Confessions: The Private School Murders (28 page)

But now my parents were gone, and with them, their special drugs. And now I remembered all of it. Officially and completely. But there were still some things I didn’t know. Like when I was dragged off to Fern Haven, what the hell did they do to James?

I stood up from Hugo’s bed and stared through the windows at the city lights flecking the cobalt sky. Hugo and Jacob were still immersed in the train game, and I could hear Harry practicing at the white-winged Pegasus grand piano down the hall. No one noticed when I went to my room and closed the door.

I got the postcards out of my biometric-protected desk and took them to bed.

I sat down and read:

I gathered the five cards and put them in an envelope, then placed it carefully under my pillow. I laid my head down and clutched the corner of the pillow near my cheek.

I’m going to find you, James. We’ll be together again. I promise. Just don’t give up. Please, don’t give up
.

60

There is truth in dreams,
but especially in nightmares. That night I dreamed of the snakes Burroughs had written about. They were sleeping together, entwined as James and I had been on that bed in East Hampton. But as I watched, the snakes shook off their hibernation and rose up. They swelled larger and larger and unfurled their hoods, and just when I was about to scream, I felt the room around me moving, slithering, slipping.

Snakes crawled through cracks, slid along baseboards, dripped from light fixtures. They were all around me. Everywhere. And they were closing in.

I shot straight up and threw on the lamp beside my bed. My eyes searched the room, but I saw nothing moving, or
dripping, or slithering, and felt nothing under the blankets. I jumped and tossed my bedding to the floor anyway.

I stood in the corner of the room and watched for any sign of an animal of any kind, hand to my chest, gasping for air.

At last I was satisfied that I was alone.

So what was the truth in the nightmare?

Was there a truth about James that I was hiding from myself? Was there anything snakelike about him, as my parents had suggested?

As much as I resented the implication, I allowed the thought to have its way, let it circle my mind for a few charged minutes, but it didn’t ping on a truth.

So I took my mind for another spin, let it roam around the list of things I was worrying about, trying to figure out what the snakes meant. The murdered private school girls; Matthew, who was penned in only a few city miles from my room. Then I thought about the obvious—the snakes loose in the Dakota. And suddenly it hit me.

Snakes in the Dakota.

The Dakota.

I remembered the blueprint that had been set up on an easel at the shareholders’ meeting. Something I’d seen there now struck me as wrong. An anomaly.

There was a flaw in the floor plan.

61

I dressed quickly
and tiptoed through our dark apartment until I got to the kitchen. Inside the freezer, I dug around until I found the last unopened pint of Graeter’s chocolate-chocolate-chip ice cream, a family favorite. And I just happened to know someone who was highly vulnerable to full-fat ice cream of this type and at this hour.

I grabbed the frosty pint in my sweaty hands, snatched a spoon from the drying rack, and ran downstairs.

Virgil was sitting behind the front desk in the lobby talking with Oscar, the night porter. Virgil was big, with a glittering diamond in one ear. He had been our personal driver until bad times descended on the Angel family.
Luckily, there’d been an opening for a night doorman at the Dakota, and Virgil had snagged the job.

“I’ve got something to trade,” I said, sauntering over to him.

His eyes sparkled when he saw me. “What’s that, Tandy?”

I pulled the ice cream out from behind my back, and the sparkle grew. “A little tub of something delicious,” I said.

“Uh-huh.” He crossed his arms over his chest, trying to play it cool. “And you’re trading it for what?”

I leaned in and told him. He almost fell off his stool.

“You trying to get me fired?” he asked.

“Virgil. I’m Captain of Snake Patrol and Venomous Animal Security at the Dakota,” I said, lowering my chin. “I’m pretty sure I outrank you.”

“You’re funny,” he said, laughing. “Oscar, can you take the desk for about ten minutes while Ms. Angel here puts my job at risk?”

“I gotcher back, boss,” Oscar answered.

Virgil slid off his stool. “Give me that ice cream.”

I handed it over, and we went to the elevator together. Virgil pried the top off the tub and began to eat.

“Oh. My. God. Totally worth it,” he said with a sigh.

As the elevator lifted the two of us skyward, I thought through the layout of the apartments on the ninth floor.

Some of them, like our apartment, are duplexes. Our front door is on the ninth floor. Malcolm and Maud’s suite can only be reached by our interior circular staircase, which goes up one flight.

But other duplex apartments on the ninth floor have been split up over the decades and are no longer attached to the suites on the tenth floor. Those smaller tenth-floor apartments are directly under the roof, with steeply sloping ceilings and smaller windows.

When our neighbor Mr. Borofsky moved out of 9F months ago, he split his duplex and sold the ninth-floor unit—but the tenth-floor suite was never sold.

What I’d realized earlier was that the blueprint displayed for the Pest Control meeting in the common room showed 9F as a duplex. So it was possible that the upstairs suite had not been searched.

When the elevator finally came to a stop on the tenth floor, Virgil and I walked to the vacant apartment known as 10F. Virgil knocked on the door. When no one answered, I held out my hand for the keys.

“I’m not allowed to go in there without express permission from the tenant,” Virgil told me.

“There is no tenant,” I reminded him. “At least, not one that we know of.”

Virgil narrowed his eyes. He handed me his flashlight along with the keys. “Be careful, Tandy. And return the keys when you’re done here,” he said. “In, say, fifteen minutes?”

“No problem,” I said.

Wrong again.

62

Virgil walked off with his ice cream,
and I waited for the elevator doors to slide closed behind him. Then I stood outside apartment 10F, thinking.
I am out of control. Who sneaks out in the middle of the night to go investigating deserted apartments in a building known for murder and scandal?

But if it was an empty apartment, it was harmless. Right?

My hands shook as I tried to shove a key into the lock. I dropped the flashlight on my toe and cursed under my breath. When I bent to pick up the flashlight, I dropped the keys.

Honestly, I was a hot mess. Fear, as has been previously
established, sucks, especially for someone not used to feeling it.

Finally, I fitted a key into the lock, wiggled it, and turned the knob, but the fireproof door wouldn’t budge. So I stuck the second key into the top lock and gave it a half turn. The bolt slid back, and this time when I turned the knob, the door opened.

I held my breath and peeked around the door. Inside the room was another room, this one made of glass. It was like a large terrarium with sliding doors facing me.

What the hell?

I shone the flashlight beam on the door handle and slid the doors open.

I was immediately hit with a tsunami of stink, a smell so overpowering and nauseating, it could only be rotten meat. Imagine if you were to dump a pile of garbage in the middle of the kitchen, then turn off the air-conditioning and leave the house for two weeks in the dead of summer.