Confessions of a Murder Suspect

49

Not only was Samantha intelligent, but I truly believed she genuinely liked my mother. If Maud had told Samantha that my father was having an affair, Samantha would have kept her confidence as a matter of principle.

I left the kitchen and went down the hall to Samantha’s room. I knocked, and when she didn’t answer the door, I turned the knob, entered her very organized room, and got to work.

Half of the space was a tidy pink bedroom; the other half was an efficient little office with a bank of file cabinets, a wooden desk that held a laptop and a printer, and a swivel desk chair.

I was not surprised to find that the computer was password-protected and my random guesses wouldn’t get me in.

Aside from the computer and printer, there were only a few items on Samantha’s desk: a heavy-duty stapler, a set of Russian nesting dolls, and a crystal bowl filled with peppermint candies.

I unwrapped a peppermint and sucked on it as I opened the desk drawer.

Apparently Samantha liked little boxes, as the top drawer was full of them: candy tins, enameled pillboxes, porcelain heart-shaped containers, and a sturdy little box made of stone.

Inside the stone box was a bunch of small keys. Was this it? Far too easy. Working quickly, I opened the thirty file drawers, one at a time. What were my mother’s secrets? Would there be a record of them here?

I thumbed through a lot of files filled with paid bills, memos, and tax returns. I found receipts for furniture and for artwork, and I came across a file of birthday cards from all of us kids to Maud. I thought it was uncharacteristically sentimental of her to have saved them.

I spotted my self-conscious nine-year-old handwriting in one card:

Dearest Mother,

Happy Birthday. May you find today productive and fulfilling. I will spend the day working on my Latin and learning how to construct the perfect birthday cake with Father. We will all enjoy it together when you come home.

Sincerely, Tandoori

Even I could tell that was not normal. Not in the least.

Then I found a whole standing file case relating to my mother’s company, as well as full drawers concerning Royal Rampling, the man who was suing Maud. Did he have an interest in seeing my mother dead? It was certainly my investigative responsibility to study these files in painstaking detail.

But I wasn’t ready to do that yet. Please don’t ask me why.

Instead, my fingers started nervously flipping through the folders, my eyes scanning faster and faster until I got to the back of the bottom drawer. I halted when I spotted some familiar writing. I recognized it as having come from my own hand. The folder was labeled J.R.

Did I want to look at this?

Yes, Tandy, a little voice told me. Go ahead.

I can’t call what was in front of me “my” handwriting per se, because it was done in calligraphy. At least a hundred pages, all written with an old-fashioned flat-nib pen and a bottle of ink. I’d copied the more than ten thousand words of Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s famous poem “Maud.” In Germanic gothic script. It had been a wicked Big Chop, I remember that much.

But for what? The whole point of a Big Chop was to make certain that you would never, ever again make the mistake you made to merit the chop.

What had I done to deserve this specific punishment?

I wasn’t ready to go back to that place yet.

I quickly flipped through the first fifty pages, scanning the poem. Many of the words themselves chilled me: “Villainy somewhere! Whose? One says, we are villains all.…” But what chilled me even more was remembering how I’d felt when I wrote those words: like a traitor.

Shivers started shooting up and down my spine to the point that I felt nearly paralyzed.

I shut the folder and slammed it back into the drawer.

Not now, Tandy. This is distracting you from the real mystery, I reminded myself. Leave it alone.