Confessions of a Murder Suspect

79

I quickly woke up my brothers, and we congregated for an ad hoc meeting on Harry’s bed.

“Look at this,” I said, showing them the wicked little gadget. “I found it in the living room. It’s a camera.”

“A camera? Like spies use?” Hugo asked. “Awesome! How was it planted?”

“It was just glued to the molding,” I said to Hugo. “And it’s not awesome. It’s terrifying. Someone has been watching us.”

“Who do you think put it there?” Harry asked, still stunned.

“Who do you think?” I looked at him with the answer plain in my eyes.

“Sick,” Harry said, shaking his head. “That’s sick.”

“Help me, Harry,” I urged. “Please. I can’t sleep until we go through the entire house and find every camera—if there are more of them—and remove them. I have a vision of some creepy lab assistant in a back room at the factory getting paid to take notes on us. Or even worse… maybe Uncle Peter is monitoring us.”

Harry got it instantly and pulled on a sweatshirt. We were not going to allow ourselves to be violated like this anymore.

“I’ll help you, too,” Hugo offered, like it was a game.

And so the three of us searched the apartment for several hours. It was a slow and grueling task. I was making my way through the kitchen, and Hugo was on hallway duty, when I heard Harry calling me into the study.

“Here’s another one, Tandy.” He held out the gadget to me. “You were so right.”

I paused, examining the tiny unit and rubbing my temples.

“No… no, Harry. I was so wrong.” My head was starting to hurt.

Harry gave me a quizzical look. “Huh?”

“Dad wouldn’t put a camera in his own study, would he? If he were studying us, he wouldn’t bother putting a camera in a room he rarely allowed us to spend any time in.”

“Tandy, we’re not dreaming. These are real. Someone put these here. Who else do you think could have done it?”

I rolled the little camera around in my palm. “Samantha is a real possibility, of course,” I said. “She has complete access, and she’s interested in cameras. But I don’t see any motive for her to do that, unless it was at Malcolm or Maud’s bidding.”

By now Hugo had joined us. “Maybe Maud wanted the cameras to spy on Malcolm,” he suggested. “On account of the affair and all.”

“An excellent thought,” I said, thinking how disgusting and sad it was that the ten-year-old in the room was the one to come up with that theory. “But I have another one.”

The name of a particularly saccharine-sweet filmmaker had just popped into my head. “Mr. Crosby could have planted a camera when he was interviewing our parents.”

“Creepy Crosby, spying on us?” Harry said. “That’s a little far out, Tandy.”

“We’ll have to see. It’s just a hunch. I have a couple of questions for our friendly and talented neighbor.”

We dressed quickly. With the tiny camera in my hand, I led my brothers out of the apartment and over to Mr. Crosby’s door. I looked at my watch. It was almost eight AM; he should be awake. He would definitely be awake in a few seconds.

I rang the doorbell, and when Nathan Crosby didn’t answer right away, I rang again. When I turned around to say to my brothers that we had to rethink and regroup, I saw that I was alone.

Harry and Hugo had just disappeared.

“Harry? Hugo?”

I felt every single hair on my body standing on end.