The Paris Mysteries (Confessions #3)(29)

When Harry took his fingers from the keys, the live room filled with praise from the recording execs, who couldn’t wait to tell my brother what I knew he’d been waiting to hear forever.

“Harry, you’re fantastic. That’s seriously good stuff, man!”

Monsieur Pogue came over to me.

He said, “You must be so proud. We think your brother has got something—I have to say—unique.”

I looked into Monsieur Pogue’s face and was afraid to speak. I nodded, and Monsieur Pogue saw the magnitude of what I was feeling. He put his arms out and hugged me.

He then joined the others in the live room, but I stood outside the glass and watched Harry’s triumph. I could still hear the melody of his portrait of Katherine.

Harry hadn’t been allowed to go to his friend Lulu’s funeral. And so I wondered if Lulu, like Katherine, had been one of those lost girls of Paris.

Maybe I was one of them, too.





We weren’t very graceful as we stumbled down the stairs to the street. We were whooping and yelling and my arms were around Harry’s neck and I was jumping up and down and squealing like a groupie, telling him how freaking great he was, monster great. When just at the edge of my vision, I saw a black SUV down at the corner of the block.

“Harry!” I shouted, turning him around so he could see what I saw. “It’s that car.”

The headlights came on, and the car began to move off the curb. It was coming straight toward us. Again I screamed, “Harry!” I ran back to the Smart Blue Door and jammed down all the intercom buttons with the flat of my hand.

Harry was tugging at me. “Tandy, no. That’s a limo.”

By then the limo had cruised up to the curb and stopped. A man in a black jacket and chauffeur’s cap stepped out and opened the rear door for us. That’s when I saw the discreet Smart Blue Door logo on the car’s door. Yeah, I felt like a complete and total fool.

Harry spoke into the building’s intercom.

“Sorry, Michael. No, everything’s fine. Talk to you soon.”

We got into the limo, and Harry told the driver our address. Then he fell back against the seat.

“So this was maybe the best hour of my life.”

“I don’t have enough words to describe what it was like hearing you. But we can just start with a-maz-ing.”

He was amazing, but was it within the human high-genius range of amazing? Or was it something else?

I took Harry’s hand and asked once more. “You have to tell me the truth, Harry. Are you using the pills again? Are you? Harry? The truth.”

“Tandy? I’ve told you the truth. Don’t ever ask me again.”

“I didn’t mean to insult you, bro. I’m afraid, and I have good reason to be afraid.”

I looked at the back of our driver’s neck through the Plexiglas transom. I flipped the switch to shut off all communication between the front and back compartments.

And still, I spoke in a murmur.





“Get ready,” I said softly to my twin. “I have to drop some bombs. I went through the rest of the papers in the basement and found love letters from Uncle Peter to Kath.”

Harry drew back. My gentle brother looked shocked and disgusted and completely horrified.

“Are you kidding me?”

“I have the letters. You can read them yourself.”

“No freaking way. Kath wasn’t just sixteen to his what—forty? She was his blood relative! Uncle Pig is a perv. I’ve hated him my whole life. I really want to throw the hell up.” Harry buzzed down the window and let air blow over his face for a while.

I wasn’t finished. I had to confess to Harry what I’d done.

“Last night,” I said. “I was feeling too much, Harry. Like I was lying on train tracks while a hundred-car train rolled over me. So I took Num.”

“Ha!” Harry shouted. “So that’s why you keep accusing me of using the pills. Because you’ve done it.”

“I made a mistake. All Num did was make me process every dark feeling even faster. I need to slow this bullet train down, Harry. For some very good reasons, I think you should do the same.”





Once we were home, I turned up the oven to “roast,” rubbed spices all over some chicken, put the bird into the oven, and set the timer. I snapped some beans like they’d done something mean to me. I chopped some fresh fruit with the same attitude, splashed peach brandy over it, covered the bowl with a damp cloth, and stashed it in our immense, triple-wide fridge.

After that, I set up a plate of cheese and crackers and cornichons and capers and took all of it to the media room, where Jacob and Hugo were watching one of the Bourne sagas.

“Uncle Jake. Please mind the chicken. I’ve got homework.”

“Very good,” he said. “Thanks, Tandy.”

I went upstairs and locked my door. I opened my laptop and looked up news articles about Angel Pharmaceuticals. I easily found the whole sordid story of the bankruptcy of my mother’s hedge fund, the collapse of Angel Pharma, and about a hundred links to articles about my parents’ deaths and every putrid thing that had spilled from that.

I didn’t need to read any more about the New York justice system and what my brothers and I had been through and somehow survived. But I did open every link to Peter Angel.