Confessions of a Murder Suspect

27

“No, please, Mrs. Hauser. I can find my way out. This has been really helpful. Thank you.”

I left Mrs. Hauser sitting in her silky purple cloud under the springbok so that she didn’t have to battle her arthritis just to walk me to the door.

But her words accompanied me, and although I didn’t doubt her, it was hard to picture my parents fighting in public. And even harder to imagine my mother calling Malcolm a boob.

If I were a normal girl, it might even have made me laugh just a little. It sounded so… immature. Malcolm was one of the smartest men in the western hemisphere. Even when he was wrong, every decision he made was well thought out and reasoned. My mother must have been truly furious. So the word boob was nothing more than a clue that didn’t lead anywhere.

Next I spent some time turning over the phrase rearranging the finances.

Had my parents’ fight centered on Royal Rampling, the man who was suing my mother for fifty million dollars? His name gave me serious twists in my stomach. I can’t even begin to explain why. But the fact is, if my father thought that we might lose the lawsuit, “rearranging the finances” could have been a way to protect the family from a crushing financial blow.

Then I had another thought.

Did this have something to do with Uncle Peter and the company he and my father owned? I thought about what Caputo had asked Samantha: Who stands to benefit from the deaths of these people?

Samantha didn’t know, and even if she did, she would die before she would discuss my parents’ private business. But honestly, it was obvious that my uncle Peter had the most to gain. With my father’s death, he would become the sole head and major stockholder of Angel Pharma. That would not be small change.

As far as I knew, Uncle Peter didn’t have a key to our apartment. And if he had come to the apartment late that night, Maud would have thrown him out of her room, not knocked back a shot of poison.

I closed Mrs. Hauser’s door and pushed the elevator call button. The doors opened immediately, and inside the elevator was another of our neighbors.

His name is Morris Sampson, and I hate him.

I don’t use the word hate lightly. In fact, I can’t think of another person I hate as much as Morris Sampson.

If hate could kill, Morris Sampson would be dead.