The Paris Mysteries

  I closed the door behind Hugo and went back to the box I’d been digging around in before he jump-started my nervous system. I was still winded from that.

  As I sorted through miscellaneous Katherine-related documents, I wondered again: Who had collected Katherine’s papers and lab reports? Who had locked them in a basement-within-a-basement in a place where no one lived?

  Who had hired a detective to watch her, and why?

  I made small piles of papers, some from MIT, where Katherine would have gone to college. There were documents from passport offices in France, South Africa, and New York.

  I was about to close the box, which seemed to be filled with personal documents of little importance, when my hand fell on a short stack of cream-colored stationery—just the notepaper, not the envelopes. The paper was heavy, and the dates written in the top left-hand corner were just the day of the week, not the month or year.

  I unfolded one of the notes, and to be honest, from the moment I read My dearest Katherine, I got a queasy feeling. I had no business reading my sister’s mail.

  But it was too late to stop now, right?

  The letter was written in blue fine-point marker and read:

  Thursday

  My dearest Katherine,

  I know you as well as I know my own face, feel your feelings as if they were my own. I’m sorry I’ve upset you. I didn’t mean to do it. I suggest we meet again so we can talk everything over. I think we owe each other that.

  Fondest love,

  P.

  What was this? A love letter? Who was P.? Or was that really the initial D? The writing was just ambiguous enough that I couldn’t be sure.

  So I had to read the next letter in the stack. Wouldn’t anyone in my position do the same?

  The second letter looked and sounded similar to the first:

  Monday

  My dearest Katherine,

  Seeing you, today, well… Thank you for seeing me. You are the most precious person on earth to me. And I know some people would say it’s wrong, but I think we both know that when it’s right, only the people involved have the right to say.

  All my love,

  P.

  Yes, it was definitely a P.

  I opened a third letter and a fourth, and in this last letter, I saw something that made me want to throw up. P. wrote,

  I’ve enclosed your ticket, my Angel. I’ll meet you in Cape Town. And I promise you, this time will be special and will reveal the future.

  All my love,

  P.

  The ticket was in the envelope, Cape Town to New York. One way. It hadn’t been used, but of course, Katherine hadn’t left Cape Town. And the name of the person who paid for the ticket—I had to read the typing several times before my brain would accept the name Peter Angel.

  Uncle Peter. Our father’s brother.

  I felt the familiar stirrings of revulsion when I thought of Peter, especially as I recalled when he was in our apartment at the same time as Katherine. And that after our parents died and Uncle Peter was our guardian for a short while, he had moved into Katherine’s room, used her desk, slept in her bed.

  We all hated that. We all hated him.

  Had he forced himself on Katherine? Had he raped her? Did he have a sick fascination with her that she didn’t return? Or—please don’t let it be true—did she have feelings for him, too? No. He was pleading with her. She had to have rejected him.

  I pocketed the letters from Peter. If anyone confronted me about going into the boxes, I’d shove Uncle Peter’s love letters in their face.

  Another mystery had been added to my list, and more questions without answers.

  Was Peter angry that Katherine had run off with a lover?

  Was that why he had threatened Dominick’s life?

  As a person who knew the pain of heartbreak, I wondered if Uncle Peter had been so thoroughly hurt by Katherine’s rejection that he had engineered her death.

  It was a crazy theory. But when Angels are involved, crazy is almost normal.

  As I tore through the cartons, I whispered out loud to my poor dead sister.

  “Kath, it’s me.

  “I think you left these boxes—for me. I’m here now. I’m reading. I’m learning. I’m using the best of my analytical abilities. I’m going to figure out what happened to you. And if your death wasn’t accidental, someone will pay. So help me.

  “I mean that literally. Please help me.

  “By the way, I love and miss you.

  “And I’m still the Amazing Tandoo.”

  There were a million papers I hadn’t looked through, but I was determined. I was going to pass my eyes over every document in this room tonight, and if there were answers in these boxes, I would find them.

  I swore on my love for Katherine.

  So. Clearly there was information in these heavy cartons, plenty of it. If I wanted to understand what had been done to all five of the Angel kids, I had to dive into the hard stuff—and I was way ready. I especially wanted to know more about our uncle Peter’s role in the destruction of our family.

  I attacked the docs by sorting them into categories, then subcategories. Hours passed, and I was in the zone. I refused to be sidetracked by fatigue or ghosts or ricocheting random thoughts.

  After reading through the first huge stack of Angel Pharmaceuticals memoranda and lab reports, I checked my phone. It was after four AM. In a few hours, my family would start moving around upstairs, and someone would surely look for me.

  I had to read faster.

  I plowed through the next pile of documents, then pulled the third stack of papers off the table and sat on the floor with my back against the cold stone wall.

  I fastened my attention on a memo to my dad from Uncle Peter, when they were both senior partners at Angel Pharmaceuticals.

  The body of the memo read, “Mal. All the reports on nootropics are here. Your conclusion is required by the end of the month. P.”

  The table of contents in the attached file listed nootropics, including antidepressants, also hormones, brain cell protectors, and stimulants—my God.

  My parents had given this stuff to us as vitamins.

  “Don’t forget to take your vitamins, Tandoori.”

  “I already took them, Dad.”

  And then I moved on to even scarier stuff: letters and memos to Uncle Peter from government intelligence agencies asking about the “K. Angel Experiment.”

  Katherine.

  Some of the letters were from the CIA, but there were cryptic queries from spy agencies in Russia, France, Japan. And Israel.

  Government interest in my sister was shocking and hideous, and it also made me wonder if this high-grade secret intelligence interest was why Jacob had been drawn back into the Angel family web.

  I got to my feet and dug around in the very first box I had opened days ago, and found Katherine’s chart. You didn’t have to be a genius to see that the experiments on Katherine had gone way too far, too fast. If drugs had done this for her, I could see the applications for military use. And if there was money to be made, it would be very big money. My parents and uncle would have been all for that.

  But what if Katherine, with her monumental IQ, had figured this out?

  What if she hadn’t liked being a lab animal and a business model combined? What if there had been bad side effects that my father and Peter had ignored, and she wanted to quit? And what if her side trip to Paris when she was on her way to South Africa had been one small act of rebellion, and part of a bigger plan?

  Had Katherine’s independence freaked someone out? Had that someone been afraid she might go over to an enemy? Was that why private investigators had been called in?

  What if Katherine hid these boxes in Gram Hilda’s house in case something happened to her?

  I imagined too many reasons why someone might have targeted Katherine for death. I was afraid I might be on the verge of learning something horrible and too close to home.

  I
was panting hard enough to be heard upstairs, so I rolled up the chart, grabbed two handfuls of incriminating papers, and left the basement room.

  It was time to talk to Jacob.

  I found Jacob brewing coffee in the kitchen.

  He turned, smiled, and said, “A little early for you, isn’t it, Tandy?”

  I put a fat stack of papers on the table, including Katherine’s chart, which I unrolled and flattened out, holding down the corners with salt and pepper shakers and a couple of trivets.

  I said, “I’m pretty smart, you know, Jacob? Some would say smarter than ninety-nine point nine percent of my peers.”

  “I don’t doubt that,” he said. “Is your intelligence in dispute?”

  He poured two oversized mugs of coffee and brought them to the table. He slid one over to me and pulled out a kitchen chair for himself.

  Then he said, “I’m pretty sure I told you those boxes were off-limits.”

  “Well,” I said, “as Katherine’s sister, I think my rights to her stuff override your rights.”

  “My fault for not locking them up,” Jacob muttered to himself.

  I continued, “I’ve been in the basement for about eight hours, Jacob, and I’ve found some very scary shit.

  “I found documents, lab reports, spy agency inquiries, and in-house memos between Peter and Malcolm proving that Angel Pharma was experimenting with nootropics, brain-enhancing drugs, as well as mood-altering drugs and strength and speed enhancers.”

  Jacob stirred his coffee but said nothing. I went on.

  “Let’s look at Katherine’s official chart, okay? In one year, Katherine’s IQ zoomed from a pretty brilliant one hundred thirty-three to an astonishing one hundred eighty plus.

  “Correct me if I’m off the wall here, but an IQ boost of more than forty-five points in the course of a year has never been achieved in recorded history.”

  “You think Katherine was given drugs to boost her intelligence,” said Jacob. He didn’t sound surprised.

  “You got it,” I said. His flat demeanor was maddening. I stabbed the chart with my finger.

  “Here’s a similar trend line in four other categories: physical strength, linguistics, math, and resistance to pain.”

  Jacob said, “I see that.”

  He got up, grabbed a baguette and a tub of butter from the counter, and brought them over to the table.

  I continued my very focused rant.

  “This strength drug. MusX. Matty took that. It’s for increasing muscle mass. Here, at the beginning of the year, Katherine could bench-press two hundred pounds. Not bad for a female high school senior with a small bone structure.

  “One year later, Katherine could press four hundred forty pounds. That’s about four times her weight and probably an Olympic record. Shall I go on, Uncle?”

  “I’ve seen this chart, you know.”

  “So you understand, then, that MusX is an untraceable synthetic steroid made in Angel Pharma labs. This drug, plus the brain drugs, and the strength and no-pain drugs, dumbed down to commercial strength, would be pretty valuable in drugstores. But in the full-strength form, in the hands of military agencies, it would be priceless. And I can back that up, too,” I said to my uncle, patting the raft of memos from spy agencies in four countries.

  “Maybe Katherine ran off. Maybe it was too dangerous to Angel Pharma for Katherine to be on the loose. What happened to Katherine, Jacob? Who killed my sister and why?”

  “You think that, Tandy? That she was murdered?”

  “It sure looks that way to me.”

  Jacob shook his head. “Katherine wasn’t murdered. She was killed in a collision with a bus. As for the drugs, I’ll tell you what I know, but not now. It’s a long story. And right now, you have to get ready for school.”

  I said, “After what I’ve just said, you’re going to talk to me about school?”

  He said, “Damned right.”

  I yelled and screamed like a wild animal. I threw my coffee cup hard against the wall, where it totally shattered.

  Unruffled, Jacob said, “That’s enough. Clean that up. And get dressed.”

  Then he left the kitchen.

  I felt good about throwing the mug for about a second; then I felt like a drunken football player and a total idiot. I mean, throwing china is a true symbol of powerlessness.

  I wiped down the wall and put the shards of the cup in the trash. Then I grabbed the chart and other stuff and marched up to my room. I wondered if Jacob was telling me the truth about Katherine’s death. He didn’t seem to be lying, but experience has taught me that I can’t trust any adult in my family.

  Like Jacob.

  Enough said.

  I dressed in my school uniform. Which I now freaking hated. Itchy knee-highs and ugly flat shoes. No makeup. At all. Were these dowdy mouse clothes really necessary?

  I was properly attired and backpack-ready when Monsieur Morel pulled up to our front gate. Not much later, I was at my desk on time, and it’s a tribute to my earlier education that I was sufficiently prepared without having studied. But I was exhausted from lack of sleep. I was also heartsick and paranoid.

  The pills I’d once taken had protected me from depression, but now I was nakedly vulnerable to bottomless despair and the effects of what’s commonly called “birds coming home to roost.”

  The birds were black shadows over my past, present, and future: my parents’ deaths and Katherine’s, along with the constant virtual threat of Royal Rampling, who’d made every black SUV seem like a messenger from hell.

  The biggest, blackest bird was the unknown.

  What was going to happen to the orphaned Angels? I was still a kid. How was I supposed to cope with things that were so out of my control?

  No, really. How?

  As I wallowed in my private downward spiral, I remembered a beautiful black lacquered box my dad had given me, saying it had once belonged to Gram Hilda. The box was inlaid with mother-of-pearl flowers on the outside and had velvet-lined compartments inside, in which I kept my very special high-potency, candy-colored pills.

  A black pill and a pink gelcap would put an end to these horrid sinking feelings. I fantasized about taking one.

  When school was over for the day, Harry took off for his new studio and Morel dropped me at home before driving Jacob and Hugo to soccer camp. I watched the taillights of the Mercedes round the corner, then went upstairs to my room.

  I found the black lacquered box in the corner of my suitcase. It looked like a jewelry box, and it had probably been used as such by Gram Hilda. Inside the box was an array of Lazr and HiQ and, especially seductive, the pink gelcaps I knew as Num. Num could take me to a crisp, clean place where there was no fear, no pain, no anxiety. It was beautiful there.

  I picked up the ten remaining Num capsules and held them in my hand, rolling them back and forth in the cup of my palm. And then I dumped them back into their compartment and slammed down the lid of the box.

  Didn’t I want to have normal human emotions?

  Or had my parents been right when they’d told me emotions were a useless distraction?

  I knew I should take the pills to the bathroom and flush them down into the famous sewers of Paris. But I couldn’t quite do it. I put the box back in my suitcase and went downstairs.

  After a particularly awkward Jacob-made dinner of watery quiche, canned peas, and grapes, I returned to my room and opened my laptop.

  I had letters to write. It was damned well about time.

  So my mother and father had been pretty much my entire world before I met James. They made the rules, handed out the Grande Gongos and the Big Chops, and jacked us up with illegal drugs. And then they died.

  The evidence suggests that they drugged us to keep us on track to future success. But how had they ever thought we could survive in the world without the full use of our hearts?

  I say I’d loved them, but was I capable of that?

  Without overthinking, I wrote a letter to the
m on my laptop, letting the words flow from my fingertips:

  Dear Mother and Father,

  I have a few questions.

  Mother, you know I admired you. But I don’t understand. Didn’t you want me to fall in love? Didn’t you want me to get married and have someone love me as much as Malcolm loved you?

  Father, I wanted to be just like you. I followed you around and tried to learn everything you knew, because I thought you were the smartest man ever. So how could you use your children as lab animals? You couldn’t have known the long-term effects of those drugs. We still don’t know.

  Did you know what really happened to Katherine? Do you know who killed her?

  And here’s the big question for both of you, the one I really hate to ask: Did you love any of your children, really love us?

  Your daughter,

  Tandy

  I felt sorry for myself, sure. And after the tears stopped leaking out of my eyes, I hit the delete key. A window popped up and asked, Are you sure you want to delete this e-mail?

  Yes. I’m sure.

  I turned off the light next to the bed, but I couldn’t stop thinking.

  I don’t think I slept at all.

  Overnight, my somber bottom-of-the-sea depression morphed into the foulest possible anger. Like a gathering squall about to break over a small island in the middle of the ocean.

  I glared and grunted at breakfast, then got into the front seat of the house chariot with Monsieur Morel so I didn’t have to talk to anyone. When we disembarked fifteen minutes later at the convent school, I barked at Harry for walking on my heels.

  He said, “Shut up, Tandy. Meet me at lunch. I’ve got something to tell you.”

  At noon, I made it to the lunchroom before Harry did.

  The Sisters of Charity didn’t have the kind of cafeteria we have in schools at home. Tables lined a windowed wall and were laden with baskets of bread, a kettle of clear soup, fruit and cheese, and compotes of pudding. I was suddenly ravenous.