Crosby’s film-editing room was right off the living room. He had an L-shaped desk and a top-of-the-line computer. There were several monitors on the long wall, and a huge TV and DVD player across from the desk. Next to the TV was a stack DVD jewel cases.
I went to the cases and saw that they were color-coded and labeled ANGEL—and they were dated, going back a number of months.
I think I stopped breathing as I examined them. I knew the discs were very important, that maybe they even contained evidence of murder. It came to me that each jewel-case color represented a different camera.
When my hand fell on a case marked ANGEL: MASTER BR and dated a week ago, I could hardly believe what my eyes were telling me.
Crosby had footage of my parents’ bedroom from the day they died.
Had he captured my parents’ killer on videotape?
I shouted, “Harry! Come in here. Please.”
My twin came through the door and I handed him the disc. He switched on the TV’s DVD player and pushed the disk into the tray. The video started playing.
This couldn’t be true—but it was.
We were looking at Malcolm and Maud in their bedroom on the last night of their lives. My mouth went dry, my scalp tightened, and my hands started to shake.
Oh my God, oh my God.
“Turn it off. Harry, turn it off.”
He did and we stood there, blinking at each other, shocked to the core. I tried to quiet my panicked mind, but it was flailing like an animal caught in a trap.
Harry was wheezing. He said, “We have to see it through.”
I nodded, and Harry pushed play again.
We watched the video to the end, and during those ten minutes of hell, we witnessed things we shouldn’t have seen and would never forget.
All sensation left my body.
When the video ended, I reached for Crosby’s phone and dialed a number I knew by heart.
“Sergeant Caputo, this is Tandy Angel. You have to come to unit sixty-four in the Dakota right now. The mystery has been solved.”
82
“So you broke into Crosby’s apartment,” Caputo said. “And you want us to what? Watch a movie?”
Caputo’s expression was sour, but I didn’t care. My insides were liquid. I could barely stand or order my thoughts.
I had just watched my parents die.
I picked up the three-hole-punched sheaf of paper with the cover sheet that read “Filthy Rich” and shoved it at Caputo.
“Crosby outlined all the scenes,” I said.
My voice broke. I swallowed hard, then pushed on.
“These DVDs are copies of illegal wireless transmissions from our apartment to this apartment. Sergeant, Nate Crosby knew the whole story. He knew what happened to my parents because he filmed it.”
“So you say,” said Caputo.
Harry took a puff from his inhaler. Then he cued up the DVD. I didn’t think I could bear to see it again, but I had no choice.
Harry pushed play, and the video began to roll.
The camera had been mounted above the fireplace, looking toward the bed. My mother was wearing ice-blue satin pajamas. My father wore his favorite striped cotton pj’s, with the Angel Pharma logo over the breast pocket.
My mother coughed into a tissue, then dropped it into a trash can beside the bed. Her voice sounded strained when she turned to my father and said, “I’m sorry, Malcolm. I don’t think I can put it off any longer.”
“Maud. What are you saying?”
He put his book down, then took off his reading glasses and placed them on the night table along with the book. He looked into my mother’s eyes. “We haven’t even decided to go through with it. Do you really think you’re ready? Something could change.”
Maud said, “I wish…. But there’s no getting around it, Malcolm. The pain has become unbearable. I could hardly get through dinner tonight. Everything is coming down. And I won’t survive it. You know that. This is the right time.” There were tears on her cheeks, and in her voice, too.
With the exception of my one fractured memory of hearing my mother’s voice breaking in her study, I’d never known her to cry, and I’d certainly never witnessed it. I’d thought she was invincible. I wiped away my own tears with the back of my hand. More tears immediately replaced them.
My father said, “I’m not sure. I should feel sure. I must feel sure.”
“You’re an optimist, Mal, and I love you for that, but it’s my decision. Please. Forgive me. For everything. Don’t fight me on this.”
My father touched my mother’s cheek and said, “There’s nothing to forgive, darling. Okay.”
Then he opened the drawer of his night table and withdrew a small amber bottle.
Crosby had used his editing program to move closer for this shot. He focused on my mother as she gripped a water glass with both hands. Then he pulled back again so that the camera could capture my father pouring liquid from the bottle into the glass.
I wanted to scream, Stop. Stop. Stop.
But the story was unstoppable.
My mother said, “Thank you, Malcolm. I love you. I’ve never loved you more.”
He replied, “I’m sorry for anything I’ve done to hurt you, Maudie. I’ve never loved anyone but you.”
My father moaned as my mother drank down the contents of her water glass. Then, as I looked at his face, I saw tears fall from his eyes. And I saw him accept the decision.
He lifted the bottle to his lips and quickly drank the rest of the poison down. The empty bottle rolled out of his hand and across the silk bedding. Then it fell to the floor.
My mother grabbed my father’s arm and cried out, “No! No, Malcolm. What have you done?”
What had they done?
What had they done?
83
The scene in my parents’ bedroom wasn’t over. Nate Crosby’s video rolled on.
On-screen, my mother turned in response to a knock at the door. From her expression, I thought that she might have been expecting the visitor. “Come in, please,” she called out.
I watched as Samantha entered my parents’ bedroom. She was wearing slacks, a white eyelet blouse, a dark blue jacket that my mother had given her, and flat pink shoes.
“Am I disturbing you?” Samantha asked. “Is it too late?”
“No, we’re still awake,” said Maud.
“I wanted to tell you that I double-checked all the documents to make sure that your signatures and the notary stamps were all in the right places,” she said, moving toward the bed. “I dropped the papers off at Philippe’s office before I went to out to dinner.”
She paused, seeming to notice something in the looks on their faces.
“Is everything all right?”
“Everything is fine,” said Maud. Her smile was crooked, forced. “What did you have for dinner?”
Samantha smiled. “Pasta pomodoro,” she said. “And a little red vino.”
Maud reached out to Samantha, drew her in for a hug, and kissed her cheek. Samantha kissed Maud’s cheek, too. As Samantha pulled back, I saw a glint of gold at her throat—the locket.
Samantha had been wearing Maud’s keepsake that night.
On the TV, Samantha said, “Maud, do you need anything before I go to bed?”
Beside me, Harry cried out, “Please, Samantha. Do something.”
If only we could go into that scene and tell Samantha what they had done. Maybe there would have been time to save them.
Maud said, “Will you put the trash down the chute, Sammy?”
“Of course,” Samantha said. She picked the bottle up off the floor, put it in the trash basket, and went to the doorway. She turned before she left, waggled her fingers, and said, “Sweet dreams.”
“And you as well, dear. We’re fine. Perfectly fine,” said Maud. She blew Samantha a kiss, and once the door was closed, put her face in her hands. Her shoulders shook as she sobbed.
My father took her in his arms and held
her tightly. “It’s okay, darling. It’s all okay now. We’re sparing them the worst.”
Maud nodded. “I wouldn’t have changed a day,” she said at last. Her voice sounded tired. “Well, I wouldn’t have awarded Katherine… the Grande Gongo… with an Asterisk.”
“No, of course not. Please don’t think about that, darling. The other kids… they’re strong. They’ve risen to every challenge we’ve given them. They’ll be fine. And they’ll understand why it had to be this way when they read the papers,” my father said.
My mother said, “Yes. It’s best to let the children find their way… in their own way. Mal? Do you want the last word?”
“No. You have it, sweetheart.”
My mother looked up at her husband, wearing a brave smile that tore at my heart. She said, “Thank you, Malcolm. I’ll love you forever.”
I turned away then. I knew it was where my father nodded and hugged my mother even harder. They were entwined when the seizures started.
I choked out, “Turn it off, Harry.”
Tears were streaming down both of our faces.
“I’m sorry,” said Sergeant Caputo. He reached out and touched my arm. “I’m very sorry for your loss.”
CONFESSION
It probably won’t surprise you to hear me say that watching Nate Crosby’s illicit video made me cry, longer and harder than I ever have in my life. But it might surprise you to hear me say that I wasn’t crying because seeing my parents’ death was so horrible.
I was crying because it was beautiful.
That was real, normal love—right here in the house of Angels. A man who couldn’t bear the idea of living on this planet without the woman he married and had committed his life to. A woman despairing because she was dying and didn’t have enough time to make everything right for her family. A woman crushed when she saw that the man she loved was taking his own life, too.
Okay, so maybe it wasn’t exactly “normal.” But it was the most tangible proof I’d ever had that they loved each other so much.
They loved each other. Malcolm and Maud loved each other.
In their deaths, Malcolm and Maud had finally succumbed to their most basic emotions. Love. Fear of death. Fear of life without the one you cherish.
Witnessing their ultimate sacrifice had somehow given me the most valuable lesson of all. Now I knew I couldn’t wait until the brink of death to finally be real and true to myself.
Their own Big Chop was going to save me.
84
I’m not sure I could have faced preparing a eulogy without seeing that video. As painful as it was, it gave me strength. If Malcolm and Maud truly believed we could do anything in life, even without them, I believed I could deliver this speech.
And I would not be a robot.
The press dogged us when we left the Dakota to attend the service, ran after us on the street, got right in our faces. It didn’t matter to them that we were orphans. It didn’t matter that we had been cleared of killing our parents.
As you might expect by now, the press was at its obnoxious worst. I hated them. They wanted interviews. They wanted drama. They wanted news. But we weren’t going to give it to them. We kept where we were going secret so the press couldn’t follow us.
Philippe was one of the very few friends invited to the extremely small, very private service at a funeral home on Eighty-third and Columbus. Despite how powerful and influential Malcolm and Maud were—or perhaps because of it—we didn’t really know who their true allies and supporters were, so we decided to keep the invitation list to the very closest and oldest family and friends. I actually think our parents would have been proud of us—for trusting no one.
Philippe took the three of us aside before the service began and, without ceremony, delivered some information that forever rocked our worlds.
“Your mother had pancreatic cancer,” Phil said. “Stage four. She didn’t learn about it until it was too late for treatment. And this kind of cancer… There’s no cure.”
Although his explanations were clear, my mind was foggy. Not because I’d stopped taking the pills, but because I was oversaturated with feelings. I wasn’t sure I was hearing him correctly.
“She was dying?” I’d deduced on some deeper level that illness was implied in the video of my parents’ death, but it was stunning to hear the news nonetheless. “I just can’t believe that, Phil. We would have seen something—medications, trips to the doctor….”
“She didn’t want you children to know, Tandy. You know how important it was to your parents that you be strong, no matter what. I imagine Maud visited the hospital under the guise of work appointments, or while you were in school.”
“It’s not like we were ever allowed in their bathroom,” Harry added. “She could have easily hidden her meds from us.”
“As if anyone would have thought a bunch of pill bottles lying around was anything weird in our house,” Hugo remarked, as astute as ever.
“She was a woman of many secrets,” I murmured, remembering Samantha’s words, vowing to find out more about what she knew, later.
Phil nodded. “I know how hard this is, but there’s more I have to tell you. The SEC had filed a formal charge against Maud. She promoted Angel Pharma’s stock and got all of her clients to buy in, but the company was crashing.
“She would have been indicted, for insider trading and for fraud. She wouldn’t have lived long enough to be convicted, but she would have had to endure her last months in a hospital jail pending trial. She couldn’t do that.”
I pictured my mother chained to a rock. I saw the cancer tearing at her guts every day.
“And my father? What was he thinking?”
“Malcolm was going to file for bankruptcy,” Philippe told me. “He didn’t have a penny that wasn’t borrowed. Everything your father owned was tied up in the company. But, most of all, he didn’t want to live under any circumstances without your mother. What would his life have been like?”
Harry’s eyes, so sad that morning, were now blazing. “You kept all of this from us? Even after our parents were dead? Even when this could have helped solve the case?”
“I only found out about your mother’s illness yesterday, from the hospital—I was notified of some outstanding medical bills. Malcolm’s plans to file for bankruptcy would have been addressed as we settled the estate. But the part about your father not wanting to live without your mother… well, he told me that himself. I only wish I had realized that he meant he was truly considering ending his life when hers ended. I would have tried to stop him.”
I shook my head. I kept shaking it, a wordless no, no, no, until I became aware that Philippe had taken my hand and was saying my name.
“What will happen to us?” I asked him.
“I don’t know. Your grandmother, Hilda Angel, didn’t leave anything to your father, but she put what she had into a trust for any grandchildren who might be born later on. I don’t think that the government will be able to take your inheritance from you, if there is one, but I won’t have details until your parents’ estates are settled.”
At that moment, I hated my parents. I couldn’t help it.
My parents had left us to pull our lives together without them. They had died penniless and with debts that would have to be satisfied. Would we even have a place to live?
And what’s worse, Malcolm and Maud Angel had cheated and lied, and their selfishness had hurt a lot of people. They weren’t just flawed, they were corrupt. And they corrupted their children because of their need for perfection. What could our parents have said in any “papers” that would comfort us now?
I went into the chapel desperately seeking good things to say about my parents. I tried to turn my mind back to the strength they’d given me.
I needed to bring healing words to my brothers. And to myself.
85
The lights were low in the simple little chapel. There were lilies in urns on either side of the podium, and the two caskets
were below me—two dark wood coffins with sprays of white flowers lying across them. A large photo of my parents together stood on an easel to my left. They looked happy and optimistic in the picture, which had been taken twenty-five years ago.
Sadly, I wouldn’t be able to lean on my big brother for support, since Matthew was still in jail and I wasn’t even allowed to talk to him. So it was just Harry, Hugo, Samantha, and Philippe who looked up at me from the front row. They were counting on me to say the right things.
I didn’t know if it was possible.
“Malcolm and Maud were good parents,” I began. “They loved us in their own way.”
My voice cracked and splintered. I tried to speak, but my broken little voice disappeared into the overwhelming sadness of my hollow words echoing in the small and nearly empty room.
I tried to rein in my grief and start again with sweeter memories in my mind.
I thought about the birthday cake my father had let me help him bake for Maud’s birthday, and the way my mother had taught me how to dress and act. I remembered how effusive Maud had been when she described the great things I would do someday, including running the family business.
“They were tough on us, and, they held us to a high standard, because they loved us. They wanted us to do great things….”
“Because they loved us,” Harry chimed in from the front row of the chapel. Tears were streaming down his face. “I know they did. They had to.”
“They didn’t tell us in actual words….”
“But they did love us,” said Hugo, punching a fist into his other hand.
“They truly, truly loved you,” said Samantha.
“They told me how much they loved you, many times,” Phil said.
Really?
Where was all this certainty coming from? I wasn’t sure. But it felt like the right thing to say. And I wanted so badly for it to be true. No matter what they’d done to me, I still loved them.
I think we all needed to believe that they loved us.
Suddenly, I was crying too hard to speak. I heard the creak of door hinges and looked up to see Uncle Peter entering at the front of the chapel. He looked like he’d been raised from the dead to attend this service.