Confessions: The Paris Mysteries (14 page)

Once we were home, I turned
up the oven to “roast,” rubbed spices all over some chicken, put the bird into the oven, and set the timer. I snapped some beans like they’d done something mean to me. I chopped some fresh fruit with the same attitude, splashed peach brandy over it, covered the bowl with a damp cloth, and stashed it in our immense, triple-wide fridge.

After that, I set up a plate of cheese and crackers and cornichons and capers and took all of it to the media room, where Jacob and Hugo were watching one of the Bourne sagas.

“Uncle Jake. Please mind the chicken. I’ve got homework.”

“Very good,” he said. “Thanks, Tandy.”

I went upstairs and locked my door. I opened my laptop and looked up news articles about Angel Pharmaceuticals. I easily found the whole sordid story of the bankruptcy of my mother’s hedge fund, the collapse of Angel Pharma, and about a hundred links to articles about my parents’ deaths and every putrid thing that had spilled from that.

I didn’t need to read any more about the New York justice system and what my brothers and I had been through and somehow survived. But I did open every link to Peter Angel.

I reacquainted myself with his medical degree in pathology from Cornell, his early training at Pfizer, and a discovery he’d made in his thirties for a drug that relieved pain in patients with stomach cancer.

Then he’d gotten funding—no specifics on that—and started Angel Pharmaceuticals with his younger brother, my father, who was a statistician with a degree in pharmacology.

Everything else I found on Peter Angel was social. Namely, his bachelorhood, his famous dinner parties, his theatergoing and philanthropy. Pictures of him showed his characteristic flyaway hair and loud, expensive suits. Close-ups on his narrow, piggy eyes. One photo was taken at an after-theater dinner party at the Palm.

That photo at the Palm was a wide shot in a packed and narrow room. The light was golden, and I recognized the caricatures of celebrities on the walls and the giant slabs of steak in front of the diners.

But my eyes locked on something else.

There was a man sitting at the table behind Peter, someone I
almost
recognized. I read the caption under the photo. The name jumped out at me like a mugger in an alley. And there it was, another connection between Uncle Peter and our family enemy, my enemy in particular.

The man sitting at the table behind my uncle Peter was Royal Rampling.

I stared at the photograph that
linked my uncle Peter and Royal Rampling, and I felt another mood come over me. A
bad
mood. Paranoia.

I reflected on that super-romantic night in the Hamptons when James and I were, without warning, nailed to the dunes by blinding headlights, then snatched and separated, each of us screaming the other’s name.

When I woke up—or more likely, regained consciousness—it was daylight. The van that had taken me was parked in the semicircular driveway of a sterile white building I later learned was a mental institution. I was dragged from the van, and for weeks after that, I was treated with talk, drug, and
electric-shock therapy that together practically rewired my brain.

I forgot about James. Forgot I ever knew him.

And I forgot the faces of the men in the van.

Suddenly, a new memory crept into my brain… one that I hadn’t recalled before.

I remembered a man who stood by and watched as I was wrestled into the building, just after the hood was taken off my head. I saw his features now with a clarity I could hardly believe. I saw the messy ginger hair, got a glimpse of narrow, colorless eyes. It was my uncle Peter.
Damn
him.

It wasn’t paranoia if my uncle Peter had his fingers in the pie. Make that a hand. No, make that both hands, and maybe he’d even
masterminded
the whole criminal kidnapping affair for my parents.

That frightening thought only made me question Peter’s older brother more, the brother Peter had called in to watch over the Angel kids.

Yes. Uncle Peter had hired Jacob.

True, Jacob had put us back together and practically hand-carried us to our grandmother’s house and our inheritance.

But why had Peter turned us over to Jacob? Because
he couldn’t be bothered being our guardian? Or because Jacob was an undercover agent?

More questions without answers.

I got up from my computer, pushed a slipper chair across the floor, and wedged its back under the doorknob. I double-checked the locks on the windows and drew the curtains. When I was sure no one could get in, I got into bed and opened my laptop.

I had a letter in mind. I addressed it to my uncle Peter.

I woke to the sound of Jacob screaming.

Jacob never screams.

I realized I had fallen asleep, fully clothed, with my shoes on, so I ran downstairs in yesterday’s school clothes to the sound of Uncle Jake shouting at the top of his lungs in his guttural mother tongue.

I didn’t know what time it was, only that it was dark outside the windows and that a pool of light filled the downstairs area at the bottom of the staircase.

When I reached the landing above the foyer, I saw a bunch of kids, maybe ten of them, most a few years older than Harry and me. They were in various stages of dress
and undress, and from the lazy way they were stumbling around, I was sure they were stoned.

The front door was open, and Jacob was holding a boy by the shoulder with one hand and by the waistband with the other and shoving him out the door.

Other kids, heavily inked and pierced and made up, music types maybe, grumbled and shouted at Jacob and collected their possessions at their leisure, as Jacob ranted—at Harry.

I got to the ground floor in a hurry. The parlor was trashed. Bottles and bongs and items of clothing were everywhere. The leather furniture was wet and stained. Someone had puked on the carpet.

Harry was sweaty and shirtless—no tattoos, thank God—but he looked wild-eyed, and he was grinning. He was saying, “Jacob, you’re making a big deal out of nothing.”

Picture Jacob’s intense glare as he tried not to smack Harry for talking back.

“Nothing? You didn’t have permission to bring people here.”

“It’s my house, right, Jacob? I mean, it’s a jail, but it’s
my
jail. You can’t have control over every single thing I do.”

Kids were laughing, leaving the house in singles and
pairs. The more the room emptied, the more I saw: smears on the walls, stains on the expensive furniture, beer puddled in the carpets, a broken lamp that had probably been worth ten thousand dollars.

Jacob didn’t even notice that I was there. And now Hugo was standing behind me.

Jacob said to Harry, “You’re an ingrate.”

“I have a producer now,” Harry said. “I have an agent.”

“You could be in an
actual
jail now,” Jacob said. “You could be waiting for a lawyer to take your case. Hoping he was good enough to get you out on bail.”

“That’s crazy,” said Harry. “I didn’t do anything wrong.”

But his face belied what he was saying. His eyes were huge. A tall blond girl walked by, patted his butt, and said in French, “Good party, Harrison. See you very soon,
chéri
.”

Jacob said to Harry, “Do you understand that I had a life of my own six months ago? I had friends and family and a community of respectable people who held me in high regard.”

“Oh,” said Harry.

Jacob went on, “I volunteered to guide you children, take care of you and protect you. To make sure you got a fair chance at success. I saved your ungrateful butt just
this week, Harry. I asked the board not to cut years off your inheritance. I had to
beg
.”

“I’m sorry, Uncle Jacob.”

“Are you, Harry? Because last week, a friend of yours
died
. Then you were taken to the hospital because of a weak heart. Now you are taking substances and bringing strangers here while your siblings are in their beds. You are also disgracing the memory of your grandmother.”

“I’m a wretched person, Jake. But I meant no harm.”

The parlor was finally empty. Jacob closed the door and locked it.

“I was never popular,” Harry said. “Now people want to be with me. I recorded my own composition and it aired in
Paris
. It was a big thing for me, Uncle Jake. How could I say no to people who wanted to celebrate with me?”

“Learn to say no to self-destructive compulsions,” Jacob said. “Be smart, Harry. Make the best of your privileged situation, because in two years, I won’t be your guardian. You will be free to stand on your own feet, or fall down. That will be up to you.

“But not today. In a few hours, you
will
go to school and you
will
be on time.”

Harry said, “I’m sorry, Uncle Jake. I really am.”

He plucked his shirt from where it hung on a lamp finial, then passed me and Hugo as he headed up the stairs.
I followed him, whispering at him fiercely, “I know you took some of those pills. Why are you lying to me, Harry? I know you. I know you as well as I know myself.”

He didn’t deny it. But then, he didn’t say anything.

God, oh God, I don’t want my brother to die.