—SAMUEL JOHNSON, JUNE 17, 1783
Make no little plans, they have no magic to stir men’s blood.
—DANIEL HUDSON BURNHAM
PROLOGUE
He walked in on a nightmare and realized at once why his brother had been murdered. The how was also immediately apparent: two in the face. Point-blank.
He’s dead. And my life is over, too.
To put it mildly. Who was he without his brother? He had always been prepared to go first—at times, he would have welcomed it. But he couldn’t spin this, couldn’t fix it, and he couldn’t run from it, either. He had his family to think about.
He tried to look down a tunnel of years without his brother and drew a total blank. It was unfathomable.
There was nothing for it but the truth. This one time, he would tell the exact truth: In an act of carelessness and envy he’d killed his brother, and he would accept whatever punishment was assigned. He wouldn’t try to wriggle free of it. Ever.
And he wouldn’t let anyone else get him free of it. Ever.
When he heard the sirens, he felt nothing but relief.
ONE
“Everybody, listen up! Our cousin and Leah Nazir will be here in twenty minutes. Twenty minutes! So everyone get your pants on!”
“Pants tyrant,” came one response, and “We have a cousin?” was another, and “Angela, shrill is not a good look for you,” and “If I didn’t put my pants on for the mayor, I’m not doing it for Leah Nazir. Or our brother.”
“He’s not your brother,” she said, pointing to Mitchell. “He’s your cousin. He’s your brother.” Pointing to Jordan.
“No, he’s mine!”
Other families, she thought, are not like this. I’m pretty sure. “You think I won’t tell your girlfriends? The ones lucky enough to have them? They’ll hear everything. They’ll see everything.” Angela Drake shook her phone in their direction. “I will take soooooo many pictures of you guys without your pants. The girls will mock you and dump you in a flash.” Unlikely. But she was desperate.
“How long have you been a hostile pornographer?”
“Nineteen minutes.”
“That’s how long we’ve got to re-robe,” one explained, “not how long she’s been a hostile porn peddler.”
“Just . . . come on,” she said, and she definitely didn’t whine. Nope. Too much pride and class for that. Right? Right. “Guys? Come on? Pants? Okay?”
Grumbling, they complied. She was careful not to let the relief show on her face. Her plan, hatched at age ten, had a much better chance of working if everyone played nicely together.
So it was good to see amusements (cookbook, TV, phones, gambling sheets) were set aside as the lot of them changed out of one thing (swim trunks, hot pants, boxers, culottes, briefs) into another (khakis).
The lot of them. That was just right. Because she was a bad person, Angela found her brothers and cousins generally interchangeable. They were all young and lanky and had messy mops of thick dark hair, from lightest brown (with gold highlights—her brother Jack, the lucky creep) to near black (her cousin Jordan, another lucky creep—why were long eyelashes wasted on boys?) and everything in between. They all had blue or green eyes or, in her cousin Archer’s case, one of each. Long noses, wide mouths, long limbs, big feet, deep voices (except Jack, who was sixteen and still occasionally squeaked, to his annoyance and everyone else’s mirth). They were a pile of energy when they weren’t a pile of sloth. Looked alike, talked alike, annoyed alike.
In fact, if some of the family gossip about her father and uncle was true, some of her brothers were actually her cousins and vice versa. If it turned out to be true, not a single one of them—herself included—would have been surprised. Which reminded her . . .
“And we’re not going to bring up family scandals.” Even as she said it, she understood at once it was a lost cause. Because Jordan, Jack, Mitchell, and Paul all knew the reason Archer and Leah Nazir were coming to town was . . .
“Isn’t that’s why The Skull is coming to town? The family scandal?”
“Don’t call her that!” The worst part: “The Skull” wasn’t even the nastiest nickname the public used for one of the best Insighters on the planet. “And I meant the other family scandals. Don’t talk about those. Any of them. Well, maybe that thing with the orange. That wasn’t too bad. Nobody called the cops, and we eventually got the stains out of the carpet. No, scratch that, leave all the scandals out of it. Just to be safe. Okay?”
“Didn’t Archer kill a guy last month? I mean literally murder the hell out of someone?”
“Don’t talk about that, either! Honestly! It’s like you guys aren’t even reading the memos I send out!”
A low sigh from behind her. Another problem with a large family: You were always surrounded. “I’ve told you before, hon. Shrill isn’t your best look.”
“I remember, Mom.” The Scandal No One Should Talk About had blighted Angela’s childhood and stolen her mother. Mrs. Emma Drake had turned into a shadow the day her brother-in-law pled guilty to murdering her husband. Angela knew that threatening the lot of them with “. . . or I’ll tell Mom!” would never have worked. Mrs. Drake was so unplugged from herself, strangers (and neighbors, and family members) often assumed she was sedated. “And I’m not being shrill. I’m being authoritative.”
“Authoritative in a high, shrieky voice,” one of the pack commented.
“Firm!” she definitely didn’t yelp. “I’m being firm. Because I want to make a good impression on—on—”
“The Skull,” everyone in the room said just as Angela finished with, “Archer.”
A barrage of scornful hoots was their simultaneous rebuttal. “Since when—”
“When, Angela?”
“Since when do you—”
“Archer? You think we’re buying that? You want to make a good impression on—”
“Oh, this is too too rich . . .”
“Archer? The one you treated like a house pet that never quite figured out house-training? That Archer?”
“I did not!” Well, maybe sometimes. During middle school, possibly. Maybe once or twice in high school. “All of you, back off. And back up.” They’d all climbed off or from beneath various pieces of furniture and were closing in, which was as dreadful as it sounded. “We didn’t get along when we were kids, but that was years ago.”
“Years.”
“Years, she says.”
“Hey, guys, it’s all in the past because, y’know, Angela here says it’s been years and years and—”
“She thinks last Christmas is ‘years’?”
“She thinks last month is ‘years.’”
She groped for the flyswatter hanging on a nail between the living room and kitchen, then lunged forward like a fencer on the offense. “Back! All of you, get back!” The Horde collectively flinched as the swatter swung and hissed through the air.
“Oh, gross.”
“Seriously with this, Angela?”
“Don’t point that thing at me.”
“We have a flyswatter?”
“Yeah, it’s usually on one of those little hooks on the keyboard.”
“All right!” Swish, lunge, parry. If I didn’t know better, she thought, I’d think I was a fencer in a former life. But nope. Alas: She’d been nothing more exotic than a minor league baseball pitcher just after World War I.
Which was probably why she didn’t consider softball a real game. “You’re right.”
“Hear that? I’m right!”
“Which one of us is right?”
“Shut up, you’re all basically a hive mind, anyway.” She’d stopped ducking and weaving (literally as well as figuratively) and held them all at flyswatter length. “I admit it: I was a shit to Archer through most of our childhood—”
“The sordid truth comes o
ut!”
“It was awful, I was awful, and I’ve apologized to him.” So many apologies. Even now, she flushed hot with embarrassment when she remembered the cutting things she’d said over the years. The fact that, as an adult, he tolerated her with absent good humor was more a testament to his easygoing personality than to her amends. Which she found perversely irritating. The guy can’t even hold a grudge right.
But, again: The Plan.
“We need to put that behind us now because— Oh, my God they’re here!” She almost dropped the flyswatter, hesitated—it had kept the throng at bay pretty well—then hung it back up. She would not meet Leah Nazir with a flyswatter in one hand. Most likely.
“This is the most excited I’ve ever seen you.”
“Of course I’m excited! She’s the Mangiarotti of Insighters.” She could actually feel the puzzled silence, and tried again. “The Mozart of Insighters.”
“She’s a famously immature genius harpsichord player who loves jokes about shit?”
“Scatological humor,” she corrected automatically, then cursed herself. “I mean, no!” She flinched as she heard car doors thunking shut in the driveway. They’d be heading up the walk to the front door. They’d be entering the front door! Her cousin/maybe brother/worst enemy and the James L. Brooks of Insighters! Here! In her house! Where she’d been stood up for prom! Twice!* “Please. I’m begging you guys. Be nice. Be . . . not weird. I mean—as best you can,” she modified.
No use asking for miracles.
TWO
The James L. Brooks of Insighters stared at the cream-colored two-story house and tried not to vomit.
“Home,” Archer announced (unnecessarily), already tugging their suitcases out of the trunk. “The place where they are morally and sometimes legally obligated to let you in.”
“I don’t think I can do this,” the Mangiarotti of Insighters muttered.
“What’s that, babe?”
“I said I don’t feel well.”
“Okay, let’s get you inside and you can have a ginger ale and lay down.”
Ah, Archer Drake. The love of her life. (Well. This life.) Straightforward and not a man to get lost inside his own head. Product of a close, large, loving family. Brave and sweet and gorgeous.
And clueless. Also, lay/lie was one of her peeves. “It’s lie. Unless you are physically laying me down, it’s lie.” Her peeves were legion.
“You’ll lay yourself down,” he said, with aggravating cheer. “I stand by what I said! And you know it’s totally fine to be nervous, right? Hell, I’ve met all the players, and I’m nervous. Actually that’s probably why,” he added thoughtfully. “I know ’em. But they’ll love you.”
Leah found a smile. “I’m certain that’s a lie.”
“Well, they won’t hate you.”
“That’s better.”
“They can’t hate you, they know you’re here to solve a murder.”
“Why are they so adamant the wrong man is in prison? Is it—” Her experience with such things was nearly non-existent, so she chose her next words carefully. “Is it a family thing? Or is it more objective than that?”
“A little from Column A and a little from Column B. Listen: There’s no way my father killed his brother. They were always tight, to the point where my aunt hated it. My dad adored his brother. Still does, how’s that for depressing?”
“I don’t know.”
“And anyone planning a murder would make sure they had a much better alibi than Dad did. It’s stuff like that, all little things. You look at the facts, and you can’t shake the idea that something’s missing. Something huge.”
Her normally good-natured sweetheart had gone pensive, so she held off from more questions. “This won’t be an instant fix, you know. I’m not sure your cousin understands that.”
Archer’s brow furrowed. “What? I’m not following.”
Before she could say anything else
(not a fix—and also, get me out of here)
(what was I thinking)
(I mean it, get me out of here!)
the front door popped open so hard, it rebounded in the face of the young woman standing just inside. “Archer!” she called as she wrestled with the screen door and bounded out in a burst of energy with which, by now, Leah was familiar. The woman—his cousin?—strongly resembled Archer, with the same long limbs and barely suppressed hyperactivity, the same bright eyes, and a mouth made for smiling. Her hair—a riot of shoulder-length reddish-blond waves—was the only visible difference. Well, the hair and the breasts, too. Obviously.
“Huh,” Leah mused. “You’re all like that.”
“Only when we’re freaked out. Or nervous. Or horny. Or in fear for our life . . . yeah,” Archer finished, giving up. “We’re all like that. All the time. Except my aunt. But you’ll see for yourself.”
Splendid.
Archer’s cousin had finally fought free of the screen door. “Hi, it’s so great to meet you oh, my God, I can’t believe you’re here how was your trip oh, my God!” This as she rushed over so quickly and shook Leah’s hand so enthusiastically, she nearly knocked her back into the car.
THREE
They’re insane. I should be terrified.
And perhaps she was. Deep down inside, where she crushed most of her fears. Mostly she was fascinated. It was like observing a pack of Archers in the wild, and she was the hapless nature lover trapped in the high hide, praying the predators were vegetarians. Or at least full, and thus would not eat her.
Angela had begun by introducing her brothers and cousins. Or her cousins and brothers; there were a lot of them, they all vaguely resembled each other, and they all spoke in unison.
“Guys, this is Archer’s fian—”
“Hi.”
“Do you know who James L. Brooks is? Will you tell us?”
“Arch captured you, right? Set some sort of bizarre trap and you fell right into it? Blink twice if you want an extraction team.”
“Man, not cool. Archer doesn’t like ‘Arch.’”
“He also doesn’t like when you insinuate he makes a habit of felony kidnapping.”
“He didn’t like Toe Cheese, he didn’t like The Thing That Smells Like Gym Shorts, now he’s yanking ‘Arch’ from circulation . . . Cripes, what does he like?”
“It’s nice to meet you, Leah.”
“Angela made me put on pants. You’re welcome.”
“It’s nice to meet you,” Leah managed. Probably. There were a half dozen of them, all gangly and dark-haired and energetic. The youngest—Jack? Jordan?—was still in his teens, the oldest—Mitchell? Paul?—was in his early twenties. Angela was the oldest of them all, at twenty-five. “All of you.”
“What?”
“What’d you say?”
“Hon, you’d better speak up if you want to be heard over our actual voices and all the voices in our heads.”
“She said—shut up—she said she—shut up, you guys, let me talk! She said it was nice to meet you!” Angela made a visible effort to calm herself. “Which is a lie, obviously, but she’s being a good guest.”
“I’ve been called many things,” Leah said, and found a smile, “but never once ‘a good guest.’” Possibly because she was rarely invited anywhere. Who’d want to be around someone who could see all your sins from all your lives? Answer: no one who didn’t need something.
“Aw, Angela.” Archer was grinning at his cousin, who looked capable of murder, or at least assault. Leah didn’t blame her; she couldn’t imagine growing up in such a din. “I missed how you shriek us into submission.”
She let out a snort. “Sure you did.”
“But listen, can I get a ginger ale or something for Leah? It was a long drive and she—”
“Long drive?” a cousin (or brother) asked. “From where? We all live in Chicago.
”
“Yeah, but they’re suburban, we’re city.”
“Which suburb, though?”
“Unless the suburb is five hundred miles away, it’s not a long drive.”
“A suburb five hundred miles away isn’t a suburb, you deeply pathetic idiot.”
Then the ghost drifted by, and Leah—who hated clichés—nearly jumped out of her skin. At least, that’s what it felt like. She did a double-take and realized that this woman—whoever she was—was just a shell. A living breathing shell, a walking talking ghost. “You need something to drink?” the ghost asked vaguely. “Nice flight?”
“They drove, Mom,” Angela put in before Archer could say anything. Leah noted that he shot his cousin a sympathetic grimace. “They don’t live very far away.”
“Actually, they live in a suburb five hundred miles away.”
“Shut up, Jack.”
“Oh, well, you’ll be visiting lots of times, then,” the spirit predicted as she began to drift away. She followed that with a non sequitur: “I picked up the mail.”
“Thanks, Mom. We know that’s your thing.” To Leah: “It’s her thing. She’s in charge of the mail, everyone else is in charge of everything else.”
Curious, Leah broke her own rule
(don’t touch people just to peek at their lives. it’s only okay to invade people’s privacy when you’re on the job, but holy God what is up with this woman? is she here? are we?)
and extended a hand. “It was kind of you to invite us.”
“Oh, well,” came the vague reply. “I didn’t, really. Angela did.”
“I’m Leah Nazir. It’s nice to meet you.”
Mrs. Emma Drake gave Leah her limp pale paw and Leah saw
nothing
nobody
alone
always
alone
(but . . . on purpose?)