Nevermore: The Final Maximum Ride Adventure (Maximum Ride 8)

“The medical examiner will determine if these were homicides, accidents, natural deaths—”

“Natural?” I interrupted, getting fed up. “Come on.”

“It’s the medical examiner’s job to determine these things,” she said.

“Have you found a weapon? Was there any blood?”

“Listen, Tandy. I’m sorry, but you have to go now, before you get me in trouble.”

CSI Yeager was ignoring me now, but she didn’t close the door. I looked around the room, taking in the enormous four-poster bed and the silk bedspread on the floor.

And I did a visual inventory of my parents’ valuables.

The painting over their fireplace, by Daniel Aronstein, was a modern depiction of an American flag: strips of frayed muslin layered with oil paints in greens and mauve. It was worth almost $200,000—and it hadn’t been touched.

My mother’s expensive jewelry was also untouched; her strand of impossibly creamy Mikimoto pearls lay in an open velvet-lined box on the dresser, and her twelve-carat emerald ring still hung from a branch of the crystal ring tree beside her bed.

It could not be clearer that there had been no robbery here.

It shouldn’t surprise me that the evidence pointed to the fact that my parents had been killed out of anger, fear, hatred…

Or revenge.

As I stood outside my parents’ bedroom a shadow fell across me and I jumped, as if I were already living in fear of the ghosts of Malcolm and Maud. Many ghosts in my family already haunt us, friend, so it helps me to know that you’re here.

Fortunately, this shadow just belonged to Sergeant Caputo. He pinched my shoulder. Hard.

“Let’s go, Tansy. I told you, this floor is off-limits. Entering a crime scene before it’s cleared is evidence tampering. It’s against the law.”

“Tandy,” I said. “Not Tansy. Tandy.”

I didn’t argue his point; he was right. Instead, I went ahead of him down the stairs and back to the living room, arriving just as my big brother, Matthew, stormed in from the kitchen.

When Matthew entered a room, he seemed to draw all the light and air to him. He had light brown dreadlocks tied in a bunch with a hank of yarn, and intense blue eyes that shone like high beams.

I’ve never seen eyes like his. No one has.

Matty was dressed in jeans and a black T-shirt under a leather jacket, but anyone would’ve sworn he was wearing a bodysuit with an emblem on the chest and a cape fluttering behind.

Hugo broke the spell by leaping out of his chair. “Hup!” he yelled at Matty, jumping toward his brother with outstretched arms.

Matthew caught Hugo easily and put a hand to the back of his baby brother’s head while fastening his eyes on the two homicide detectives.

Matthew is six-two and has biceps the size of thighs. And, well, he can be a little scary when he’s mad.

Mad wasn’t even the word to describe him that night.

“My parents were just carried out of the building in the service elevator,” he shouted at the cops. “They were vile, but they didn’t deserve to be taken out with the trash.”

Detective Hayes said, “And you are…?”

“Matthew Angel. Malcolm and Maud’s son.”

“And how did you get into the apartment?” Hayes said.

“Cops let me in. One of them wanted my autograph.”

Caputo said to Matthew, “You won the Heisman, right?”