The Last of the Stanfields

by Levy, Marc

  “How could you not tell me?” said May.

  “I was trying to protect you.”

  “To protect me . . . from the humiliation, or just so you could say ‘I told you so’? Don’t tell me that you’re vain enough to be that cruel. You’re supposed to hate him, so why in the world would you choose to protect him and let me get screwed over?”

  Suddenly unsure, Sally-Anne slid the issue of the Baltimore Sun from May’s lap and laid her hand down softly on her knee.

  “Can you just explain what you’re talking about?”

  “Enough! Enough lying,” May sighed. “Haven’t all your lies made enough of a mess already? Don’t treat me like a fool.”

  “You want the truth? We barely have enough money to pay for the paper to go to print. We won’t make rent, let alone pay all the wages we owe. I didn’t tell you because knowing how honest you are, you never would have let me print the first issue. You would have let everyone go. And you seemed so happy frolicking around with my bastard of a brother, I didn’t want to spoil it for you, as crazy as the whole thing has driven me. It was wrong. But I’m begging you to stick with me and see this venture through. We go to print with the first issue, and if you never find it in your heart to forgive me, so be it. We go our separate ways.”

  May straightened up in bed, her eyes haggard. “Now . . . it’s my turn to ask what you’re talking about.”

  The two women looked at each other, angry and confused. Sally-Anne took the first leap.

  “I’m talking about my mother’s dirty trick, her latest and greatest work: seeing to it that our loan was rejected. What else would I be talking about? We’re up to our ears in debt. She wiped her hands of me with a silly little check that doesn’t begin to cover our debts. See? We actually needed those dishes. We don’t have a cent for new ones. That’s all. That’s the only secret I was keeping.”

  May reached past Sally-Anne to grab the copy of the newspaper from the foot of the bed. She held it out, stabbing a finger at the offending text.

  At the end of the month, a masquerade ball will be held at the home of Mr. Robert Stanfield and his wife, Hanna, in honor of their son Edward’s engagement to Miss Jennifer Zimmer, daughter of Fitzgerald and Carol Zimmer, and heiress to the bank that bears their name.

  “I didn’t know! I haven’t even been invited,” Sally-Anne whispered. “They’ve cut me out of my own brother’s engagement party. And, my God, you had to find out about this through the paper?” She sighed, defeated.

  She moved in closer and put her arms around May. “I swear on my life: I had no idea.”

  May let Sally-Anne rock her softly, their faces cheek to cheek.

  “He used me and threw me away . . . like some kind of whore,” May sobbed.

  Sally-Anne hugged her closer. “It’s as though I don’t exist to them . . . like I’m something to be ashamed of. It’s so humiliating. I can’t even say which of us got it worse.”

  May rose and led Sally-Anne to the door of their room, the glow of the candles still reflecting off the porcelain debris.

  “I was cooking a special dinner for your brother. I tried calling him three times. Your butler kindly informed me that Mr. Edward was in a meeting, but would relay my message to him. So, I sat reading the paper while I waited for his call. And that’s how I found out he wouldn’t be coming. Can you imagine anything so cruel? The only thing worse than the lie is how much of a coward he was. To think that he took me to his island and swore up and down that he loved me. He played me for a fool. I’ve been a fool. But, I’m begging you, don’t say ‘I told you so.’”

  “It’s even worse than you think, worse than him just being a coward. The whole thing was a plot that my mother and Edward hatched together. While my brother drove a wedge between us, my mother sharpened her knives and stabbed me in the back, and you in the heart.”

  A silence fell over the space, as though the awful reach of Hanna Stanfield’s power had extended all the way into the apartment.

  “Let’s sit down,” May said. “There’s a nice dinner just sitting there, and we can clear a spot on my desk.”

  They sat down across from each other. Sally-Anne shook her head. “We can’t let this stand,” she whispered.

  “We got double-crossed and now we’re ruined. What choice do we have?”

  May thought about the weekend on Kent Island, just days earlier. She had been so happy, but Edward had ruined it. Sally-Anne, meanwhile, was peering across the warehouse at the part that had been transformed into a newsroom. Just days earlier, the Independent had been taking its first breaths, but her mother had killed it.

  “I’ll tell you what we’re going to do. We’re going to take back what’s ours,” she said.

  “I think I’ve had my fill of your asshole brother.”

  “That’s not what I meant. I mean the paper.”

  “You said it yourself: without funding, the paper is finished,” May said. She crossed the room and lit the stove burner under a pan of watercress soup.

  “My father has a small fortune in bearer bonds in the safe in his study. It’s a favorite payment method of art collectors who want to keep some transactions tax-free. Officially, the painting is resold at cost, then all taxable profit is settled this way. No one’s any the wiser. The bonds are anonymous. They can be cashed at any bank, without any kind of proof of origin.”

  “We’re not thieves, Sally-Anne. How do you expect us to break into a safe and steal all that money?” May sighed as she poured the warmed soup into a tureen and set it on the desk. It was far from the romantic dinner she had envisioned while slaving away in the kitchen earlier.

  “Who said anything about stealing? The Stanfields built an empire on what had been left by my grandfather: his paintings and the legacy of his reputation. I’m the only one who seems to have inherited the man’s ethics. He’d be livid if he were here to see how his daughter was acting now. He’d be first in line to help us.”

  “That’s all well and good,” said May as she filled their bowls with soup. “Claiming your inheritance wouldn’t be stealing, but there’s no way your parents are going to give it to you.”

  “Right. Which means we’ll just have to help ourselves.”

  “If your parents haven’t invited you to your own brother’s engagement party, what makes you think they’ll just let you into their safe?”

  “The key is in a cigar box that my dad keeps in his office minibar.”

  “Great,” May said. “So, what? You’re going to scale the roof and break into the house in the dead of night to steal the bonds while your parents and their entire staff sleep through the whole thing? Come on. This is real life, not a movie.”

  “Night would be best. But we won’t break in; we’ll waltz right in through the front door and do it in style. And then we’ll steal the bonds out from under their noses and leave the way we came.”

  May poured herself a glass of red wine from a bottle of Château-Malartic-Lagravière.

  “Wow, a 1970? You weren’t messing around!” whistled Sally-Anne. “Well, at the very least, I’m glad I get to drink it instead of my brother.”

  “You’re drunk already, the way you’re talking. You don’t need another sip.”

  Ignoring this, Sally-Anne poured herself a glass and raised it in a toast. May downed hers in one swig.

  “Okay, enough half-baked revenge plots,” May said. “When do we let the team know we can’t pay them?”

  “We won’t even have to; they’ll get paid for the first issue and every one after it.”

  “Enough is enough, Sally-Anne! Don’t talk crazy. You’re not going to walk out of there with your father’s bearer bonds, not if they turn you away at the front door.”

  “They won’t even know who we are. Isn’t that the entire point of a masquerade ball? That’s when we’ll do it.”

  “The masquerade ball that you aren’t invited to!”

  “Not yet, but I can fix that. And I’ll need you to come along as m
y date.” She laid out the plan, step by step. May would infiltrate the manor and tamper with the guest list. She would be taking an enormous risk.

  At first, May categorically refused to even set foot in Edward’s lair ever again. She remembered being smuggled out of the service door at dawn like a whore after their weekend on Kent Island. Yet, Sally-Anne proved to be quite adept at convincing her, her powers of persuasion rivaling even those of her mother.

  As the night came to an end, May poured the last of the wine, and the two women clinked glasses. There was no turning back.

  29

  ELEANOR-RIGBY

  October 2016, Baltimore

  Waltzing into the police station and flashing my press card did not work out as planned. The cop at the front desk just couldn’t see why a nature magazine would be so interested in an obscure crime dating all the way back to 1980. He had a point, I had to admit. After losing patience with my thin explanations, he told me I could file a formal request with the appropriate department. I asked how long the process would take, all told.

  “It could take a while,” he replied. “We’re a bit understaffed at present.” And with that, the cop buried his nose back in his book, just as we had found him. George-Harrison could tell I was about to explode, and put a gentle arm around my shoulders.

  “Chin up, we’ll find another way,” he said softly. “I promise we will. I know it’s sad, but you’ll pull through.”

  “You want sad?” muttered the policeman. “Sad is dragging your feet when you walk to work in the morning, then dragging them twice as slow to get home at night. That’s sad.”

  “True,” sighed George-Harrison. “I’m no stranger to that type of sadness. But have you ever been writing a book and felt so stuck? What am I saying? Of course you haven’t.”

  Hook, line, and sinker. The cop looked up from his book.

  “Truth is, we’re not really here as journalists,” George-Harrison continued. “We’re novelists, and this whole thing is a major plot point in our story, one we want to be as authentic and reality based as possible. I’m sure you can imagine that having a real police report from that period would add a vital touch of authenticity to our novel.”

  “What type of novel is it?”

  “A thriller.”

  “Thrillers are the only type of book that really grabs me. My wife only reads romance novels, which is rich, considering romance is what she seems most incapable of in our marriage.” Getting all worked up, the cop motioned us closer and leaned in to whisper. “If you agree to name one of your characters after me, maybe I can help you out with this thing, huh? Not necessarily the main character, but somebody with a big role, and one of the good guys! Like a really smooth operator, you follow me? I mean, just imagine my wife listening as I read her passages of a book with me in it!”

  George-Harrison and the officer sealed the deal with a firm handshake. The cop then peppered us with questions about what exactly it was we were seeking. He disappeared into a room down the hall and emerged a half hour later, a manila folder in hand, all dusty and worn with age. He summarized the details for us out loud, as though the report were an excerpt straight from our nonexistent novel and he were playing stand-in narrator.

  “Your burglary took place on October 21, 1980, between the hours of 9 and 11 p.m.,” he said, scratching his chin. “It’s a cold case. They never found the perp. The events transpired at a party thrown by one Robert Stanfield and his wife. Apparently, the thief mingled with the guests and then robbed the family blind, stealing bonds from the house safe. A hundred fifty thousand dollars, all told, which could be worth as much as 1.5 mil today—and that’s a ballpark figure. You gotta be brain-dead to keep that kind of money sitting at home. I mean, it’s just not the brightest move, even if people used cash more in those days. Ah, interesting. It says here the lock on the safe was intact. No forced entry. In my opinion—professional opinion—the guilty party must have known the premises inside and out. Probably had help from someone on the inside. And what do you know? I see here that all the house employees were questioned, temporary and permanent, including event staff and caterers. There’s a good thirty or so eyewitness accounts in here. And as usual, nobody saw or heard a single thing out of the ordinary. Quite the caper. An impressive sleight of hand.”

  The cop kept reading, nodding eagerly here and there as though he were a sleuth hot on the trail of an elusive master villain. “The theft was first discovered around midnight, when Mrs. Stanfield went to return her jewelry to the safe. Police were called at 12:45 a.m., which probably left just enough time for the victims to recover from the shock and take stock of what had been stolen.”

  “Jewelry in the safe . . . but she couldn’t have been wearing all her jewelry,” I interjected. “Were any of those items listed as stolen?”

  “Nope, not as far as I can see,” the officer replied, punctuating his certainty with a firm shake of his head. “Not one item of jewelry reported missing, only the money—those bonds.”

  “And does that seem normal to you?” asked George-Harrison.

  “Normal doesn’t happen too often in my line of work. But this I can tell you for sure: this job was done by a pro. He wasn’t going to bother with things he couldn’t manage to sell. I’m going to let you in on a real insider tip, a nice touch that’ll make your story as real as it gets. Maybe even, if you can manage, have my character be the one who makes a speech about it, huh? If possible. A good cop always uses deduction. See these notes here? The eyewitness accounts? I count fifteen employees working full-time with these people. Housekeepers, cooks, butler, private secretary, and even a live-in presser? Just for ironing, I guess. That’s wild. I didn’t even know that existed. So, you know, it’s not too far a leap to conclude that the . . . what’s their name, again? The, uh, the Stanfields . . . Sorry, lost my train of thought. Ah, right . . . so, calling the Stanfields a ‘wealthy family’ would be an understatement. You still with me, right? I don’t gotta slow down? Okay, so. For folks as rich as them, the lady of the house probably doesn’t own even one piece of run-of-the-mill jewelry. And for a burglar, that’s a real snag. Think: Rolex, pearl necklace, even a reasonably sized diamond ring can all be pawned relatively easily. But when we’re talking jewels with values pushing five, even six figures? It’s impossible to hock that kinda stuff. Only way to get rid of something that hot is through a specialized underground network. Stones have to be pulled from their settings, mostly recut to make them unrecognizable, and then, presto! Back on the market. But if you don’t have those connections, you’re out of luck.”

  “Wow. Have you worked on cases like this before?” I asked.

  “No! Never. But like I said, I’m a big reader.” Despite his lengthy and colorful monologue, the bottom line was crystal clear: the thief had taken only the bonds because everything else in the safe was too tricky for him to fence.

  “Is there anything else that could have been in that safe?” inquired George-Harrison.

  “Guns, maybe? If they had unlicensed firearms in the safe, they’d be sure to leave that out of the report. Valuable watches can be easier to fence, but there’s no mention of that anywhere in here. Bars of gold, that can also happen, but they sure are bulky. Just one can weigh over ten pounds, so it’s a little tough to just waltz out discreetly with it crammed in your pocket. If the Stanfields were younger, or showbiz types, I would have also thought drugs, but they don’t strike me as the nose candy crowd.”

  “Aside from illegal firearms or drugs, are there other things people are reluctant to mention in police reports?”

  “Nothing I can think of. More often they overshare. Folks use burglaries as an opportunity to get rich off insurance. They hide their valuables and claim they were robbed. But that’s out of our jurisdiction. Companies hire private investigators to flush out that type of scam, and it’s usually only a matter of time. Sooner or later, people who play that game slip up and get caught. Lady heads out to dinner wearing a necklace that she repor
ted stolen, or maybe the investigators take a picture with a long telephoto lens of a painting in their living room that they claimed had been lifted.”

  “But that never happened with the Stanfields?”

  “No way of knowing. In general, you get busted for fraud, you negotiate directly with your insurer, and then you’re going to pay up, big-time, huge damages, just to stay out of a prison cell. Anyone could come out on top, tables turn, winners become losers, and vice versa. Also, there are cases where folks who got robbed don’t bother declaring items that weren’t insured.”

  “What do you mean? Why?” I asked.

  “For the rich and powerful, burglary is humiliating. Even if it seems backwards to folks like you and me, some think of it as a sign of weakness. Let’s say you had decided to cut corners on insurance and it comes back to bite you in the ass, you come across twice as dumb. So, they leave those things out, just to save face.”

  “You’re saying it is possible something else was stolen that night?” George-Harrison asked.

  “Sure, why not? It passes the sniff test, so if it fits for your novel, I say go for it. But whatever you end up using, just make sure it’s nothing too difficult to carry. At the same time, don’t forget: if the thief had inside help, he could have disappeared with the loot through the kitchen or by the service entrance. But hey, that’s your call. You’re the writers.”

  We thanked the officer for his time, and were about to walk out when he called back after us.

  “Wait, hold it! How are you gonna hold up your end of the bargain if you don’t even have my name?”

  I quickly got his name, eager to get the hell out of there.

  “Frank Galaggher, with two g’s and an h. Say, you know what you’re gonna call the novel?”

  “Hey, maybe we’ll call it The Galaggher Affair,” said George-Harrison with a smile.