Confessions of a Murder Suspect Read Online Free PDF Page B

means.
    The person who did… what? Were they talking about someone working for the hedge fund? Or the man driving the vehicle that had killed Katherine?
    Or the boy who had tried to steal their precious Tandoori away from them?
    The boy I think I loved… once?
    I’m so sorry, reader. I can’t go on thinking about that right now.

11
    Our apartment suddenly felt completely empty.
    The police were gone, except for the oversized and overweight patrolman putting great stress on an antique armchair outside our parents’ room.
    The CSIs were gone.
    Hugo had, for obvious reasons, not been able to sleep, and had followed Matty back to the living room. He was now quietly feeding squid-burger to the sharks while Matty paced. Harry had also returned from his room and was sitting at the piano with his head in his hands.
    Philippe Montaigne was gone, and Uncle Peter had shut himself up in Katherine’s room and locked the door. Shortly after the sounds of furniture being moved hadceased, the bar of light showing under the door had also gone out.
    And, of course, our parents were gone. They’d left a gigantic vacuum. I never realized until that moment how much they’d filled this apartment. Our world. With all the silence around us, I wondered for a moment if they had been the Angel family’s entire life force.
    Matthew shattered the silence by whistling loudly, shrilly, and long.
    “Attention, everyone,” he shouted, putting on his sunglasses. “It’s time for a family meeting, and Samantha is invited to attend.”
    Matty had our attention. Harry sat up at the Pegasus, his fingers on the keys. Samantha and I shared the sofa, and Hugo lay on the carpet with a couple of forty-pound weights in his hands. He curled them to his chest as his idol and mentor talked.
    “Here’s the thing, sports fans, and you, too, Tandy. United we stand. Divided we fall. Don’t talk to the police without Philippe. Don’t speculate on what could have happened, or why. That only muddies the waters. Let the police do their work. We stand on the sidelines.” He slid his sunglasses down his nose and looked around the room at us. “Anybody have anything to add to this?”
    Well, yeah.
I
did.
    “Matty, it’s obvious that we’re all suspects,” I said. “The police didn’t believe our alibis, and why should they? No one else had access to the apartment. The doors lock automatically. The elevator requires a key. It’s pretty clear to them that one of us murdered Maud and Malcolm.”
    “That’s what I’m talking about, Tandy, that’s the exact thing. They don’t know if it was one of us. Maybe you gave a key to a boyfriend—”
    “You know I don’t have a boyfriend.” That was cruel on Matty’s part. He knew we did not speak about boyfriends in this house. At least mine… Because they weren’t allowed.
    This, dear friend, was the paradox of my life. Even though I’d traveled the world—more than once—you might say I didn’t get out much. At all.
    Matty was still talking. “Or maybe Sal hired a hit man.”
    “Our
doorman
Sal? Are you crazy, Matthew? Why would Sal do that? Malcolm liked Sal. He gave him free chill pills. I’m sure the cops will give him a good turn on the spit, but
you
have more of a motive to kill our parents than Sal has. Why are you so quick to shut us up?”
    Matthew pushed his sunglasses to the top of his bird’s nest of hair. He gave me the double-barreled blue-eyed all-American stare. Now the gloves were coming off.
    Yes
, I thought.
Everyone
should
defend themselves in the safety of the living room now, because sooner or later, we will have to do it for real.
    “Don’t look at
me
, Tandoori,” Matthew said. “Even if I am fast enough to circle the block before the smell catches up with my fart, I
still
wasn’t here last night, and I
still
haven’t even visited this insane asylum since Christmas.”
    Harry was running his fingers over the piano keys in a dramatic thrumming riff, either Chopin or