The ambassador was polite but not effusive in his praise, and I took offense. My father was a serious foodie. He cooked; he savored; he even named me Tandoori, after West Indian cooking that is prepared in a clay stove called a tandoor. We had a restaurant-grade tandoor oven in our own kitchen, which I’d leaned against as I watched my father prepare that night’s meal.
So when the ambassador didn’t make mention of the obvious perfection of my father’s meal, I decided to bring up a topic that had been expressly forbidden by my parents before the ambassador arrived: the refugees living in UN-supervised camps in Nepal.
Insurgents had sprung up in these camps, and some believed that they were the intelligence behind the bombings that had pounded the country before the parliamentary elections.
The ambassador refused to answer my questions about the lack of progress to repatriate the refugees; he just said, with a cheeky smile, “And when did you get your degree in the foreign service, Miss Angel?”
It was nervy of him to take me on.
I said, “You don’t behave like an ambassador, sir. You behave like a politician.”
The look on my father’s face said everything.
13
After the ambassador had been escorted to the elevator, with apologies, my parents marched me right into their study—a library with a high vaulted ceiling and bookshelves lining every wall. Two glass-topped desks stood in the middle of the room, facing each other. Samantha’s amazing framed photos of the family decorated the mantel above the fireplace, the only other available surface.
My mother’s desk held not one, not two, but six computer monitors, which she used to track every burp and giggle of domestic, European, and Asian markets so she could trade in nanoseconds.
My father’s übercomputer had one enormous screen. It operated at warp speed and had massive storage capacity so that he could mine the scientific world on every front, synthesize the data, and adapt it to his needs. But neither of them was sitting at their computer that night. Instead, they stood in front of them, arms crossed, staring me down as if they could crush me with their gaze.
When my father finally began yelling at me for disgracing him in front of an important guest, Harry started banging out Wagner’s Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg on the Pegasus to drown him out.
Punishment in our house was called the “Big Chop,” and it was always fitted to the crime and doled out immediately.
“You must name every landmark in Bhutan in Dzongkha, the national language.” My father furrowed his brow. “I don’t care if it takes you the rest of the night. If you make a mistake, you’ll have to start again, Tandy.”
I said, “I want sixty seconds with the computer. That’s only fair.”
“Sixty seconds with the computer comes with a penalty.”
“I’ll take it,” I said.
I hadn’t read any Dzongkha since my freshman year, so I needed a refresher, and I wanted to see a map of Bhutan’s cities, too. I flipped on the computer and scanned the Google Earth view of Bhutan and the nearby countries of India and Nepal.
Then the computer was switched off.
Malcolm said, “You turned our dinner party upside down, Tandy. This chop is appropriate, fair, and equitable, and furthermore, for your penalty, you must execute this task while standing on your head.”
If you’re from a normal family, you probably think that part was a joke. But it wasn’t a joke, and I knew it.
I had never won an argument with my father, and I never would. I put a cushion under my head and walked my feet up the bookcase. I began my recitation with the high spots—Thimphu, the capital; Mongar, a town in the east—and finished the cities before naming the monasteries.
My mother was online, tracking trades in Asia, and I whispered to her, “Mother, please. I’ve done enough.”
“Buck up, Tandy,” she said, “or we’ll double the chop.”
I was released after an hour.
I told my father that the meal had been delicious, and that I had enjoyed it when it came back up almost as much as I had enjoyed it going down.
He chuckled and kissed me good night.
Maud patted my cheek and told me I had to work on my pronunciation a little, but all in all, I’d done a good job.
I went to bed and thought about what I’d done, not because I was sorry for offending the ambassador, but because I’d let myself get out of control. I didn’t like that. The few times I’d been out of control in my life things had gone terribly, terribly wrong.
I don’t usually let myself think about those times.
If you stick with me long enough, though, maybe I’ll remember enough about it—and about him—to share.
14
After our little family meeting, we decided it was best to try to get some sleep and keep talking in the morning. But it felt like only seconds after I drifted off that I was awakened by the sounds of loud pounding and crashing somewhere in the apartment.
I didn’t have a shotgun, so I grabbed a lacrosse stick that was leaning against the wall and ran from my room toward the noise.
Was someone else being murdered?
I found ten-year-old Hugo in his room. He was still wearing his Giants sweatshirt, and he was using a baseball bat to break up his four-poster bed.
As I entered the room, he swung the bat for the last time, splintering the headboard, then began working on the bed frame with karate kicks.
“Hey. Hey, Hugo,” I said. “Enough. Stop. Please.”
I dropped my lacrosse stick and wrapped my arms around my little brother. I dragged him away from the bed and more or less hurled him toward the cushy, life-size toy pony that Uncle Peter had given Hugo when he was born.
We collapsed together onto the pony, my arms wrapped tightly around him. He could easily pick me up and toss me into the closet, but I knew he actually wanted me to keep him still and safe.
“What is it, Hugo? Tell me what exactly has made you go bug-nuts.”
Hugo heaved a long sigh that could have stirred the posters of Matty up on the wall. Then he put his head on my lap and started to talk.
“I didn’t hear anything, Tandy. I should have. Something horrible happened in there, and I totally failed them! If I’ve ever done anything to deserve the Big Chop, this is it. I was supposed to protect them. Malcolm said that would always be my job.”
“Hugo, it wasn’t your fault.”
I stroked my little brother’s hair and told him about crimes that had happened without anyone knowing intruders were in the house. One of the stories was about a family that had lived in Florida in 2009.
“They were very kind parents,” I told Hugo. “They had adopted a lot of children with disabilities, and had a total of sixteen kids.”
Hugo listened attentively.
“Eight of those children were asleep in the house when three intruders broke in, and in just a few minutes shot the parents to death and escaped. They weren’t caught. And no one knows why they committed that horrible crime.”
I realized that I was talking to myself, suddenly aware of the fact that maybe someday some other big sister out there would be telling her little brother about the great unsolved Angel Family Murders.
I couldn’t let that happen.
Soon, I noticed that Hugo’s breathing had slowed. He wasn’t in a state anymore.
“It was late, Hugo, and you were asleep. Whoever killed them was intent on being silent and invisible. If Malcolm and Maud had screamed, you would’ve been right there. All of us would have.”
A few minutes later Hugo was asleep, half on me, half on the unloved stuffed pony. And he left me alone with a question:
Why hadn’t my parents screamed?
15
After everything that had happened, it was hard to believe I’d be able to sleep. But I dozed off as soon as I crawled back into my bed, only to wake up sweating and feeling like I’d traveled very far—but also like I’d been tied to a bungee cord and yanked back to my bed, h
ard.
I’d had a dream, and like most of my dreams, it was a memory, complete in every detail.
My twin brother, Harry, and I had just turned three.
Maud was carrying Harry piggyback and Malcolm was carrying me. I had my fingers twisted in my father’s hair and my legs were hooked around his chest. I was grabbing onto his shoulders and pulling up because I was so excited, kicking him in the ribs to make him go faster.
I could already recite Victorian poetry from memory, but right then I only had one thing to say: “Harry, Mommy, lookit meeee, lookit meeee.”
The four of us were at the small boardwalk amusement park at Coney Island, where Malcolm and Maud had come as kids before they got married.
Maud looked beautiful in this memory, if that’s indeed what it was. She was wearing a butter-yellow sundress and her dark hair was curling around her face and she was beaming at Malcolm and me as she said to my brother, “You’re going to love this, my angel. This is going to be a wonderful experience. I wish that I were going on the roller-coaster for the first time.”
Oompah music was coming from the merry-go-round, and bright-eyed, happy people swarmed all around us. Other kids were on their parents’ shoulders or holding their hands or giggling and weaving through the crowd at high speed. And there was the pervasive and incredibly delicious first-time smells of burnt sugar and popcorn.
We joined the line for the Cyclone, and as we reached the front, the train of roller-coaster cars braked with a loud metallic squeal. A man in a striped shirt and suspenders pulled a lever and the lap bars came up, releasing the people who had been on the ride. They spilled giddily down the ramp past us.
Now, no three-year-old would ever be legally allowed to ride on a coaster like the Cyclone, but Malcolm and Maud thought their children were up to the task. The man looked at us and shook his head, pointing to the height requirement. My father pulled out his wallet and quickly remedied the situation; several hundred-dollar bills, at least, must have changed hands. The man’s face broke into a smile, and he tore our tickets and remarked on what pretty children we were. Our parents placed us next to each other in one of the seats, and then took the seat behind ours.
The metal bar came down across our laps and locked with a loud clank—although there was still a considerable amount of space between our bodies and the bar. The train began to roll forward. “Here we gooooo,” Malcolm sang from behind me. “Hang ooooooon.”
The car rolled slowly at first, chug-chug-chugging as it went up the incline. For a moment we hung over the boardwalk. We could see the moving dots of color below, and the other rides, and even the beach and the horizon.
And then, with a breathtaking and shocking suddenness, it all dropped away. My stomach flipped over and my eyes watered and I gripped the lap bar with both hands.
It was the most incredible feeling.
I was flying.
As the car hurtled toward the boardwalk, Harry let out a piercing scream that could be heard over the shrieks of our fellow passengers—and probably across the whole island. I looked at him and saw that his face was crumpled, completely transformed by terror.
I turned away.
I could see myself as if from above, leaning into the wind, looking into the next dip and rise, feeling one with the roller coaster, seeing everything. I didn’t want it to stop.
But it did stop—because of Harry’s wailing, blubbering, unceasing meltdown. The man in the striped shirt slowed and then stopped the roller coaster as it pulled into the station.
The bars went up.
Malcolm reached toward me to lift me out of the seat, but Maud picked me up instead and said to Malcolm, “You take him.”
We left Coney Island in a hurry. I wrapped my legs around Maud’s waist and pressed my face against her sunny yellow bust. Harry clutched Malcolm’s hand and was being dragged along, sobbing the whole way.
My father said sternly, “Buck up, son.”
I never heard our mother call Harry “my angel” again. And for a long time, he was referred to as “the boy we found on the boardwalk.”
I was three, and three was all about meeeee. But do I regret that I hated my brother for being afraid?
Profoundly.
After the murders I was consumed by sadness for my brilliant and lovable twin, who had never been considered good enough, and would never be able to confront our parents as an adult.
I wanted to give in to my grief for Harry, and for my mother and father, too. But no tears would come.
What’s wrong with me? Why can’t I cry?
16
The day after my parents were murdered was a Saturday. For the first Saturday morning that I could remember, Malcolm wasn’t in the kitchen whipping up something green and stinking to infuse our brains with oxygen and steep our bodies in trace minerals.
There were also no calisthenics, no foreign-language drills, no pop quizzes on geopolitics or the state of the global economy.
The very atmosphere had changed.
It was as if one of the elements of the planet had disappeared; not water, air, fire, or earth, but something else. Maybe it was the rule of law, as Malcolm would call it.
I opened my computer and did a search for sudden deaths and black tongues and found terrible things that raised my eyebrows as high as they could go. I began a folder of questions with both answers and hypotheses and was still absorbed in my detective work when the police arrived for a surprise visit at 7:30 AM.
Again, I was the one who heard the buzzer and let them in.
We stood in the hallway, under a chandelier shaped like a sci-fi UFO, and the police began to grill me right there under its bright, blinking lights.
Detective Hayes looked as though he hadn’t changed his clothes from the night before. Sergeant Caputo wore a short-sleeved shirt and black slacks that stopped short of his black sneakers. He looked down at me as though I were a bug mounted in a lab.
“You didn’t tell me you had a guest for dinner last night. Why did you withhold information, Toodles?”
Some people might have been embarrassed at being caught in a lie of omission by a crude cop with a tattoo of a goat on his wrist, but it didn’t bother me. My parents had repeatedly told me that I had a “phlegmatic” conscience—which basically means it doesn’t work overtime—and that that was a good thing. Was either part of that true? I had no idea.
I fake-smiled and said, “Are you pretending you don’t know my name, Sergeant Caputo? Or is jabbing a suspect an interview technique of yours? I really want to know. I’m learning your craft, and I’m a fast learner.”
“You cost us valuable time, Candy. If we had known, we would have interviewed Ambassador Panyor last night.”
“I’m not supposed to speak to you without my attorney, but I’ll give you this for free,” I said. “The ambassador didn’t kill my parents. My father prepared all of the food, and I helped him. The meal was served in big bowls, family-style. My brother Harry and I ate everything my parents ate, drank everything they drank. We’re both perfectly fine, and apparently so is the ambassador. You can’t arrest him, anyway. He has immunity.”
“You should have told me, Tidbit. I’m moving you to the top of my list,” Caputo said.
He answered his phone, then opened our front door for a couple of CSIs. The three of them went upstairs to what I still thought of as my parents’ room.
We had truly been invaded by aliens. Rude and very nasty ones. And there was nothing we could do to stop them from infesting our home planet.
17
Funny moment in the middle of a tragedy.
Detective Ryan Hayes sat down on the Pork Chair and it let out a snuffle, a snort, and a ringing squeal.
He jumped up. “What the…?”
“Art,” I told him with a smile. A real smile, this time.
“Does the sofa bark or anything? Let me know now.”
“The sofa is mute,” I said.
“Fine,” Hayes said, but he eased hims
elf down gingerly anyway. “Sit down,” he told me. “Please.” He looked through the Plexiglas top of the shark tank that served as a coffee table.
“These are real sharks?”
“Pygmy sharks. Hugo won them.”
“He won them? Like, at a carnival?”
I paused and decided it would be too hard to explain “Grande Gongos” just then. So I said, “These are real pygmy sharks. At an average of nine inches long, they are the second-smallest sharks in the world. Their stomachs glow green because they’re bioluminescent—they have special phosphorescent cells in their skin. It’s possible that the green light attracts prey to them. The sharks can’t see you because the tank is specially designed to block light—”
Hayes interrupted my monologue. “Your mother was a bit like a shark, wasn’t she, Tandy? No disrespect, but that’s what I’ve heard. She worked all the time, but still, she had some pretty unhappy customers lately. Very unsatisfied customers.”
“She wasn’t exactly Bernie Madoff. My mother was honest. Honest people can have enemies. My mother said whatever she believed to be the truth.”
“There was a massive lawsuit pending against her for manipulating investor returns. A man named Royal Rampling is at the helm of it. Ever heard that name before?”
My stomach lurched, but I ignored it. “ ‘In volatile times, not every client is a satisfied client,’ ” I said, quoting my dead mother. “Still. Let’s say she had a particularly disgruntled client who happened to be a homicidal maniac as well. How could this… Royal Rampling”—I forced the name out with some difficulty—“have gotten in, killed her and my father—”
“We’re looking at every possibility,” said Hayes, again cutting me off. “Let’s talk about something else. I wanted to apologize for my partner, Tandy. Caputo is a hound. Did you know that hare hounds can pick up the scent of a rabbit on concrete?”