by Levy, Marc
But it was too late. Once more, May’s eyes had taken on that faraway look. I could tell it was a lost cause as she abruptly flipped off an elderly woman at a nearby table, then turned back to me, laughing.
“Let me tell you why my son became a carpenter. I had a crush on an antiques dealer, and I could tell he felt the same for me. I was alone, he was unhappily married. Two broken people trying to fix things by giving the other what they lacked. As a child, George-Harrison spent quite a lot of time with the man, almost every day after school. Pierre was there for us when no one else was. He was like a godfather to George-Harrison, taught him everything he knew. That suited me just fine, even if I could see a certain irony to the whole thing. You see, there had been a carpenter in my life once before, a good man, perhaps the best I’ve ever known. He came to see me shortly after George-Harrison was born, hoping I’d drop everything and run away with him. I acted like a fool. I still regret it. But it was far too late anyway. Don’t say a thing to George-Harrison. He always thought carpentry was his own choice, and he’d be outraged at thinking his mother, of all people, had any influence over him. After all, he is just a man. Okay. You run along now, dear. I’ve told you more than enough, and if you can’t connect the dots now, then you must be even thicker than you look.”
“Are you the one who wrote those letters to us?”
“Get out of here! I have to take my bath, and you’re not my nurse, last time I checked. Wait just a minute! Are you telling me you’re my new nurse? They can’t just switch nurses without telling me! This place is a dump! Any more of this crap, I’m going to complain, I swear I will.”
This time she was gone for good. Despite my mixed feelings for the woman, I gave May a hug goodbye, perhaps just to enjoy that comforting, familiar perfume one last time.
I stood outside George-Harrison’s pickup and took a deep breath before getting inside. I was at a total loss. Not only did I have to break the news that his long-lost father was dead, but I was betraying May’s trust by telling him. I didn’t know where to start.
“Did you solve the mystery?” he asked.
“What? What do you mean?” I stammered.
“The case of the missing cell phone. Did you work it out? It’s been over ten minutes, I was starting to worry.”
I swallowed. “Drive. We have to talk.”
37
ELEANOR-RIGBY
October 2016, Magog
It was getting dark as we pulled out of the retirement home, with the air outside even colder than the night before. I knew I could have stayed silent. But if I had learned one thing from my quest so far, it was that secrets could be poisonous. Completing the task ahead of me would be no small feat. I knew I had to tread lightly from the start. And telling George-Harrison would only be the beginning. Sooner or later, I’d have to reveal everything to Michel and Maggie as well, and I had no idea how to do that without going against my mother’s wishes. But for the time being, I had to face the problem sitting next to me in the driver’s seat.
When at last I managed to tell George-Harrison that his father had died years before and that May had implied she had something to do with his death, his unfazed, stoic reaction was the last thing I was expecting. He simply kept driving, stone-faced and quiet. I told him how sorry I was for his loss, and how guilty I felt about exposing May’s deep, dark secret. Still nothing. George-Harrison sat biting his lip with incredible reserve.
“I guess I should be sad,” he finally said. “Strange as it sounds, I’m more relieved than anything else. What used to hurt most was thinking that he didn’t care about meeting me, that he was ignoring my existence altogether, like his own son was . . . unimportant. At least now, he has a foolproof alibi. You can’t really blame him for not showing up.”
May hadn’t mentioned exactly when George-Harrison’s father died, but I didn’t see any point in emphasizing that now.
“When she told you she had killed him, did it seem like she was still thinking straight?” he asked.
“That’s not what your mother said, not exactly. She told me it was her fault. It’s not the same thing.”
“It sure sounds like the same thing to me,” he said, the bitterness at last coming through in his voice.
“It’s not! We don’t know a thing about how he died. It could have been a car accident, and she feels it’s her fault because she wasn’t there.”
“It’s pretty naïve and hopeful, jumping to her defense like that.”
“That’s not it at all. It’s just . . . I could see how much she loved him.”
“What difference does that make? A crime of passion is somehow more forgivable?”
“It doesn’t change anything for you to know you were created by two people who loved each other?”
“I see how hard you’re trying, I really do. It means lot to me, a hell of a lot, but slow down a little bit. She also was in love with a guy named John, a guy named Tom, a guy named Henry . . .”
“A guy named Pierre,” I added, and instantly regretted it.
“Wait, what about Pierre?”
“She also had a thing for a guy named Pierre, an antiques dealer.”
“I know who the guy is, damn it!”
“And you know that . . . that they . . .”
“Of course I know! And you can spare me your pity. I’ve known forever. The way they would brush up against each other, the way they acted when she dropped me off or picked me up at his shop, or whenever he came to our place. Whenever he saw her, he would always caress her hand ever so softly. Then he’d give her a very friendly kiss when saying goodbye, right near her lips. It’s the type of thing a kid doesn’t miss. But I didn’t care. Out of all the men she was with, he was the only one who never . . . you know, treated me with pity, like he felt sorry for me. Quite the contrary. Whenever he talked about Mom, he made it sound like I was lucky to have her all to myself. He didn’t act all guilty and sheepish. It was a breath of fresh air. All Pierre ever did was take care of me, with enough decency to never act like a substitute father. Having him around was . . . reassuring. But why’d you mention him?”
“Because I have a hunch he knows a lot more than he’s ever told you. Maybe more than just a hunch.”
George-Harrison reached out and cranked up the volume on the radio, letting me know he had heard enough for one night. A whole half hour passed without a word. Finally, as we arrived in Magog, he turned the volume back down.
“There’s one thing gnawing at me. If our poison-pen knows every last thing about the two of us, wouldn’t he already know my father was dead? So, why write to me in the first place?”
That sent chills down my spine. The first logical explanation that came to mind was that the poison-pen couldn’t tell George-Harrison, so instead he had tried to steer him toward uncovering the truth on his own. But I kept that to myself, not wanting to add another layer. I had already done enough damage for one night.
George-Harrison pulled the truck into his studio. Just being back inside the hangar lifted my spirits, for maybe the first time that day. It was chilly, and the cold had somehow penetrated the walls, so George-Harrison turned on a space heater while we ate dinner. Though he tried to hide it, I could tell that the sadness and loneliness were consuming him. Seeing him like that broke my heart. Even with my own family waiting for me back in London, I knew I had to face the truth. There was something I had been denying desperately ever since George-Harrison nearly left me on the sidewalk in Baltimore. The intense panic I felt at that moment wasn’t out of fear of being left alone; I was afraid of being apart from him. After all we had been through, I wasn’t going to let secrets and hypocrisy stand in the way of my happiness ever again.
I waited until he had been in bed for a while, then went into his room and nestled in between the sheets, pressing myself close against him. George-Harrison turned and took me in his arms. It would have felt wrong to make love for the first time on the day George-Harrison had learned his father was dead. Instead, w
e floated together in our own little bubble, more tender than any mere joining of bodies.
We spent the next day together in the hangar. George-Harrison was running behind on a job, and I got a kick out of watching a master at work. As he carved out the legs for a chest of drawers, I found the lathe especially fascinating. The way the wood whistled as the chips flew made it seem like a musical instrument, and watching the spirals take shape was utterly mesmerizing. It was beautiful to see someone so passionate about their craft. A little later, George-Harrison assembled the whole piece, explaining that the key was to sculpt the tenons so they fit perfectly into each mortise. While I thought he was pushing it with all the jargon, I played along and pretended to be fascinated by all the details. He studied the chest carefully from every angle until he was satisfied with the results. I gave him a hand loading it into his pickup, then agreed to come along and help unload it at the antiques shop.
As we stepped inside, Pierre Tremblay looked up from his newspaper and leapt to his feet, greeting us warmly. The man was positively over the moon about meeting me. I could tell by the kind, warm look in his eyes that it wasn’t every day “GH” brought someone to meet him. However, his face fell when he saw the chest of drawers. He shook his head in disappointment, pouting and telling us to just leave it in the back.
“Really? You’re not going to put it out front in the window?” asked George-Harrison, feigning surprise. Pierre grumbled something about leaving it in the corner overnight until he made up his mind, then George-Harrison asked the antiques dealer to join us for dinner. They chose La Mère Denise so I could feast my eyes on their “authentic” antique eighteenth-century bookcase. The forgery was undeniably impressive, even to the untrained eye. Seeing George-Harrison’s talent filled me with a sense of pride, however silly that sounds.
Pierre Tremblay recommended the bouillabaisse from the Magdalen Islands, which he thought would pair perfectly with a dry white wine from Les Brome—a local Quebecois winemaker, he noted with hometown pride. After a warm toast, Pierre leaned in to George-Harrison and raised the delicate subject of the chest of drawers, chalking the whole thing up to a misunderstanding.
“I know you’re not going to want to hear this, GH,” he said. “But I think I asked you for an antique sled, not a chest of drawers.”
“Indeed, you did,” George-Harrison shot back. “And I asked you for any leads on my father, only about a thousand times. Since you never had any, or at least none you were willing to share, I had to go out and do some digging of my own. Which took a very long time. Nobody can be in two places at once, as they say. So, it was either hit the road or work on your sled. So, the sled had to wait, you see. Count yourself lucky. I started that old chest of drawers a while back, and spent all day today putting the finishing touches on it so I wouldn’t come empty-handed.”
“I see,” Pierre grunted. “So, the whole dinner invitation, introducing me to this fine young lady . . . was just a trap?”
“What good would that be, since you don’t know anything?”
“Easy now,” Pierre cautioned. “Don’t make a scene and get all nasty in the middle of a restaurant. I never told you anything because I wasn’t allowed to. I made a promise. And a promise is a promise, as they say.”
“What exactly did you promise?”
“Not to say a word, GH. Not while she’s still around.”
“But she’s not really still ‘around,’ now is she, Pierre? The woman you made that promise to is gone; she doesn’t even know who she is most of the time.”
“I will not have you talk about your mother like that.”
“It’s sad but true, and you know it. You’ve seen it yourself, many times over. You think I’m blind? You didn’t think I’d recognize all the furniture you brought out there to spruce up her bedroom? Bedside table, pedestal table next to the door, Victorian armchair by the window . . . You’ve gone to see her enough times to bring a whole bedroom set.”
“Well, somebody had to go.”
“Don’t play the guilt card. I’m sure she prefers getting attention from you over me any day. Now, I’m asking you to do exactly what you should have done from the minute I told you about that letter, and tell me what you know.”
“What I know? First, you tell me: What’s any of this got to do with your new friend here?”
“Eleanor-Rigby is Sally-Anne Stanfield’s daughter,” George-Harrison responded, calm and steady as always.
Pierre’s face gave him away, leaving no doubt that he knew of my mother. George-Harrison summarized everything we had learned since the last time he had seen Pierre, before the trip even started. By the time he had finished recounting the tale, Pierre agreed to fill in the missing pieces.
“On the night of the heist, after the deed was done, your mothers went back to their loft apartment. They stashed away what they had stolen and met up with their buddies on the Baltimore waterfront. Apparently, it was a night to remember. While all others in attendance thought they were celebrating the inaugural issue of the Independent, your mothers were celebrating their heist, which was somewhat ironic considering what would happen the day after that first issue hit the newsstands.” He shivered at the thought. “The police were extremely thorough and diligent with their investigation, but the only fingerprints they found on the safe were Robert’s and Hanna’s. With no proof of forced entry, they could only come up with two hypotheses. One: it was an inside job; the thief was an employee. Two: the whole thing was a sham. The Stanfields were already very wealthy, so the idea of them committing insurance fraud seemed far-fetched. Hanna Stanfield was more afraid of a scandal than losing money, especially since her livelihood was built around her reputation. Highly renowned art collectors entrusted her with rare works of art. Imagine what they would think when they heard that a priceless painting had been stolen right out of her own home! So, of course, she didn’t say a word about it to the police.”
Pierre stopped short at the sight of our stunned faces. “What? What did I say?” he asked, but George-Harrison and I were both in a state of absolute shock. The puzzle pieces all seemed to fit, and the anonymous letter began to make sense. Before Pierre could continue, George-Harrison asked what happened to the painting, but the antiques dealer just shrugged.
“All I know is that your mothers had a terrible falling-out over that painting, not because of the insane value of the thing, but because it was of such importance to Hanna Stanfield. As I understand, it had belonged to her father, and Hanna was more attached to that one painting than the rest of her entire collection combined. That may be the very reason Sally-Anne stole it, or so May suspected.
“She didn’t commit the robbery because she wanted to keep the Independent from going under, but out of revenge, plain and simple. When put on the spot, Sally-Anne swore up and down that she had no idea the painting was there, that she had just stumbled upon it in the safe and grabbed it without thinking. But May didn’t buy that, not for a second. She was infuriated at having been manipulated and used. The problem was, she wasn’t the only one. And that’s where poetic justice comes in. If Sally-Anne hadn’t been so bold as to publish that article blatantly smearing her family’s name in the first—and, as it turned out, last—issue of the Independent, putting her own initial on it like a point of pride, Edward would have never figured out who had written it. But the damage was already done. Her brother instantly pieced things together and thought that he had been played for a fool. Up until that point, he had thought that May had done what she did only out of . . . well . . .”
“Well, what?” George-Harrison pressed him.
“Forget it. It’s none of your business, kid. Let’s just say that the article convinced Edward that May had ulterior motives for coming to the masquerade ball that night, aside from simply spoiling his engagement. Their . . . encounter had been up on the second floor, right next to the scene of the crime. So, when he read that stupid article and saw how far his sister would go to get revenge on her own family, th
e pieces fell into place. All the time he had been . . . ‘talking’ with May . . . Sally-Anne had been robbing her own mother, snatching the thing Hanna loved most in the world right out from under her nose. You understand? Is that all clear enough for you?”
“Yes, crystal clear,” I cut in. I had spared George-Harrison some of the more sordid details of his mother’s retelling, and was relieved that Pierre had the good grace to do the same. “Tell us what happened to the painting,” I said.
“No one knows. Sally-Anne kept May completely in the dark, and I know May never had the painting in her possession.”
“How could she keep May in the dark if the two of them were living in the same apartment?”
“Well . . . they didn’t stay up in that loft very long. Edward Stanfield was so convinced of his sister’s guilt, he set out to thwart her plans and retrieve what she had stolen. You have to understand, Edward loved his mother very deeply. While it did hurt Hanna’s pride to have a small fortune in bonds stolen from her, the loss of the painting left her crushed, inconsolable. So, Edward decided to follow Sally-Anne and May. For days, he spied on them coming and going, everything. While the two busied themselves with the next issue of the newspaper, he staked them out, watching them through the window, sitting in his mother’s car so he wouldn’t be recognized. He even followed May to the bank, watching the entire time without her ever knowing. He saw her cash in a bearer bond to pay some suppliers and that was that: he had proof of their guilt, and it was irrefutable.
“Edward soon made another startling discovery. As May left the bank, she doubled over and puked her guts out onto the sidewalk. He thought maybe it was her nerves. But then it happened again, as soon as she stepped out of the taxi she had taken home. It didn’t take a genius to put two and two together. No sooner had she entered the loft than Edward jumped out of his mother’s car, climbed that tall flight of steps all the way to the very top, and began pounding on their door. What came next was absolutely horrible.
