Confessions: The Private School Murders (4 page)

I looked at Harry as we walked
back to the Dakota. Harry and I were both dark-eyed and dark-haired, and we were fiercely loyal to each other. Two people couldn’t be tighter friends and confidants than we were. Still, I wished we had that twin telepathy thing you always hear about, but we didn’t. Probably because aside from the superficial physical traits and the aforementioned loyalty, we couldn’t have been less alike.

Harry was quiet. He was mopey. He had this tendency to slouch. He was asthmatic, and he slept long and late every day when he could. Harry was also kind.

Yes, much to my parents’ disappointment, Harry was born an emo, and even though he was a world-class
pianist who could bring an audience at Lincoln Center to tears, Malcolm and Maud described him as sensitive, sentimental, and weak. He had never won a Gongo or gotten a chop, and not even a billion emotion-quashing pills had ever dimmed a single ray of his brilliance.

According to me, he got major points for that.

I was Harry’s flip side. I was up at dawn. I sometimes cooked elaborate breakfasts of apricot-and-chai oatmeal and fresh-squeezed orange juice before anyone else was even stretching their arms above their heads. I lived for a complex chemistry experiment and checked over my dad’s financial books for fun—at least I had, back when he let me. I was known for being high-strung, and occasionally my sharpness was interpreted as, well, rudeness. I never danced around anything when I could cut to the chase, and no one had ever called me kind.

My parents gave me major points for
that
.

I’d also studied forensic science as a hobby since I was about six years old and had solved every mystery I’d ever read or seen on TV since I was eight. Now I just hoped I still had that talent. That quitting the drugs hadn’t taken it from me.

Harry held the gate open for me, and we slipped inside the courtyard, ignoring the camera flashes popping all around us. Instead of thinking about me or Harry or Matthew,
I thought about Adele. Adele, who listened well and laughed easily. Adele, who played in the orchestra and wore pink constantly and hung photos of composers and film directors in her locker. She could have gone on to do anything, be anyone, have a great big life.

Now she would never have another day. Another minute.

Call me crazy, but I wanted—no, I
needed
—to do something about it. I just hoped that the new and maybe-improved drug-free me still could.

4

I put my key in the lock
of apartment 9G, the duplex where Harry, Hugo, and I had once lived with our parents but now suffered daily with our horrible uncle Peter until the courts decided what was to become of us. But before I turned the knob, the door opened, and a tall, dark, and drop-dead-handsome man of maybe fifty said hello.

My shoulders coiled. Stranger in my apartment equals not good. “Who are you?”

“I’m Jacob Perlman,” he said calmly. “Call me Jacob. Peter has brought me in as your guardian.”

Harry gave Jacob a dubious look. “I thought Uncle Peter was our guardian.”

“He was. Now I am,” Jacob said, his brown eyes free of guile. “Would you like to come in?”

“To our own home?” I snapped. “Sure. Thanks.”

Jacob smiled slowly and stepped back to let us through. Harry, sensing that I’d flipped into set-to-pop mode, quickly disappeared down the hallway and into his room.

“Peter installed a stranger in our house to look after us?” I said, looking up at Jacob and noting the small scar near his ear, the perfect hairline, the razor-sharp shave. “Is that even legal?”

He smirked. “Tandoori, right?”

He had an accent I couldn’t quite place, which was odd considering I’d been most places and spoke most languages. The wrinkles fanning out from the corners of his eyes looked like squint lines more than laugh lines. He was lean and muscular, but not like he’d been working out in a gym. More like he’d had a physically demanding life.

“Yeah, that’s me,” I replied. “Where’s Uncle Peter?”

Jacob folded his hands in front of him. “He didn’t say.”

Great. So not only had he left a stranger in our house, he’d left him here alone. How was I supposed to know this guy was even who he said he was? There could be a team of ninjas hanging out in the kitchen just waiting to gut me.

Considering my family’s history, it wasn’t much of a stretch.

“You won’t mind if I just… give him a call,” I said, angling one foot toward the still-open door.

“Feel free,” Jacob said. He was so sophisticated and smooth that the UFO chandelier hovering over his head—the one that had decorated our foyer my whole life—looked suddenly out of place.

He was a man of few words. That, at least, I liked. I speed-dialed my uncle, hating with every fiber of my being that I had to consult him on anything.

Uncle Peter was my father’s totally despicable brother. He was intolerant and so rude that he made me seem like Miss Manners. In fact, we all hate him and call him Uncle Pig, sometimes to his face.

Peter had moved into our house when my parents died, had taken over my sister’s room, which had been strictly off-limits up to that point, and had started treating the Angel kids like the dirt under his grubby fingernails.

He picked up on the fourth ring. “Yes, Tandoori, Jacob is your new guardian. Yes, it’s legal. If you’d like to see the paperwork, ask him. I’m busy.”

He hung up before I could even get out a word. Jacob raised an eyebrow. I cleared my throat.

“All right, then,” I said grudgingly. “Looks like you’re legit.”

“I’m glad of that,” Jacob told me. “I’d like to have a family meeting. Shall we gather in the living room in, say, twenty minutes?”

A family meeting was actually in order. I had to report on my awful conversation with Matty. But I wasn’t sure yet that I wanted to include Jacob Perlman in
that
.

“Where will you be staying?” I asked him as we turned toward the living room.

“I’ll move into Peter’s room.”

“Don’t call it that,” I snapped. “It’s Katherine’s room.”

“I apologize,” Jacob said immediately. “Katherine’s room.”

I narrowed my eyes at him. “I have some work to do.”

“Twenty minutes,” he reminded me.

“I’ll be there.”

I stalked off to my sky-blue bedroom, with its leafy ninth-floor view of Central Park and shelves of sea coral. If I stood at the windows and got up on my toes, I could just about see where Adele Church’s body had been lying, her dead eyes turned skyward.

I flopped down on my bed and called C.P.

“You read it? Tell me you read it,” she said hungrily. “Wasn’t it just
awful
?”

“Actually, I haven’t had time,” I told her. “C.P.… Adele Church is dead. She was shot. They found her body in the park about two seconds before I got home.”

“What?” C.P. demanded. “Are you kidding me?”

“No. I’m sorry. I just figured I should tell you,” I replied.

“Oh my God.” The tears were clear in her voice. “Tandy… oh my God. Do they know who did it?”

“Not yet,” I told her. “But we’ll figure it out.”

“What’s this
we
stuff?” she asked.

“I’ll explain later,” I told her. “And I promise, at some point, to read your latest favorite book porn.”

C.P. sighed. “Oh, forget it,” she said sadly. “All the fun’s gone out of it now.”

“Sorry,” I mumbled. “I’ll text you later?”

“Sure.”

We hung up, and I rolled over onto my stomach, pulling my laptop across my bed to see what Google might turn up about Jacob Perlman. Uncle Peter had brought him into my house, so there was no way I was about to trust him without a thorough background check.

Turned out Google was full of Jacob.

And nearly every word about him was mind-blowing.

5

Jacob Perlman was
a retired Israeli commando.

Yes, you read that right. A
commando
.

There was a whole
New York Times
profile on the guy. He’d rescued hostages from terrorists, disarmed and killed a suicide bomber he’d caught trying to blow up a marketplace, and evacuated a whole mess of kids from a school mere minutes before it was hit by a rogue Palestinian missile.

So basically, if anyone tried to mess with the Angel kids from now on, they were gonna get a beat-down. That much was comforting.

But why would a man who swatted down terrorists like they were houseflies want to babysit three bratty private
school kids in New York City? And how did Uncle Pig even know someone like him? Most of our uncle’s acquaintances were as sniveling and pointless as he was.

I went next door to Harry’s room, which was spacious and modern, with one of his own amazing paintings of angels adorning the ceiling. He was, of course, passed out facedown on his king-sized bed. Harry needs a lot of downtime to refresh his brilliant mind, but I thought it was odd that he could sleep with the specter of Jacob Perlman looming.

I shook him awake, relayed my intel on Jacob, and told him we were having a family meeting. Then I found Hugo in his bedroom, sitting on his mattress on the floor with his laptop on. After Malcolm and Maud died, Hugo trashed just about everything he owned—the vintage toy cars, his four-poster bed—and now only his Xbox, desk, and chair were left standing. Hugo had the strength of a full-grown man and wore his hair in long curls, Samson style. He was upbeat and forgiving, and he exaggerated every time he opened his mouth. He was also fearless. His favorite person in the world, bar none, was our football superstar brother, Matthew. Honestly, Hugo’s behavior when it came to Matty bordered on worship.

“Was Matty wearing one of those hockey masks so he couldn’t bite or spit?” Hugo asked, still typing as he spoke.

“Matthew is not Hannibal Lecter, Hugo.” I sat down next to him on the mattress. “What’re you up to?”

“I’m setting up a website,” he informed me. “I’m going to raise money for his bail.”

That was my ten-year-old brother for you. Always thinking. I reached out to ruffle his hair, then lay back on the mattress next to him and just listened to him type as I went over the bizarre events of the day.

Matthew, possibly a killer. Adele, dead for no apparent reason. A stranger running my household. Could my life get any more dramatic?