The Last of the Stanfields

by Levy, Marc

  The professor’s stuffy office smelled of dust and wax. He took a seat at his desk and gestured for the two of us to sit across from him. Then, he opened a drawer, took out a bottle of painkillers, and swallowed two of them dry.

  “Goddamn sciatica,” he growled. “If you’ve come seeking pearls of wisdom, I’ve got one at the ready: better to die young!”

  “Well, thank you, I guess,” said George-Harrison. “But don’t you think we’re a bit old to be students?”

  “Speak for yourself!” I chimed in.

  Morrison leaned forward and stared at us over the rims of his glasses, sizing up his two visitors. “Your friend does have a point,” he concluded, rubbing his chin. “If you haven’t come seeking help for your dissertation, just what can I do for you?”

  “We’re here to ask about the Stanfields.”

  “I see.” The professor straightened his back, his face twisting in pain once more. “Often the smallest fragments of history can present a historian with the greatest of challenges. It all begins with cracking open a book, as I’m apt to repeat to my students. If you’re interested in learning about Frederick Stanfield’s life, why not try the library before wasting my time?”

  “The Stanfields we’re interested in are Hanna and Robert, as well as the last of the family line,” I explained. “We can’t find a thing on them. Believe me, I’ve scoured the internet far and wide, stayed up half the night, and came up with barely a mention.”

  “Ah, glorious. The internet. How lucky am I to find myself face-to-face with a great historian of tomorrow! She actually went so far as to stay up ‘half the night’ searching through her precious encyclopedia of nonsense. When are you people going to stop being so daft? Anyone can write anything in that dismal and intangible catchall. One moron after another vomits words onto the page, posting whatever thoughts come to his head without the smallest shred of integrity. No wonder your great ‘web’ is such a tangled mess of fantasies and falsehoods. Go ahead. Tomorrow, post about how George Washington was a master tango dancer, and a hundred cretins will start repeating the tall tale. Soon, we’ll all be asking Google what time we should take a leak to avoid prostate cancer. In any event, the two of you were sent by someone to whom I am greatly indebted, thus I have no choice but to help you. But let’s try to waste the least amount of time possible, yes? What do you wish to know about the Stanfields?”

  “What happened to them, for a start.”

  “Like anyone who reaches a certain age, they died, the very same fate that will befall the lot of us, sooner or later.”

  “When did they die?” asked George-Harrison.

  “Robert Stanfield died in the eighties, I don’t know when, exactly, and his wife not long after that. They found her car on the seafloor, right off the pier, leaving little doubt that the woman’s agony had become unbearable, and she had at last given in and taken her own life.”

  “Can you provide any documentation? Any proof of your claims?” asked George-Harrison. “Or did you just read that on the internet?”

  The professor was speechless. It took backbone to put an old grouch like him in his place like that, and George-Harrison suddenly shot up at least ten points in my book.

  Morrison glared at him, eyes sharp and beady like a trial lawyer. “My, my, you’ve got some nerve talking to me like that.”

  “Must be a lot of that going around . . . judging by how you’ve treated us from the moment we walked in,” George-Harrison retorted, without missing a beat. Another ten points.

  “I haven’t exactly given you the most cordial greeting, I’ll grant you that. Try five minutes with a hip like mine, we’ll see how friendly you behave. But, to answer your question, no, I don’t have any sort of formal proof. Mind you, there was no streaming video of the First Continental Congress in 1774, yet we can rest easy knowing the founding fathers accomplished great feats during that time in Philadelphia. History is set into stone through deduction and cross-referencing of facts and events. And as far as the late Mrs. Stanfield is concerned, all I can tell you is she summoned all her staff, settled their wages, and left her home, never to return. Unless you think that someone of her stature would go hitchhiking cross-country, I’d say suicide is a safe enough conclusion to draw.”

  “What was the tragedy that befell the Stanfields?” I asked.

  “Make that tragedies, plural. First came the trauma of the war. Then the disappearance of their daughter, followed by the loss of Edward, ending their bloodline and the dynasty. Like many mothers, Hanna loved her son very deeply. He was her whole world. In the span of just a few short months, the glory of the Stanfield name was scattered to the wind. Rumors flew about town that the Stanfields had been the victims of a massive theft, and some even made the sordid accusation they had committed insurance fraud after the fact. There were whispers about Edward’s ‘accident’ not being quite so accidental, considering it occurred mere weeks before his own wedding. Finally, the Stanfield gallery canceled an auction at the last minute, leading some to suspect the catalog had been a sham—a veritable faux pas in the art world. Quite a host of rumors flying about for such a small town. The Stanfields led a lavish lifestyle in the heart of high society, and suddenly no one wanted anything to do with them. Their coffers were soon empty. I’m convinced that Hanna Stanfield chose death in the face of solitude and disgrace. In the blink of an eye, she lost everything—family and fortune. Robert was first to go after a fatal heart attack, and there were even some who believed he had been poisoned. A foul lie, masking an even fouler truth—he dropped dead in the arms of his mistress!”

  “Why no mention of any of this in the press?”

  “As I said, Baltimore is like a small town. While Mrs. Stanfield wasn’t loved by all, she certainly had no shortage of friends in the highest of places. I suppose our local journalists and editors had the grace and dignity not to heap more on the back of a family down on its luck, especially one whose matriarch had spoiled the press so thoroughly in her heyday.”

  “And just what was it they decided to keep quiet about?” I asked.

  “All of this happened more than thirty years ago! Just what is your interest in the fate of the Stanfields?”

  “It’s a long story.” I sighed. “You said that history is set into stone through deduction, cross-referencing of facts and events, so I’m just trying to cross-check the story in my own way.”

  Morrison crossed over to the window and gazed out onto the street. The professor seemed miles away, lost in the not-so-distant past that seemed close enough to touch.

  “I crossed paths with the Stanfields from time to time at social gatherings. An academic with any career ambition must venture out and mingle with high society from time to time. But I had never met with them in private, not until I was struck with the idea of publishing a book on the lives of the founding figures of Baltimore, a project I never actually finished. Robert was the only descendant of Frederick Stanfield. I reached out to him and received an invitation to visit. Robert was a quiet man who valued his privacy, but was also very generous. He gave me quite the warm welcome, inviting me into his study and treating me to a glass of incredible Scotch—a bottle of 1926 Macallan, a whisky so rare, there were scarcely ten bottles of it left in the entire world, even back then. It was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity; the taste was unforgettable.

  “We spoke at length, and I eventually gave in to my curiosity and asked a few questions about Robert’s past, starting with his wartime experience. Robert had shipped off to fight in France before the landings, an exceedingly rare occurrence. Most American soldiers serving in Europe in early ’44 were stationed in England. I knew that he and Hanna had met during that tumultuous period, and I secretly dreamt of recounting their story as part of my book. My vision was to demonstrate a continuity between the past glory of the Stanfield family and Robert’s own exploits.

  “When at last I raised questions about how he and Hanna had met, the lady herself happened to enter the study, and R
obert immediately cut the conversation short. Now, getting faithful accounts and asking pointed questions are part of my job, as is grilling my subjects for answers, just as you two are doing now. But I haven’t a clue as to the motives behind the couple’s secrecy. What I can tell you is that Hanna had a very strong influence over the rest of the family. It took mere moments observing the two of them in that study to see the extent of her authority. Hanna was the empress ruling over all. She called the shots. She even showed me to the door herself that day, both figuratively and literally. Firm yet courteous, she gave a message that was loud and clear: I was not welcome to return. I don’t know what else I can tell you. All else is gossip, a tawdry domain which I’m loath to enter.”

  “So, you visited their house? Where is it?” I asked.

  “‘House’ doesn’t quite cover it. It was an estate, one that’s long gone. As a leading member of the Baltimore City Historical Society, I, as well as my peers, vehemently protested when the city granted authorization to tear it down. A pack of shameless developers reduced it to rubble, erecting upscale condominiums in its place. This despicable skullduggery is laying to waste our heritage and history, all for the benefit of a select few. This city has become infested with corruption and greed that goes as high as our former mayor, just one more poor fool who flew too close to the sun. Luckily, the new mayor has integrity, luckily for you, considering it’s that very trait that drove her to send you here to me. On that note, I believe it’s high time I returned to my duties.”

  “First, could you tell me more about the estate?” I insisted.

  “It was opulent, richly furnished, lined with canvas masterpieces, and imbued with a grandeur that is, alas, all but forgotten now.”

  “So, what became of their art collection?”

  “Mrs. Stanfield was forced to part with it out of necessity, I suppose. The parting came at a great cost, for the reasons I mentioned earlier. I apologize if this comes as a disappointment, but that collection is long gone. Lost and buried in the sands of time.”

  Morrison walked us to the door and bid us good luck.

  George-Harrison sat behind the wheel in silence for a long time before at last starting the pickup and pulling onto the road. Ten minutes later, I decided to ask where we were headed.

  “Well, clearly the Stanfields saw their fair share of tragedy, but so what?” he began. “Most of what he said was useless, except for—”

  “You can stop there. You’re right, I was wrong. You don’t have to gloat. It was a dead end. And what’s worse, I don’t have a clue where we should head next.”

  George-Harrison pulled over and stopped the truck in front of a police station. “Except, as I was saying, there was one thing the lovely Professor Morrisman said that fits with our story.”

  “The theft. When he mentioned them being robbed? That occurred to me as well. But a city of this size has got tragedies and insurance scams to spare.”

  “Exactly. But that’s not what stuck with me. It was the Scotch. The 1926 Macallan.”

  “What, you’re some kind of aficionado?”

  “Not at all, and neither is my mother. And yet she had that very bottle of whisky. I remember seeing it, up on the shelf, all through my childhood. Every October, she’d take just the tiniest little glass of it, savoring every drop. I guess that makes sense now, considering how much it’s worth. I eventually did ask her what was up with her weird annual ritual, but she never gave me a direct answer.”

  “Just to play devil’s advocate, there must be as many bottles of this type of Scotch in Baltimore as there are thefts and tragedies.”

  “Not according to the professor, not from 1926. Barely ten of them left at the time, he told us. And he seemed to know what he was talking about. Seems a bit of a stretch for it to be a coincidence that my mother lived in Baltimore and ended up with a bottle. I think it’s safe to say, the Macallan on my mother’s shelf must have come from Robert Stanfield’s own liquor cabinet.”

  “Could that be the treasure she talked about in the letter?”

  “Well, we could look into the actual value of the Scotch, but I doubt that’s what she meant. Although that would be hysterical, thinking back on how she treasured it! But seriously . . . I can’t help but feel like we’re following someone’s trail of bread crumbs, and I’d like to know who it is.”

  “You’re not honestly telling me you think running into the mayor was part of some master plan?”

  “I wouldn’t go that far. But Morris could have been.”

  “For the last time, it’s Morrison!”

  “Baltimore’s very own ‘living memory,’ as the mayor put it. Those anonymous letters put the two of us together right in front of a photo of our mothers. That photo led us to the archives of the Independent, which put us on the trail to the Stanfields. Sooner or later, we were bound to stumble upon that statue, or at least learn it was out there. Plenty of clues that lead back to that charming professor.”

  “You really suspect him?”

  “Well, why not? Who else would know what really happened at the Stanfield estate?”

  “Sure. Okay. And he’s obviously not able to get around well, which explains why he’d want us to come all the way here to him. But I don’t see how he could have pieced together where you and I fit into all this, much less track us down. What’s more, he would have had to know you were desperately hoping to find your father, and so many other intimate details of our lives, down to my sister’s name.”

  “Let’s say he knows a little more than he’s letting on about whatever was stolen. Let’s say he even suspects our mothers of being the perpetrators. If so, that matches what’s in the letter, and there’s your link. As for the rest, maybe he’s not as anti-internet as he says, and he did admit having a knack for pumping people for information.”

  “You think he’s after the treasure? He didn’t seem to be the type that’s out for money. The only thing more beaten up than his suit was his hairline.”

  “Don’t forget: people who are that passionate aren’t always in it for the money. The professor also bragged about being a leading member of the Baltimore Historical Preservation Society, or whatever it was. What if the thing they stole is of great historical value, so he’s willing to go to great lengths to get it back?”

  “Excellent question. You would have made a great investigative journalist.”

  “Say, you didn’t just pay me a compliment by any chance, did you?” He flashed me a coy look that I had to admit I found downright sexy. And it wasn’t the first time I had noticed, to be honest. I wanted to kiss him, right then and there. But I didn’t.

  Even though I could still hear Maggie’s warnings ringing in my ears, I wasn’t afraid of George-Harrison anymore—I was more scared of myself. I had no idea where this whole quest might take me, or if I could even see it through to completion. But I did know that my days in Baltimore were numbered. My job wouldn’t let me stay here forever. Getting involved with George-Harrison would only complicate things, even if it was ultimately only a fling.

  “What are you thinking about?” he asked, right on cue.

  “Nothing special, just wondering why we’re parked in front of the police station.”

  “We’re here so you can waltz in there, flash your press card, and work your magic on whatever cop comes out to greet you, flirting your way straight into the police archives. With a bit of luck, we might just get our hands on the official police report of the theft, and more specifically, find out just what was stolen.”

  “And if it’s a female cop?”

  “In that case, I’ll do my best.”

  “I’ve already seen you ‘do your best’ a couple of times, and for someone who claims not to be a ladies’ man, you seem to get by just fine.”

  28

  SALLY-ANNE

  October 1980, Baltimore

  Sally-Anne stepped into the loft and stopped in her tracks. Glass tealights, over twenty in all, had been lined up in a path that led s
traight to the bedroom. She rolled her eyes and sighed in exasperation. Romantic gestures like this were touching and all, but Sally-Anne felt like her own reaction to them was always forced, and the outpouring of emotion made her feel uneasy. Tonight, she just didn’t have the heart to play along. Then, something unexpected caught her eye: shards of broken dishes were scattered across the floor. Sally-Anne sidestepped the sharp ceramic pieces and knocked at the door to the bedroom nook.

  May was sitting on the bed in a bathrobe, trails of mascara running down her cheeks and a newspaper in her lap. “I trusted you. My God, did I trust you. How could you do this to me?” she moaned, her voice a mix of disbelief and sadness.

  Sally-Anne’s mind was racing. She was convinced that May must have discovered the loan rejection and the far reach of her mother’s power. She had kept the bank’s decision a secret, not out of pride or a desire to deceive, but because she needed to publish the Independent as an act of vengeance. It was now time to tell her team that the first issue would also be the last, and that every one of them was officially out of work. Blindsiding her employees certainly wasn’t fair, but the rage burning deep in the pit of her stomach made it easy to overlook such things.

  “So, you thought breaking all our dishes was going to make things better?”

  “I was trying to calm down. It didn’t work.”

  “Was it Edward? Was he the one who told you?”

  “Oh, no. Your piece-of-shit brother is far too cowardly for that.”

  “Tell me something I don’t know,” replied Sally-Anne, sitting down on the edge of the bed. May’s T-shirt showed off her curves, and Sally-Anne suddenly felt desire welling up within her, perhaps intensified by all the tension in the air.