it was always fitted to the crime and doled out immediately.

“You must name every landmark in Bhutan in Dzongkha, the national language.” My father furrowed his brow. “I don’t care if it takes you the rest of the night. If you make a mistake, you’ll have to start again, Tandy.”

I said, “I want sixty seconds with the computer. That’s only fair.”

“Sixty seconds with the computer comes with a penalty.”

“I’ll take it,” I said.

I hadn’t read any Dzongkha since my freshman year, so I needed a refresher, and I wanted to see a map of Bhutan’s cities, too. I flipped on the computer and scanned the
Google Earth view of Bhutan and the nearby countries of India and Nepal.

Then the computer was switched off.

Malcolm said, “You turned our dinner party upside down, Tandy. This chop is appropriate, fair, and equitable, and furthermore, for your penalty, you must execute this task while standing on your head.”

If you’re from a normal family, you probably think that part was a joke. But it wasn’t a joke, and I knew it.

I had never won an argument with my father, and I never would. I put a cushion under my head and walked my feet up the bookcase. I began my recitation with the high spots—Thimphu, the capital; Mongar, a town in the east—and finished the cities before naming the monasteries.

My mother was online, tracking trades in Asia, and I whispered to her, “Mother, please. I’ve done enough.”

“Buck up, Tandy,” she said, “or we’ll double the chop.”

I was released after an hour.

I told my father that the meal had been delicious, and that I had enjoyed it when it came back up almost as much as I had enjoyed it going down.

He chuckled and kissed me good night.

Maud patted my cheek and told me I had to work on my pronunciation a little, but all in all, I’d done a good job.

I went to bed and thought about what I’d done, not because I was sorry for offending the ambassador, but because I’d let myself get out of control. I didn’t like that. The few times I’d been out of control in my life things had gone terribly, terribly wrong.

I don’t usually let myself think about those times.

If you stick with me long enough, though, maybe I’ll remember enough about it—and about
him
—to share.

14

After our little family meeting,
we decided it was best to try to get some sleep and keep talking in the morning. But it felt like only seconds after I drifted off that I was awakened by the sounds of loud pounding and crashing somewhere in the apartment.

I didn’t have a shotgun, so I grabbed a lacrosse stick that was leaning against the wall and ran from my room toward the noise.

Was someone else being murdered?

I found ten-year-old Hugo in his room. He was still wearing his Giants sweatshirt, and he was using a baseball bat to break up his four-poster bed.

As I entered the room, he swung the bat for the last
time, splintering the headboard, then began working on the bed frame with karate kicks.

“
Hey.
Hey,
Hugo
,” I said. “Enough. Stop. Please.”

I dropped my lacrosse stick and wrapped my arms around my little brother. I dragged him away from the bed and more or less hurled him toward the cushy, life-size toy pony that Uncle Peter had given Hugo when he was born.

We collapsed together onto the pony, my arms wrapped tightly around him. He could easily pick me up and toss me into the closet, but I knew he actually wanted me to keep him still and safe.

“What is it, Hugo? Tell me what exactly has made you go bug-nuts.”

Hugo heaved a long sigh that could have stirred the posters of Matty up on the wall. Then he put his head on my lap and started to talk.

“I didn’t hear anything, Tandy. I
should
have. Something horrible happened in there, and I totally failed them! If I’ve ever done anything to deserve the Big Chop, this is it. I was supposed to protect them. Malcolm said that would always be my job.”

“Hugo, it wasn’t your fault.”

I stroked my little brother’s hair and told him about crimes that had happened without anyone knowing intruders were
in the house. One of the stories was about a family that had lived in Florida in 2009.

“They were very kind parents,” I told Hugo. “They had adopted a lot of children with disabilities, and had a total of sixteen kids.”

Hugo listened attentively.

“Eight of those children were asleep in the house when three intruders broke in, and in just a few minutes shot the parents to death and escaped. They weren’t caught. And no one knows why they committed that horrible crime.”

I realized that I was talking to myself, suddenly aware of the fact that maybe someday some other big sister out there would be telling her little brother about the great unsolved Angel Family Murders.

I couldn’t let that happen.