I dropped down onto the shiny red sectional sofa; Jacob pulled up a dining room chair, and Hugo took the Pork Chair, crossing his legs and looking at me as if I was about to read him a story. Harry sat at the far end of the sofa and leaned toward me with his arms resting on his knees.
“You’re the definition of a hot mess, Tandy,” he said. “What, in particular, is stressing you out?”
“Do you really have to ask?” I asked. “Matthew is on trial for murder, several private school girls exactly our age are dead in the morgue, there are venomous creatures swarming in our apartment, and we’re scheduled to be homeless in the very near future. Should I go on?”
“Yes,” Harry said. “Go on. And tell the truth.”
I threw a sigh that should have moved the curtains hanging across the room.
“It’s personal, okay? And I’m not in any danger,” I said, shooting a placating look at Jacob. “I have a right to my privacy, don’t I?” I added in a wobbly voice.
I stood up and looked for a way out, my bedroom or the front door or a wormhole into another dimension, I didn’t care. But I was confronted by three people standing up to head me off.
It was like they were staging an intervention.
“Tandy, sit,” said Jacob. “Please? Sit down and tell us what’s bothering you.”
He seemed legitimately concerned, but I really didn’t want to talk about James with Jacob. What if he thought it was trite? Some teenage girl moaning about a lost love? The man killed terrorists. He shot venomous snakes. He squashed deadly spiders. Besides, when it came down to it, I hardly knew him.
Harry said, “Sit, Tandy.”
“Sit down or else,” said Hugo.
I laughed nervously at my little brother, then threw myself back down onto the couch.
“Well, Jacob, this is the whole terrible story. Are you ready?”
He said, “Don’t be afraid. You’re safe with us.”
So I told him. I told him about James and my collision with true love. I told him about waking up in a white room in some kind of hospital, my head, actually my entire body, aching like I’d done the slalom course at the Winter Olympics. I told him about the buzzing snowstorm in my mind where my memories had once been. And then I filled him in on our startling discovery that the vitamins our parents had been feeding us since we were babies were actually specially formulated concoctions to help them control our bodies and minds.
When I was done, Jacob looked like he’d been slapped across the face.
“You poor girl. Fern Haven? Peter said you were sent to a spa.”
“That’s hilarious,” I said flatly. “Unless spas are offering electroshock treatment, aggressive talk therapy, and mind-numbing pills these days.”
Even Harry, who knew just about everything, went pale. He slid over and wrapped me in his arms.
“I could kill them,” he said, clearly meaning Malcolm and Maud.
“Too late,” I replied.
“Can you go on, Tandy?” Jacob asked me.
“Sure.”
Once I’d started, I didn’t feel like stopping. But I didn’t want to linger any longer on the broken recollections of Fern Haven. So instead, I skipped ahead to the present.
37
Night was upon the city, but it was never really dark in the heart of New York. The streetlights below threw wide cones of light on the sidewalks, and traffic zoomed up and down the avenue, headlights blazing.
Jacob turned on the torch lamp behind the sofa and flipped the switch that lit the sconces along the windowed wall.
“Do you need anything?” he asked me. “Water?”
I shook my head. I was eager to move past my recent and painful past.
“After school today, I went to Phil’s office and went through four big boxes that the crime-scene techs took away after Malcolm and Maud died,” I told them. “I found the medical file from when I was at Fern Haven, and inside that, I found some postcards from James.”
“Say that again,” Harry said incredulously.
“I found five postcards from James that I’d never seen before,” I said. “Our parents never gave them to me.”
“Figures,” said Harry. “Control freaks.”
“That’s putting it mildly,” Jacob muttered.
“The good news is James loves me,” I said miserably. “At least, he did. The bad news is I have no idea where he is or how to get in touch with him.”
This brought a moment of silence.
“I understand how you must feel, Tandy,” Jacob said finally. “First love is so powerful. So indelible. For me, it was a woman named Shira. She was a soldier and very brave. She died in a firefight. She was only twenty. We were only twenty.”
If my math was accurate, Shira had died more than thirty years ago.
“Were you with her when she died?” I asked him.
He nodded. “I couldn’t save her.”
He was clearly still grieving after so many years. But before he could say more, there was a loud knock on the front door, and when the doorbell was pressed, the UFO chandelier in the foyer tootled the theme song from Close Encounters of the Third Kind. It kind of killed the sharing vibe we had going.
Hugo ran to the foyer and, ignoring the peephole above his head, opened the door. A squad of Pest Control investigators poured in.
“I guess chat time is over,” I said under my breath as Jacob stood up to greet them.
I bet we were the only family in America to have a serious heart-to-heart interrupted by a search for venomous spiders. The investigators spent the next three hours interrogating us and searching for spiders, finding nothing but the two flattened eight-legged corpses Jacob had laid out on a bath towel.
Much later, ensconced in soft bedding, I clutched my postcards from James and looked out at the moonlight caressing the treetops in the park.
I imagined I was holding hands with James, the two of us looking up at the moon together.
“Did you know there’s a mineral named after the Apollo 11 astronauts?” I asked James in my fantasy. “It’s called armalcolite.”
James laughed. “You are a huge geek.”
I rolled over to face him. “Then you’re in love with a huge geek.”
He lifted his shoulders. “And I will readily admit it to anyone who asks.”
Then I closed my eyes and let the imaginary James kiss me. I concentrated as hard as I could, until I could feel the smoothness of his lips against mine, and just like that, I wasn’t entirely sure. I wasn’t sure if I’d just made this moon-watching scene up, or if it was another memory, another real event, coming back to me.
This was what Fern Haven had done to me. I was never going to trust my memory again. But there is one thing I can tell you for absolute certain, my friend.
I’m more determined than ever to find James.
38
The next morning we arrived at the courthouse before the crowds and the press, all the Angel kids—at least the ones who were currently free—plus Jacob and C.P., who had gotten special permission from her parents to miss school. It was a show of unity and support for Matthew, but I felt better having them there, too.
We took our seats right behind the defense table, and I looked around at the carved mahogany panels I had thought so beautiful and awe-inspiring a few days before.
Now the height of the ceilings and the darkness of the wood, not to mention the carved creatures above the moldings, seemed sinister.
At five before nine, Phil entered through the side entrance with Matty, who looked like he’d been living on the street. His dreadlocks were untied and untidy. Dark bags hung under his sharp blue eyes, and he was wearing a rumpled suit set off with shiny new handcuffs and leg chains. This could only mean that he’d done something menacing or crazy or both behind bars and couldn’t be trusted to behave in court.
I saw the jury eyeing him with alarm. Disgust. Disdain.
Fan-freaking-tastic.
As the gallery filled, so did the
business side of the courtroom. Lawyers, bailiffs, and the court reporter took their positions, as did the judge and jury.
Nadine Raphael stood, all goddesslike in her perfect black suit with her shiny coiffed hair, and called her first witness.
Barbara Tally wore a pencil skirt, a smart draped blouse, and stiletto heels. Her streaky blond curls were perfectly sleek.
“Ms. Tally, did you know Tamara Gee?” Ms. Raphael asked.
“Yes. Very well.”
“And what was your relationship with the victim?”
“She was my cousin, and I also worked as her personal assistant,” Barbara Tally answered.
“And were the two of you good friends?” Ms. Raphael asked.
“God, yes. We were like sisters. I knew all her business better than she did.”
“I see. Now, do you know the defendant, Matthew Angel?” Ms. Raphael gestured at my brother.
“Yes. Very well.”
“Do you like him?”
“Yes, actually, I did.” Barbara Tally’s gaze flicked toward Matthew. “At one time.”
Ms. Raphael laced her fingers together at waist level. “Did Ms. Gee ever tell you how she felt about the defendant?”
The witness sighed. She paused long enough to look at her hands in her lap. “Tamara loved him.”
“To the best of your knowledge, did Ms. Gee’s feelings for the defendant change in the weeks leading up to her death?”
“When she got involved with Matthew’s father, you mean?”
“That’s right,” said the prosecutor. “Can you talk about that?”
“Well, Tamara got pregnant, and after Malcolm Angel died, Tamara told a TV interviewer that the baby was Malcolm’s,” Barbara Tally said. “Matthew went crazy. I mean, completely nuts. So Tamara told Matty she was going to move out of their apartment.”
“And, Ms. Tally, how did Matthew react when Tamara said she was leaving him?” asked Nadine Raphael.
“Well,” said Barbara Tally, “he verbally abused her. He threatened her.”
“Can you recount some of those threats, Ms. Tally?”
“Yes. One time, about two weeks before her death, I heard Matthew say, ‘I could kill you. You whore.’ And the day before she died, he said to her, ‘If you think you’re walking out on your own two feet, you’re seriously deluded.’ ”
Ms. Raphael smiled thinly. She paused to let the witness’s words resonate in the cavernous courtroom. I looked at Harry and Hugo. They were as pale as the white marble columns outside.
“Thank you, Ms. Tally,” Nadine Raphael said in a satisfied tone. “Your witness, Mr. Montaigne.”
39
Phil stood and walked across the well to the witness box. I hoped his cross-examination would defuse the power of Barbara Tally’s words.
He put his hands in his pockets and said in a very nonthreatening tone, “Ms. Tally, did you ever see any suspicious bruises on Tamara?”
“No.”
“Did you ever see Matthew strike Tamara or in any other way physically hurt her?”
“No, I didn’t.”
“And did Tamara ever tell you that she was afraid of Matthew, that she was afraid for her safety?”
The witness was silent. It looked as though she was organizing her thoughts or searching for the right answer. I held my breath. Please, please don’t say she was afraid of the loud, intimidating, physically superior man who was my brother.
“Ms. Tally?” Phil prompted.
“No. She never actually said she was afraid of him, but she was leaving—”
“Thank you, Ms. Tally. I have no further questions.”
The judge puffed out his cheeks, scribbled a note on his pad, then asked, “Redirect, Ms. Raphael?”
“Yes, Your Honor.”
Ms. Raphael stood up and lifted her chin. “Ms. Tally, even if Tamara never told you she was afraid of Matthew, did you see or hear anything that led you to believe that she feared him?”
Phil jumped to his feet. “Objection, Your Honor. Calls for speculation.”
The judge said, “Given that the victim cannot speak for herself, I’ll allow it. Go ahead, Ms. Raphael.”
Ms. Raphael repeated her question, and Barbara Tally said yes, she’d seen Matthew behave in a threatening manner.
“Please tell the court why you say that.”
Tally’s voice dropped, and she ducked her head as if to avoid Matthew’s penetrating blue gaze.
She said, “Matthew has a bad temper. He yelled. He threw things. He made threats. I witnessed this myself. Even I was afraid of him. He could be a monster.”
I closed my eyes and silently cursed my parents. Like father, like son.
“Thank you, Ms. Tally. I have no other questions.”
40
Sitting in the courtroom isn’t like watching a TV show, my friend. It’s real. Barbara Tally was real. And she’d helped the jury see my brother with his face scrunched up in anger, fists balled up, threatening and swearing at his cheating girlfriend, who, for all he knew, had been impregnated by our father.
That had either been a mistake or Tamara had lied, but Matthew couldn’t know that DNA testing would eventually prove that the baby was his. All he knew was that Tamara had said publicly she was pregnant by his father.
The motive would be fairly clear.
A moment after Barbara Tally skirted around Matthew on her way out of the courtroom, Ms. Raphael called her next witness, J.C. Webb. Almost everyone knew that J.C. was a defensive end for the New York Giants and one of my brother’s best friends.
J.C. came through the doors like an explosion. He was huge, six-six, 290 pounds, so muscular that he was practically bulging out of his suit. His size 14 shoes thundered against the marble floor.
He crossed the courtroom, put his enormous hand on the Bible, and was sworn in. He nodded at Matthew as he took the stand.
“Why is J.C. a prosecution witness?” Harry whispered. “He’s Matty’s best friend.”
“J.C. would never testify against Matty,” Hugo said, clenching his fists on his legs.
I glanced at C.P., and she reached out to squeeze my hand.
Ms. Raphael began her direct examination by asking J.C. to state his full name and to say how long he’d known Matthew and what he thought of him.
“I love him, ma’am. Like a brother.”
Harry and I sighed as one. This was going to be okay.
“Mr. Webb, did Matthew talk to you about his relationship with Tamara, specifically, in the weeks before she was killed?” Ms. Raphael asked.
“Yes.”
“Could you characterize those conversations?”
“Uh… Tamara went on TV and said she got pregnant by Matty’s father. He was all chewed up by that.” J.C shook his head.
“Please go on,” said the prosecutor.
“Matty loved her. He said whatever she did with his father was his father’s fault,” J.C. explained. “He said he wasn’t going to leave her.”
Ms. Raphael paused. She hadn’t been expecting that answer. A little thrill went up my spine.
“Were you with Matthew on the night of Tamara’s murder?” she asked finally.
J.C. nodded, and the judge asked him to answer yes or no.
“Yes,” J.C. said. “I was with Matty.”
I could see that J.C. didn’t want to be on the witness stand. He looked at Matthew, and my brother held his gaze.
Ms. Raphael said, “Mr. Webb. Please tell the jury about that occasion.”
J.C. spoke haltingly.
“We went out, played poker at some guy’s house for a few hours. At one point between games, we went to the kitchen for some more beers, and Matty said Tammy was going to, uh, name the baby after his father. I said, like, ‘You should quit on her, man. There’s a lot of cute chicks out there that would fight for the chance to make you happy.’ ”
Someone, somewhere in the crowd, chuckled. Whoever it was, I wanted to smack them.
“And what did Ma
tthew say to that?”
“He said, uh, ‘I have to take care of this one chick first.’ I’m sorry, man,” J.C. said to Matthew. “I’m sorry.”
So much for that thrill up my spine. Now I felt a hot rush of fury at my brother for talking about any woman like that.
Then I saw the tears of shame and regret in Matty’s eyes. This was killing him.
“How long did Mr. Angel stay at the poker game after making this comment?” Ms. Raphael asked.
“Uh, not that long,” J.C. answered. “Maybe fifteen minutes?”
“At what time did he leave?”
“It was right after midnight. I remember ’cause Letterman was on, and he was sitting down with Brett Favre, one of my heroes,” J.C. replied with a smile.
“So the last time you saw the defendant was just after midnight,” the prosecutor prompted.
I saw J.C.’s Adam’s apple bob. His face fell as if he had just realized what that fact could mean for Matthew. “Yeah, but I—”
“And what frame of mind was he in when he left the poker game?” she asked.
“Objection!” Philippe yelled. “Calls for speculation.”
“We’ve already established these two men are best friends, Your Honor,” Ms. Raphael said confidently. “I believe Mr. Webb can attest to the mood of Mr. Angel.”
“Overruled,” the judge said.
J.C. hesitated.
“Mr. Webb?” Ms. Raphael said in a no-nonsense voice.
“He was pissed,” J.C. said. “That’s all I can say. He was definitely pissed.”
“At Tamara Gee?”
“Objection!”
“Overruled.”
Philippe sighed.
“Yeah,” J.C. said quietly. “He was pissed at Tamara.”
“I have no other questions,” said Ms. Raphael. She barely hid her look of supreme satisfaction. “Thank you, Mr. Webb.”
Philippe stood, a determined and disbelieving look on his face as he questioned Ms. Raphael’s witness.
“Mr. Webb. Did Matthew tell you he had murdered Tamara?”
“No.”
“Did you see him commit this crime?”
“No.”
“So you have no actual evidence that Matthew lifted a hand to Tamara Gee, do you?”
The Private School Murders Page 10
