Confessions: The Private School Murders by James Patterson Read Free Book Online

Dakota—the eccentric, luxurious, very cloistered building with a gossip-column present and a sensational past—and I was in the kitchen, preparing tandoori chicken, the Indian dish for which I was named. Yes, I was named after a type of poultry preparation. My parents had been foodies with a weird sense of humor.
    Harry had fired up the tandoor oven, and Hugo was vigorously washing the broccoli, his contribution to the rather ambitious five-dollars-a-head austerity dinner.
    Jacob finished expertly chopping the carrots for the salad, laid his knife down, and cleared his throat.
    “Children, there’s something you should know,” hesaid. “There was a filing today before Judge Warren’s probate court, and all I can tell you is that sometimes when a door closes, another door opens.”
    “What does that mean?” Harry asked, looking up from his history text.
    “What does it mean,
literally
?” Jacob asked him.
    “No, Jake. I understand the aphorism,” Harry replied sarcastically. “What door is opening?”
    Hugo shook the broccoli, creating a little local rainfall, and said, “I hope if a door is opening, it’s not the one to this apartment, because I don’t want to move.”
    Jacob took the broccoli from Hugo and put it in a steamer. “I would tell you…”
    “But then you’d have to kill us?” I asked, eyeing the knife in front of him, wondering if he’d ever actually used one to kill a man.
    “No, Tandoori. I would tell you, but it’s just a filing,” he replied, taking a sip of his sherry. “Let’s wait a little longer and see if we have good news or bad. To tell you more would be cruel.”
    I walked over to the counter where Jacob was standing, picked up the bottle of sherry, and took a swig, staring into his eyes the entire time.
    “Then why bring it up at all?” I asked. “Trying to let us know you have something over us?”
    Jacob blinked and wiped his hands on his apron. “No. Of course not. You’re right, Tandy. I shouldn’t have said anything yet if I wasn’t intending to tell you everything.” He looked around at the boys. “I apologize.”
    I took another sip of sherry, and Jacob removed the bottle from my hand.
    “That’s enough.” He set the bottle aside and reached for the knife again.
    “Are you a spy, Jacob?” I asked him.
    He sighed and smiled, cutting into a cucumber.
    “Of course you are,” I continued. “But a spy for whom? Uncle Peter? Or maybe the dead?”
    “What a wonderful, vivid imagination you have, Tandy.”
    I narrowed my eyes. A vivid imagination or razor-sharp instincts? Only time would tell.

12
    After dinner the four of us
scattered like billiard balls, Hugo to his room and his manuscript, Harry to the piano in the living room, Jacob to Katherine’s room. Once everyone was safely tucked away, I headed down the hallway to the room that had at one time been so secret, I hadn’t even known it was there until after my parents died. I used the key I kept on a long chain around my neck to open the door, closed it quietly behind me, and hit the switch.
    Light filled the room, illuminating my father’s file cabinets and his glittering chemistry equipment. His graphs still hung on the walls, those colorful bars that had charted the effects of the pills on his guinea pig children. This had once been his lab, but now it was my office.
    My very own PI headquarters.
    I had kept the charts so that I would never forget what had been done to us, but I’d restocked the lab with my own equipment and books on forensic science.
    I booted up my computer and had just typed the name
Stacey Blackburn
into the search engine when there was an urgent knock on the hidden door. I opened the lock, and Hugo barreled in.
    “Not now, Hugo. I’m working.”
    “I’m here to help,” he said. He went to the second computer and logged in.
    “I thought you were working on Matty’s biography.”
    “I’m taking five,” he replied. “Tell me what you need.”
    I blew out a sigh