Despite his statue greeting people as they got off the boat—the only mode of transportation to the town—Henry Ford never actually visited the town himself. Fordlandia was a massive failure, and in 1945, his grandson sold the land back to the Brazilian government for a loss of twenty million dollars. No rubber was ever produced from the venture. A few people still lived in the dilapidated town, some of them descendants of the Brazilian workers.
"Wow," I said when we finished. "I had no idea about any of that."
"Me neither," said Sabrina, "but it looks like dozens of articles and even a book have been written about it. I guess we lead a sheltered life."
"So do you think Bruce was a worker there?" I asked. We had stopped calling him my great-grandfather and just referred to him as Bruce.
"He was involved in running illegal booze," replied Sabrina. "What if they were making shipments to the 'Island of Innocence'?"
"From the states? Would it be worth it?" I asked. "Couldn't they get it cheaper from Mexico, or pretty much anywhere down there?"
"Yeah, but as you reminded me, this was your relative."
She wasn't wrong. "But he worked for others," I said. "They would have sent him down. Wouldn't they have had enough brains to see the stupidity of that?"
"You're kidding, right?"
I shrugged. "Maybe they only made the one attempt before figuring out it wasn't going to be lucrative."
"So I think we now know where we need to go. Now the question is why?"
"And going back to my father's notes, what did he mean with all that about Mikey? And why did he stop there? It seemed he was on to something. I think we can assume he read the material in his attic. Maybe the fact that Mikey's body was never found bothered him."
I was getting no response from Sabrina. She was back at the computer.
Finally she said, "I was thinking the same thing, so I wanted to check something. You ready for this?"
"Probably not."
"As you said, your father had been dabbling with this for a long time. Up until the Mikey stuff, your father hadn't made any notes for over three years. Those last entries, however, were added only a week before he was shot. It seems the minute he got onto this new topic, he was killed."
I didn't know what to say. Even as I learned that the deaths of my grandfather and great-grandfather were in fact murder, I still assumed that my father's death was totally unrelated to all of this. Hell, it had to be. They had the woman's husband in jail. He admitted to it. So was it just coincidence? The trouble was, I no longer believed in coincidence. But this would be hard to explain any other way.
I sat staring at Sabrina. She let me stare. That was good, because I had nothing to say. What could I say?
"Fuck it," I finally said, throwing my hands in the air.
"I expected something a bit deeper, but we can go with that," she answered.
"It doesn't make sense," I said, "and I don't think I can deal with that right now, so let's concentrate on something different. Izzy wrote that the Flynns seemed nervous. What if they knew that Mikey wasn't really killed and they were afraid to let out the big family secret?"
"I'm sure he died long ago, but I suppose some families are very protective about their ancestors. It's possible."
"I'd give my ancestors up in a heartbeat," I said.
"I don't blame you."
"So, another road trip?" I asked.
"Did Izzy say where they live? I seem to remember seeing Vermont, but I'm not sure where in Vermont."
"She had it listed as Brattleboro. That's only an hour or so north of here."
"Her itinerary is becoming clearer," said Sabrina. "She must have gone from New York to Vermont to see the Flynns, then on to Chicago to see Mario."
"And then her unfortunate trip to see me."
It was getting late and didn't make sense to head back to Boston if we were going to Vermont the next day, so we found a hotel nearby. I couldn't sleep in that house yet, and I didn't want to use my mother's house while she was away.
*****
In the morning we were on our way to Brattleboro. Having grown up an hour south, I was actually pretty familiar with the area. An old mill town, Brattleboro came to life in the sixties and seventies as a refuge for hippies and ex-hippies. It developed quite the counter-culture reputation. I was too young to experience it, but I was told that whether or not you agreed with what Brattleboro had become in those couple of decades, it certainly had personality. Before they split up, my parents spent a lot of time there and later filled me full of stories of that era.
But as always happens, the hippies grew older and started donning suits and ties (or the ex-hippie equivalent) and became bankers, store owners, and insurance or real estate agents. Many ran for public office, and although they wanted to stay true to their counter-culture ideals, the reality of compromise set in. Many even found themselves starting to believe in the very things that they had fought so hard against in their protest days.
These days the town was sorely in need of a personality. It was now a strange mixture of art galleries and dollar stores. I had only been through there a couple of times in the last ten years, but both times felt that the town had gotten dirtier. Maybe it was reverting back to its mill town roots.
I explained all this to Sabrina as we drove up Interstate 91.
"Now who's the travel agent?" she asked.
We found Bill and Amanda Flynn's address in Izzy's notes. Being a Saturday, we were hoping to find them in. We did, but not until late that afternoon. We spent the day exploring Brattleboro, coming back every hour or so to check to see if they had returned home. Finally, at about four o'clock, we saw a car sitting in the driveway.
They lived in an old three-story Vermont house, kept up as well as you could keep up a 150-year-old house. To me it looked like a spider breeding ground.
A rather nondescript man about my age answered the door—was that how people referred to me? He was shorter than me by a couple of inches and had wispy red hair, the edges trying to turn gray. He didn't look particularly friendly or unfriendly, just not interested why two people were at his door. He was holding a beer can.
"Yeah?"
"Mr. Flynn, my name is Delmore Honeycutt." The reaction was almost imperceptible—almost. He knew the last name. "And this is Sabrina Spencer." We had decided to go back to Sabrina's pen name—partly because he knew the name Worth from Izzy, and partly to see if her fame would get us further. So much for that. It didn't generate any response at all.
"Our great-grandfathers knew each other."
"How nice for them." He was trying to be uncaring, but when he licked his lips I knew that he was, in fact, nervous. He didn't say anything more.
A normal conversation would follow some form of politeness—"What can I do for you," or some such thing. The fact that none of that was forthcoming obviously meant that he knew—or suspected—why we were there.
Sabrina got it going. "You recently talked to my sister, Isobel Worth."
"Can't say that I did."
"Well, yeah, you did," I said. "We have her notes."
He went quiet again.
"Can we come in, Mr. Flynn?" asked Sabrina. "This is important."
With an audible sigh, he moved aside and let us pass.
Despite its ancient exterior, the inside was pretty modern and comfortable. No spiders that I could see. He motioned us to a couch. His wife came into the room from the kitchen. She was a female version of Bill—around the same height, with the same color hair. She even had the same lack of personality.
"Amanda, this is Delmore Honeycutt and … I don't remember your name … the sister of that woman who came by with all the questions."
"Oh, not again. Why can't you people just leave us alone?"
"We would … I'm Sabrina, by the way … but we are involved in something that we have to find the answer to."
"Your problem, not ours," she said.
"Not really," I said. "Like it or not, we
are all involved. And it's become dangerous. If you can tell us what we need to know, we can be out of your hair for good."
"We saw on the Boston news that your sister was killed. Sorry." Was Bill opening up? "But she was killed by a mugger, right?"
"No. She was killed in connection to this," answered Sabrina. They looked at each other. "Look," Sabrina continued, "we didn't ask to get involved in this any more than you did. We were happy in our ignorance. But the fact is, we're stuck in the middle of it now, and unless we can solve it, all of our lives are in danger."
"What did you say your name is?" asked Amanda.
"Sabrina. Sabrina Spencer."
"Like the mystery writer."
"That's me."
"Huh. Heard of you but haven't read any of your books. So let me guess. You're writing about it?"
"I'm not going to be in any book," said Bill.
"No." Sabrina replied. "It's all a little convoluted. Your great-grandfather and Del's great-grandfather were friends. They also committed a crime together. My grandfather killed Del's grandfather over that same crime. Now my sister is dead and a man in Nebraska is dead because of it. We're trying to stop anyone else from dying. If you can just answer a few questions, we'll be on our way and, hopefully, you won't have to deal with any of this ever again."
She had them. I think the pressure of family secrets, and now dead people, finally got to them. Bill looked at Amanda. She gave a nod.
"What do you need to know?" he asked.
"What do you know about everything that went on with Mikey?"
They looked at each other again, this time with a puzzled look.
"Who's Mikey?"
It was our turn to look at each other. Did we have the right person?
"Your great-grandfather."
"His name was Preston. Preston Flynn."
I must have looked confused, so Bill cleared it up.
"I suppose it's possible that he went by a different name when he was young. He robbed a museum in New York and skipped town."
"Same person. He was known as Mikey back then."
"And you're looking for the paintings he stole."
"Uh, no. Why, do you have them?"
I could tell by his face that he did.
"You've got to understand," explained Bill. "These fucking paintings have been the bane of our existence. Did you know that this was his house? I'm like the fourth generation to live here. He put those paintings in the basement and told my grandfather not to breathe a word about them. He, in turn, told my father, who told me. I'm sick of it."
"Why didn't you just turn them in?" asked Sabrina.
"Because we were told that there was a lot of danger associated with them and that we'd be better off keeping our mouths shut. And now you show up looking for them."
"We're not," I repeated. "There were eleven paintings stolen, but only ten reported missing. We were looking for the eleventh, which we've already found."
"Frankly," added Sabrina, "if you turned those over to the authorities—and you could make up some story about finding them in your basement—you'd be heroes. Those paintings aren't dangerous at this point. The one we have is."
"Then what are you here for?"
"We need information about Mikey. He was involved—in some way, anyway—in a crime before that one. The eleventh painting that I mentioned was the one they were robbing the museum to get. That painting holds a clue to the earlier crime. But we're missing something and we're hoping that any information you can give us about Mikey will give us the missing clue."
"I don't think we can help you. I don't really know that much about him. He died around 1960, I think. Other than this painting shit hanging over our heads, it's ancient history."
"So that's it?" I asked. "You know nothing more about him?"
"Nothing."
"Except," said Amanda, "that he wrote a book."
Chapter 24
"A book?" Sabrina and I blurted out almost simultaneously.
"Oh yeah," said Bill. "Forgot about that."
"That was a pretty big 'forgot'," I said.
"Hey," he said, showing a bit of anger. "Unlike you, we've tried our best to forget about him and anything associated with him. Up until your sister," looking at Sabrina, "and that other guy long before her came by, I had forgotten all about him … except for the paintings."
"Someone else came by?" I asked.
"Yeah, some Italian guy. Nice enough. When he found out I didn't know anything, he left."
"When was this?"
Bill looked to Amanda for help. "I don't know. Couple of years ago maybe."
"More than that," said Amanda. "Closer to four years."
"Did you tell him about the paintings or the book?"
"I've never told anyone about the paintings—sort of the family curse…"
"I know all about that," I mumbled.
"As for the book, I forgot we had it."
"You have a copy?" asked Sabrina.
"I just said that, right?"
The longer I knew Sabrina, the more I realized that there were things you just didn't say to her. Anything that violated her personal space in some way—such as when Russ was staring at her boobs. Bill had just committed a verbal violation—a snide comeback. She probably had to deal with those on a constant basis in prison when she first got there, but probably not so much toward the end. I could see why. Her face turned to stone and she just stared at Bill. And this was no ordinary stare; there was venom behind it.
Bill caught it. He had to. He would have had to have been dumb as a stump not to. The room went deadly silent. I didn't say anything. This was Sabrina's battle to win—and winning was the only option.
"Uh, sorry. Didn't mean it that way," Bill finally said, looking down. We had a winner, and the pecking order was now firmly established.
Amanda got up, coming to Bill's rescue, and went over to the built-in bookcase on the wall. It only took her a minute to find what she was looking for. She came back with a fairly new looking hardcover, minus a dust-jacket, and handed it to me.
Etched on the front cover and spine were My Criminal Life: A Novel, by Preston Flynn. I quickly looked through it, then handed it to the book expert. Sabrina opened the cover and looked at the first few pages.
"It was self-published in 1958," she said.
"Self-published?" I said. "They had that back then?"
"Yes, but back then you had to pay a publisher to publish it for you. They were known as vanity presses. You still hear the term, but not as much, as self-publishing becomes easier and more accessible for people to do it themselves. Back then it was assumed that you were some kind of hack and could only get published if you paid someone to do it for you. The publisher he used was probably one of the smaller ones. I've never heard of it … which means nothing."
"It looks so new," I said.
"I can answer that," said Bill, his manhood slowly returning. "I doubt if anybody in my family ever read it. We certainly didn't. I have a vague memory of my grandfather—Preston's son—calling it a piece of crap." He hesitated. "I think he was also ashamed of his father. You know, having a criminal in the family.
"May we borrow it?" asked Sabrina, all memory of the previous incident already vanished.
"You can have it, for all I care. If it will help end all of this, then you're welcome to it."
"If you turn in the paintings," I reassured him, "I think you will finally be free of it all. They were stolen from the Brooklyn Museum. I'm sure they'd be mighty happy to get them back."
We left them with smiles of relief on their faces.
As we were walking out to my car Sabrina said, "So Mario—at least we have to assume it was him—has known about this for a long time."
"Well, unlike the Flynns, the Guidrys probably kept the story alive. My guess is that each generation of that family has been as greedy as the one before it."
"No doubt. And four years ago he probably came across some information on Mikey he didn'
t have before, looked up the Flynns, and then went away disappointed. Then when Izzy showed up, the door was once again opened."
We started on our way. Dusk had fallen and a light rain was falling. The highway was shiny in the headlights. I said, "You read, I'll drive."
Sabrina spent a few minutes flipping through it, getting a feeling for the book.
"Well, I can tell you right away that the book isn't any better than the painting in terms of quality. Simply stated …"
"… It sucks, right?"
"Right. He wasn't a very educated man, but he had a story to tell. And he's telling it in the form of a novel."
"Let's just hope it's the story we're look…"
We were hit from behind … hard. The car swerved across the lanes as I frantically tried to regain control. I avoided going off the highway and finally pulled over to the side. The car stalled. Because of the rain and the darkness, the road was fairly empty of traffic. I wasn't sure anyone else had even seen the accident.
All Lies Page 14
