Confessions: The Private School Murders (21 page)

The North Common Room was packed
to the walls, and I’m not exaggerating. I knew from experience that the room was furnished with velvet chairs, usually grouped into conversational circles, and that there were tapestries and photos of old New York everywhere, but all you could see today were the tenants of the building standing shoulder to shoulder as Officer Frank from Pest Control stood at the front of the room. His expression was grave.

“This is the latest intruder,” he said. “We’re very fortunate that there have been no casualties.”

He held up a creature by its tail, clearly dead. It was a huge orange-and-black-patterned lizard, around two feet long.

“Folks, this is a Gila monster,” Officer Frank announced. “It is indigenous to the southwestern United States and northern Mexico. Its bite isn’t lethal, but it’s painful and would probably paralyze a person for a good long time.”

He tossed the lizard into a cardboard box and went over to a blueprint of the Dakota that was set up on an easel.

“As you all know, this building has already been overrun by a swarm of venomous snakes and spiders, and now this lizard was found in the bathtub of apartment 2D. These creatures must be contained, and we need your help.

“Does anyone have any information that would help us figure out where these creatures are coming from? Have any strangers been inside the building? Are there rumors or stories anyone would like to share, either here or, perhaps, in private?”

Coughs cut through the dull hum as people talked to their neighbors. Officer Frank passed around a pad and pen, asking for the names and phone numbers of all those in attendance.

“If we can’t find the source of this epidemic in the next few days,” the man in green said loudly, “we’ll have to take measures.”

“What do you mean by measures?” our neighbor Mrs. Hauser shouted in her squeaky voice.

“We will have to evacuate the building, tent it, and fumigate it,” he said. “Everyone and their pets and houseplants will have to leave for at least a week. Any other questions?”

There were.

“Are there poisonous swarms in any other buildings?”

“Not that we know about.”

My hand shot up, and Frank pointed to me.

“Gila monsters live in burrows, underground. In the desert. I’m sure you’ve checked the basement, but I’m wondering if they could be coming up from the sewers.”

“We’ve considered a sewer connection. We’re still looking into that.”

Hugo suddenly scrambled onto a folding chair. He stood up and cupped his hands around his mouth.

“Hugo? What are you doing?” Jacob said through his teeth. “Get down.”

Hugo ignored him. He ignores lots of people. And warnings. And loud noises. And sometimes logic. “I have something to say.”

There was a rumble of conversation that hushed as those assembled turned to look at my brother.

“This is my sister,” he said, pointing to me. “She’s a detective. Tandy Angel, apartment 9G. She’ll help you, won’t you, Tandy?”

Officer Frank looked unconvinced but said, “Ms. Angel, perhaps you’ll consent to being our inside contact person?”

I shot Hugo a perturbed look. Like I needed more on my plate right now. Wasn’t he the one telling me to focus on Matthew? But now he had me cornered and I couldn’t exactly say no.

“Uh, sure.”

There was a smattering of applause. Hugo jumped down, and as the meeting dispersed, the four of us walked out in a clump, surrounded by the rest of the tenants.

“Why’d you do that?” I growled at Hugo. “You should have volunteered yourself.”

“You’re the Mysteries Solved, Case Closed girl,” he said. “I’m an author and the family agent.”

I pinched him, hard, and he laughed as he squirmed away from me.

But I was already wondering: What if someone was trying to murder rich people by releasing venomous animals into our midst? As murder weapons went, they were pretty untraceable but not exactly efficient. You couldn’t
tell them which rich people to kill or when. You just had to hope they got the job done.

As we walked back into our apartment, my phone beeped. It was a text from C.P.

Meet me tmrw am at Brilling. Am working on something I think you’ll like.

44

Even C.P. was getting mysterious these
days. I sent a quick text back saying I’d be there, then went to my office. I stood in the open doorway and, freshly alarmed by the meeting downstairs, viewed the long, skinny room with suspicion. Slowly, carefully, I moved around the space, opening file cabinets with a twisted coat hanger and using a broom handle to open and shut cupboard doors.

Nothing crawled or slithered out of anywhere.

I gave the counters a good cleaning, straightened books and beakers, and when everything felt clean and clearly uninhabited by exotic guests, I finally relaxed. I took a
bottle of water out of the fridge, slugged some down, and started up my computer.

Of all the madness bubbling inside my poor percolating mind—and there was a lot—the thoughts that kept rising to the top were about James Rampling.

Now that it seemed that James was alive and he had tried to contact me, I could hardly stop thinking about him. Could barely focus on anything else. I needed to find him. I needed to get back what had been stolen from us.

Nothing less was acceptable.

The postcards James had sent me had originated in several large and small European cities. I thought of the newspaper article I’d found in Maud’s office in which Royal Rampling, Angel Family Enemy #1, had stated for the record that James was in school in Europe.

That could be true.

My e-mail to James’s old address had come rocketing back to me, but that wasn’t the end, not by far. I put “Ho Hey” on my iPod, and to the anthemic strains of The Lumineers, I typed
James Rampling
into my search engine. The top headlines:

JAMES RAMPLING MISSING

JAMES RAMPLING MISSING WITH WEALTHY ANGEL

JAMES IN EUROPE, SAYS RAMPLING SR

TANDOORI ANGEL AT CELEBRITY “RETREAT”

Ugh.

There was nothing specific about James’s whereabouts in any of the articles. So I tried another approach.

I began a search of private schools in Europe, and within an hour, I’d assembled a list of excellent institutions of learning for filthy-rich teenagers. I starred the hundred schools that were within twenty-five miles of the cities pictured on the postcards. Then I composed an e-mail and addressed it to the headmasters of these schools. I quickly translated the note into French, Swedish, and German.

It read:

I thought of the Greek god Eros as I pressed the send button, and envisioned a thick flight of golden arrows arcing over the Atlantic Ocean. Cheesy, I know, but still.

I felt certain one of those arrows would find its way to James.

45

I met C.P. a few days later
outside Brilling Day on Eighty-Third Street, where Marla Henderson attended classes before she was shot dead only days earlier on the Bow Bridge. Brilling is in an old brownstone residence, forty feet wide, just as deep, and four stories high. There are only one hundred and twenty students in all four grades, and it seemed like half of them were lined up at the coffee cart outside the building. Not that I was surprised. The espresso smelled like heaven.

“I’ve already interviewed a few of them,” C.P. said, watching me eye the crowd.

“Without me?” I asked.

“I’ve always wanted to be a sidekick,” she said wryly.

She showed me her iPad, five pages of notes from her
inquisition, all neatly organized with the students’ names, ages, class affiliations, and e-mail addresses.

My eyebrows shot up. “You’re hired.”

C.P. smiled and did that little head-bobble thing she always did when she got happy news, like an A in chem or the announcement of some Hollywood hipster’s unexpected pregnancy.

“Do you want a business card? Or a silver badge?” I teased.

Her whole face lit up.
“Yes.”

We both laughed and shook on it. C.P. brought up a new file on her tablet.

“I downloaded a complete dossier on Marla, everything I could find. Girl was
smart.
She had a three-point-nine average until the beginning of the second term, and then all of a sudden…” C.P. whistled like a bomb plummeting to earth, complete with accompanying hand-slice.

I winced. “Crash and burn? Any idea why?”

“Check out her Facebook page,” C.P. said, opening the app. “Her father died of a heart attack at the beginning of the term.”

“So you think she was too depressed to study?” I asked, intrigued.

“And considering that Adele was depressed because her brother had bailed on her for school—”

“We have a connection,” I said, breathless. Finally.

C.P. grinned. “I love it when we complete each other’s sentences.”

I tried to smile back but found I couldn’t. A cold wind blasted my hair off my face and I huddled deeper into my denim-and-wool jacket. A few of the kids in line were starting to give us the once-over. At a school so small that everyone probably knew everyone else’s middle name, we were decidedly out of place.

“What? You think there’s a serial killer out there hunting rich girls with weird families?” C.P. started to joke, cutting herself short of laughing when she saw my stony face. “What’s the matter?” she asked, suddenly concerned.

“Nothing, I just—” I turned my back to one particularly intent lurker and lowered my voice. “If that’s what this guy is doing, I’m surprised he didn’t start with me.”

“God, Tandy, morbid much?” C.P. asked, giving me a little shove. “Don’t even say that.”

She shuddered in her designer boots just as a gray sedan pulled up right in front of us, its brakes squealing two inches from the curb. Sergeant Capricorn Caputo unfolded his skeletal frame from the passenger seat as his partner, Detective Ryan Hayes, hoisted his pudgy self out from behind the wheel. Caputo’s gaze was sharp and vaguely threatening. Like always.