The Last of the Stanfields(61)

I learned all about her diabetic father with his crummy old jalopy and his Beatles obsession . . . Then the sister she always fought with, and her sister’s boyfriend, who ran a gastropub . . . Her brother’s crush on a fellow librarian . . . I had already wasted all day reading old newspapers only to now be trapped listening to an endless monologue about her family.

“I must be boring you,” she said, after an eternity.

“Are you kidding? Not at all,” I replied, courteous as could be. “It sounds like there’s never a dull moment with you guys. I bet it would be a real blast meeting a family like yours. Or better yet, have you ever considered renting them out?”

“I know I’m blabbing on and on. I just miss them.”

“By all means, go ahead, don’t stop on my account.”

“If you ever come to England, I can introduce you to them.”

Whoa. Was she actually coming on to me? No one would propose such a thing, really, without implying something more.

“Sounds like a plan,” I replied. “Who knows where the investigation might lead?”

“I imagine it’ll lead to Canada sooner or later, since that’s where all the anonymous letters came from.”

“The first ones, sure. But the second one I received had a Baltimore postmark.”

“Why would the poison-pen go to all that trouble? He could have just sent them from the same place.”

“Maybe to cover his tracks? Or maybe he just likes to travel.”

“You think he’s here in Baltimore right now, as we speak? There’s something extremely unsettling about that, don’t you think?”

“Nope, not at all. We have no idea what his intentions are, so why should we be scared?”

“Because . . . we have no idea what his intentions are.”

She had a point. I took another stab at it.

“Okay. Intentions. The poison-pen wanted us to end up together, and here we are.”

“Sure, for starters. He also wanted us to learn that our mothers knew each other, and here we are. He also wanted you to search for your long-lost father, and here you are,” Eleanor-Rigby said, rattling off points that were hard to deny.

“Well, I’ve always wanted to find my father, letter or no letter.”

“Yeah, but receiving the letter was the catalyst, the whole reason you’re here right now. But that’s not the real issue. The real issue is: Why did he orchestrate all this? To what end?”

“Are you actually asking me? Or do you already know the answer?”

She leaned across the table, coming closer, and looked deep into my eyes. That was it—she was definitely coming on to me, no doubt about it. I hadn’t been with anyone since Melanie, and lord knows I’m not exactly a master of seduction, but I found something off-putting about a woman being so forward.

“Money,” she said coolly. “The poison-pen wants us to find the money our mothers stole.”

“Who said it was money they stole?”

“Are you actually asking me? Or do you already know the answer?”

“How could I know the answer to that?”

“I don’t know, you tell me!”

“So, you still don’t trust me?”

“Come on, honestly? You must have at least thought it might be me who wrote the letter. The idea never even crossed your mind?”

“No, it didn’t. I guess my mind’s not quite that twisted. I’m going to bed. If you’re still suspicious of me tomorrow morning, if you still think I might be a big enough bastard to pull something like this off—well, then we’ll have to go our separate ways and start investigating on our own.”

“Great idea,” she shot back, rising to her feet before I could.

Well, that settled that. She definitely hadn’t been coming on to me. I paid the bill and walked straight out.

Back in my hotel room, I fell asleep feeling exhausted, irritated, and generally gloomy. I figured a good night’s sleep would clear my head. Once more, I figured wrong.



Eleanor-Rigby

Not only was he an absolute swine with an abysmal sense of humor, but he had the nerve to walk out on me! Granted, he did treat me to dinner, which was classy on his part. And maybe I had gone a little bit too far . . . but that didn’t make him any less infuriating. Maggie would have told me that the only time a guy runs away like a thief in the night is if he has something to hide. And, might I add, he wasn’t doing himself any favors in the honesty department with the whole furniture-aging scheme. Or maybe I had it backwards. Maybe he truly had been offended by my insinuations, which might be because he was innocent.

I returned to the hotel, thinking a good night’s sleep might clear my head. After emailing the photos of the microfiches to myself, I opened them on my laptop and sat cross-legged on the bed to read the newspaper pages. Just then, I remembered the note I had jotted down about that photo of the masquerade ball. I looked over the scrap of paper, found the article, and started reading.

The Stanfields, headed by matriarch Hanna Stanfield, are one of Baltimore’s most powerful families. Hanna’s husband, Robert, a war hero who served in World War II, owes the family’s success to his wife, who is credited with making the Stanfields one of the country’s leading art dealers.

In a few days’ time, the Stanfields will hold an exclusive auction for the upper echelon of the art world, presenting masterpieces by La Tour (estimated at $600,000), Degas (estimated at $450,000) and Vermeer (estimated at $1,000,000) to buyers from all over the world.