Confessions of a Murder Suspect

61

Peter rolled up his shirtsleeves and sat down again in his oversized chair. He wheeled it forward and clasped his hands on the table in front of him. He’d gathered himself during my speech, and his smirk was back, as if it had been riveted to his face.

“This ugly speech you’ve just given, Tandoori, is entirely speculation, and based on circumstantial evidence at best.” There was an angry thrum in his voice, like the lethal sound of a downed power line. The man was scary. “You have a theory based on a hypothesis. No witnesses. No physical evidence. And you expect anyone to believe this utterly libelous fabrication?”

“So you’re not denying it?” Matthew asked, clenching his fists.

“I could go into more detail about the memorandums between you and my father,” I said, “but we asked our driver to wait. Our next stop, Uncle Peter, is the Twentieth Precinct.”

“First of all, you little termites,” Peter said, staring at each of us in turn, “the pills aren’t drugs. They’re natural ingredients, supplements that are manufactured for export and sale outside of the USA. They don’t even have to be FDA approved. There’s nothing illegal about them, do you understand?”

“You expect us to believe that those pills we took our entire lives are made of rainbow dust and flower petals? Really?” Harry asked. I was proud of him for joining in the fight.

“I’m speaking, Harrison. My turn. Second, your father loved you. I don’t know why; it makes no sense to me at all. You’re all snots. But then, snottiness runs on your mother’s side of the family. The bottom line is that your father would never hurt any of you. You all did very well on rainbow dust and flower petals. I’d say that you excelled, in fact. You’re welcome, Tandoori. Children.”

He nodded at us, still sneering.

“Third, here are the facts. I founded Angel Pharmaceuticals. Me. I brought your father in as a consulting partner. He owned twenty percent of the firm when he died. That’s twenty percent of the debts, too, and right now, we’re underwater. So I would have been happy for Malcolm to have bought me out, understand? His death only adds to my problems.

“And last, Tandy, you self-important twerp, eighteen people were having dinner with me when your parents were killed. In my apartment. All eighteen of them swore to the police that I was with them until you called me that night.”

“You could have used some kind of time-release formula,” I said. “You encapsulated a poison and put it into a bottle of something, and my parents innocently—”

“Get out of here,” our uncle said. “All of you.”

He looked as if I’d struck him across the face with a whip. And I saw something else, too. There were tears in his eyes. Uncle Peter was actually crying.

“Did you hear what I said?” His voice was shaking.

My brothers stared mutely, but then Hugo, who had been sitting beside me, got up and walked over to Uncle Peter—and tipped his chair back. The wheels shot out from under the chair and Peter went down with a satisfying crash.

“I hate you for turning us into freaks,” Hugo said, standing over our uncle. “I hate you with all my heart. Just like I hated them.”

Uncle Peter scrambled to his feet and lunged at Hugo, but Matthew swiftly intervened and shoved Peter against the wall and held him there, about a foot off the ground.

“I’m your guardian!” our uncle shouted. “I can turn some of you over to the state, understand me? Without me, you three underage ingrates are wards of the state.” Uncle Peter had turned bright red, and it occurred to me that he might have a heart attack right there in front of us.

I said, “Matty, let him go. Let him go! He didn’t kill Malcolm and Maud.”