Confessions: The Private School Murders Read Free Page A

and kind, the sort of guy who put you totally at ease. Hayes was a good soul, and I was glad he would be on Adele’s case, too. Even though, technically, he hadn’t solved our parents’ “murders.”
    I had.
    “Sergeant Caputo!” I called.
    He spotted me and narrowed his beady eyes, never takingthem off my face as he picked his way carefully around Adele’s body. “You’re under arrest, Taffy.”
    Caputo had no problem remembering my name, but he loved to mess with me.
    “Wow. Still going with that joke, huh? It stopped being funny about three months ago.”
    His gaze flicked over Harry, then back at me. “Please. You don’t have a single funny bone in your entire skinny body.”
    I sighed. “So do you want to know what’s going on here, or do you want to waste some more time coming up with lame nicknames?”
    “You know this girl?” he asked, interested.
    “Her name is Adele Church,” I told him.
    “We went to school with her,” Harry added.
    “What else do you know about Miss Church?” Caputo asked, flipping open his notebook and scribbling down her name.
    “She was a sweet person,” I said. “She lived up on Seventy-Ninth, I think. Her older brother graduated last year.”
    “She played the flute,” said Harry. “And pretty much kicked ass in sociology.”
    “Any idea why someone would want to hurt her?” Caputo asked.
    We heard more sirens with deeper whooping sounds as the coroner’s van arrived. More cops were getting out of cruisers, stringing a yellow-tape perimeter around the body and shooing the onlookers back.
    “Everyone liked her,” I said. “I think she saw her killer, though. Maybe she knew him.”
    Caputo’s face flattened with unsuppressed scorn. “I’ve got no time for your amateur-night theories, Tallulah.”
    “You know better than that, Caputo.” I gave him my card. “I want to help.”
    He glanced at my card and scoffed. “ ‘Tandy Angel, Detective. Mysteries Solved. Case Closed,’ ” he read. “I was wrong. You’re actually hilarious, T-bone.” He glanced from me to Harry and pocketed the card. “Nice seeing you.”
    “You should call me,” I shouted after him as he turned away. “Consultations are free for all clueless detectives named Caputo!”
    He just kept walking.
    “That man is going to break into our apartment and kill you in your sleep, you know,” Harry said.
    I smirked. “I’d like to see him try.”

CONFESSION
    I may have seemed confident
to Caputo and to Harry while I was handing over my card, but I wasn’t. In fact, the second my card touched Caputo’s chalky, dry fingers, something inside me swooped, like the way your heart feels when you jump off a bridge with nothing but a bungee cord tied to your feet.
    Because that was when I realized: Maybe I
wasn’t
a good detective. Not anymore.
    Yes, even Capricorn Caputo would have to admit that without me, the mystery of my parents’ deaths might never have been solved. But that was then. When I was still full of Num, Lazr, Focus, and other secret Angel Pharmaceuticals concoctions. Now that I was off the drugs, I was
feeling
everything, but did I still have the sharp and rational mind of an ace detective?
    My grades seemed to indicate that I did. But anyone could get straight As. Most of the kids I knew were technical geniuses, if you believe in IQ scores. Even C.P. Probably even Adele. But something had been going on lately that was starting to seriously bother me.
    I was having these dreams. Dreams about James. And whenever I woke up from one of these dreams, I had a hard time figuring out whether it was really a dream, or if it was actually a memory.
    That’s my deepest, darkest secret, my friend. I think my mind was starting to play tricks on me. And I had a feeling I knew who to blame. My parents. And Fern Haven. And that awful Dr. Narmond.
    But that’s a story for another time.

3
    I looked at Harry as we walked
back to the Dakota. Harry and I were both dark-eyed and dark-haired,