All Lies Read online

  "You mean the book you gave us?" I asked.

  "No, something different. Some of Mikey's papers," said Bill, a little shell-shocked at Amanda's sudden desertion.

  "Was the book real?"

  "It was real. It just wasn't true. Most of it, anyway. It was a novel based on the events as he chose to relate them."

  "So you've known about this for a long time?"

  "Nah," said Bill finally. "I didn't know anything about it until about a year ago, right before my father died."

  I had to give Marsh and the other police credit, they didn't barge in. Flynn was confessing—confessing knowing full well that he was being taped. They must have figured that since we were on a roll, there was no reason to interrupt.

  "What I said before was true. Mikey was kind of dismissed in our family. As far as we all knew, he wrote this book that sucked, and that was about it. His real papers he must have packed into a box. I don't think his son—my grandfather—knew anything about it. My father discovered the papers a few years ago, but didn't tell me about them. I think he was going to look for the treasure himself, prick that he was. Then he got himself thrown in prison for murder. Only when he realized he was dying and never getting out did he finally tell me. He died a month later. The papers made it clear where the treasure was. Well, not the exact location, but I knew it was in Fordlandia. I was just preparing to go down there when your sister looked me up. So I asked Foley to keep an eye on her. I didn't know he killed her."

  Wow, that was lame. But, if he wanted to stick to that story, we were okay with it. We just wanted Mikey's story. The police could get the murder confession from him later. As it turned out, however, that wasn't necessary. There's nothing like a scorned wife to set the record straight. She had heard we one-time too many.

  "I had nothing to do with any of this," she said, almost shouting it. "Whoever is out there listening, Bill ordered Foley to kill the woman. I shoulda called the police, but he's my husband. I couldn't turn him in."

  She was smart. She knew she was facing jail time. To go in as an accessory would be better than going in for first-degree murder. Bill wasn't having any of it, though.

  "You bitch! You're the one who suggested it." He turned to me. "Don't believe her."

  I decided that it would be a good time for the police to make an appearance, and they didn't disappoint. Marsh and a half a dozen state cops came through the door, read them their rights, and cuffed them. I asked Marsh if they could wait before transporting them to see if we could get more of the story.

  "You two have been a pain in the ass from the beginning, withholding information from me, but you did come through in the end." He turned to the Flynns. "They're going to ask some questions. You have rights. You don't have to answer them."

  But answer them they did. Fueled mostly from her contempt for Bill—or for other conniving reasons—Amanda was happy to talk. This meant that Bill had to defend himself and implicate Amanda. So between them, we got the story.

  They did, in fact, contract with Foley to kill Izzy. From his father and Mikey's real writings, Bill already knew most of the story. He knew about the gold and that John had hidden it somewhere in Fordlandia. He even knew about the painting; Mikey had described it, not that it helped much. They knew Izzy had talked to Mario, so he had to be eliminated as well. But Mario escaped the first attempt on his life and went into hiding. When they found out that there was another party involved, they came after us, missing me in front of my house. Russ Simpson became a casualty of war when they found out he had the painting. Once they had the painting they—or Bill alone, if you believed Amanda—prepared to go to Brazil. Meanwhile, Foley tracked us to Miami and waited around the airport, not believing that Miami was our real destination. They still had the kill order and made the attempt on the river. Once that failed, Bill—or Bill and Amanda, if you believed Bill—instructed them to wait and see if we found the treasure before killing us.

  "So Mikey wasn't the innocent bumpkin he led us to believe in the book," I said.

  "Hell, no," answered Bill. "He was a crazy-ass loon. My father said he was the most evil man he had ever met. That's why we all thought his book sucked, because we knew it was garbage."

  "Why didn't Mikey go back for the treasure?" Sabrina asked.

  "At first, or so the story goes, he was too busy building up his business—drugs, prostitution, the usual—to be bothered. Plus, things were still too hot down there for him to show his face. He did try ransoming some of the paintings from the museum, but that blew up in his face."

  "But he obviously didn't die, like my great-grandfather thought," I said.

  "Nah. He tried to ransom the paintings because his business was falling apart. He had pissed off too many people. He did get shot—probably where the rumor started—but he escaped to Vermont. The bullet lodged in his leg and he developed gangrene. Lost his leg. From then on he wasn't in the best of health. I think he finally lost interest in the treasure."

  "And what about the eggs?"

  "Those fucking eggs. I don't even know what they were. He just kept talking about the eggs in his writings. Something real valuable."

  "Did Tony bring them back?"

  "Hell, no. Mikey did. Tony was a nothing. He made him sound big in his book, but in reality, Tony was a two-bit thug. He never amounted to anything and got himself killed a few years later. You want the eggs? You find 'em. He gave 'em to your great-grandfather. Things were getting hot for him, so he gave 'em to Bruce to hold. He had no idea Bruce was going to take off with them. So your great-grandfather was as much of a crook as mine."

  "Yeah, but the nice thing is, it stopped with him, unlike your family."

  "Why did Mikey even write the novel? It may not have been true, but it had a lot of truth to it. He named Fordlandia. Wasn't he afraid someone might see it as true and go after the treasure?"

  "He was dying. He wrote the book in 1958 and died in 1960. He was in bad health. I don't think he cared. He wanted to write a novel and his life was the only thing he could write about. So he turned it into his novel."

  The cops were getting restless to move.

  "One last question," I asked. "Did you kill my father?"

  "Your father?"

  "In Northampton."

  "Honeycutt. Northampton." His eyes lit up. "The college professor who was screwing his student? That was your father?"

  I nodded.

  "Sorry pal. He did that to himself. I didn't even know he existed."

  I believed him. My father was just a victim of the Honeycutt curse.

  "But he knew about Mikey and the book. How?"

  "You can find anything online these days. Maybe he just followed the people involved and came upon the book. You'd have to ask him."

  I jumped at him, intending to beat the snot out of him, but he was saved by Marsh, who restrained me.

  "Forget about him, Honeycutt. He's not worth it."

  The police took away their catch. Marsh stayed behind and talked to us by our car. The crowd of neighbors who had come out in force when they saw the police cars were still there. A couple of them pointed and I heard someone say "Sabrina." Sabrina was getting fidgety. Definitely time to go.

  "Well, we had our moments," Marsh was saying, "but it all worked out in the end."

  "Hey, in the Flynn's basement are some paintings stolen from the Brooklyn Museum back in 1933. They'd probably be happy to get them back."

  "One would think. Still going to look for the eggs?"

  Sabrina turned to me. "Are we?"

  "Don't need to."

  She raised an eyebrow.

  "I know where they are."

  Chapter 37

  We were back in Fairfield at the home of Harry and Edna Simpson. We knocked and waited for Harry to shuffle his way to the door. He opened it, took one look at me, then at Sabrina, and his face broke into a wide smile.

  "Miss Spencer! How nice to see you again."

  Invisible again.

  "Edna,
come quick. Miss Spencer is back."

  Come quick? Yeah, right. However, Edna must have been working out. At the mention of Sabrina's name, she set all kinds of records making it to the door.

  "Sabrina!" She put her hand over her mouth. "I'm sorry, you don't mind me calling you Sabrina, do you?"

  "As long as I can call you Edna."

  Edna giggled, turned red, then excused herself as she headed for the bathroom.

  Nothing was said until she returned, at which time Sabrina said, "You remember Del?"

  Edna gave me a quick glance, nodded, then turned her attention back to the real star. "I was so sorry to hear all about your story. That must have been terrible. Imagine my surprise when that famous reporter came to my house. I guess she heard in the local newspaper that I had met you. That was okay that I talked about you, wasn't it?"

  It wasn't, but Sabrina was gracious. "Just fine, Edna."

  "I was sorry to hear about your nephew," I said. Leave it to me to bring up the dark topic.

  "No loss," said Harry.

  "Harry!"

  "Sorry, Edna, but it's true."

  "You were right," I said. "He wasn't a good person, but he didn't deserve to die. I'm afraid it was because of us that he died. For that I feel bad."

  "Did you find the painting you were looking for?" Evidently it was time to move on from Russ.

  "We did, and it helped us solve the mystery, except for one last thing."

  "Do you need to go down to the basement again?"

  "We do, if you don't mind. Won't take long. I know exactly where to go."

  "Be our guest."

  After a few more niceties, we descended into the fifty years of clutter they called a basement.

  "Now are you going to tell me?" All I had told Sabrina was that I was pretty sure the eggs were in the basement. Why I wanted to keep it a surprise, I'm not sure. Maybe I was just proud of my deduction and wanted to present the grand reveal. Who knows, but to give her credit, she played along. Although, if it wasn't there, I was going to look pretty foolish. But looking foolish in front of Sabrina didn't bother me.

  "When we were down here before, what did we see?"

  "Dust."

  "Besides that." We reached the corner with the Simpson Gallery items. "What is out of place here?"

  She looked at the labeled boxes—the two opened Paintings boxes, the Sculptures box, Records box and Christmas Decorations box. And then I saw the light go on in her head.

  "Of course," she said, "Christmas decorations."

  "You've just gone out of business and you are storing the items not picked up by people. What possible use would you have to save Christmas decorations? If Bruce felt it was safe enough to hide the painting there, why not the eggs? This Simpson guy must have been someone he knew—from his childhood, maybe?"

  I reached in and pulled out the box. It was about two feet long, two feet deep, and two feet wide.

  "Drumroll, please."

  The tape had long since disintegrated, so I just opened the lid. Tinsel. Well, that was a little disheartening. I pulled away the tinsel to reveal Christmas ornaments—brightly painted bulbs of all shapes and sizes. Carefully, one by one we lifted them out of the box. At the very bottom were three items individually wrapped in paper. I looked over at Sabrina. I was having trouble breathing. No wonder, I was holding my breath.

  I picked up the first one. It was heavy. Definitely not a Christmas bulb. I unwrapped it. A Faberge Egg! There was no doubt about it. It was gold, with an ornate design along the top and a ring of jewels around the middle. It sat in a small, square, jewel-encrusted base.

  "Oh … my … God!" said Sabrina.

  We opened the other two. Equally as ornate, but very different from each other. We knew we were in the presence of a great historic find—not to mention a fortune. Before we flew out, I had seen online that one of the eggs from the same collection had recently been found at a flea market and had sold for a reported thirty million dollars.

  We just sat and stared at them. Finally, Sabrina said, "I wonder why Simpson didn't sell them."

  "Two guesses. First, if he and Bruce were indeed friends, he probably felt a certain loyalty to him. Bruce may have also stressed the danger that came with the painting and the eggs. Second, it was the height of the depression. If you couldn't eat them, eggs were of little use. Who had the money to buy them? Especially, who would he know who could buy them?"

  "Technically, that was three guesses."

  I gave her a playful tap. "What do we do with them?" I asked.

  "They're not really ours, but since we found them, I guess it's up to us to figure that out. I'd rather see them go to a museum than a private collector."

  "I agree. Neither of us needs the money. In truth though, we did find them in Harry and Edna's house, so they kind of belong to them."

  "I think we can convince them to do the right thing," said Sabrina. I was sure she could convince them to do anything. "No matter what they do, they'll end up rich."

  We wrapped them back up in the paper and put them back in the box, sans the other bulbs. Then we took them up to show Edna and Harry. Edna made another trip to the bathroom while Harry sat in a chair fanning himself. They informed us immediately that they trusted Sabrina to do the right thing. Meaning they didn't trust me? This invisible thing was getting old.

  *****

  Needless to say, the art world was set on its ear. Bestselling mystery author Sabrina Spencer and friend solved not one, but two mysteries. The Brooklyn Museum was getting back its stolen paintings and the world now knew the fate of three of the missing Faberge Eggs. Harry and Edna became quite wealthy overnight and were the toast of Fairfield and beyond.

  Sabrina's publisher offered her a seven figure advance for the true-life account of our adventures. She insisted that it be co-written by me—we knew who would do the actual writing part of it—and that half the advance would be mine. I decided I didn't have to look for another job. My invisibility was ending, as well.

  Sabrina and I moved into my father's house, but I couldn't bear the thought of leaving my apartment in East Boston, so I contacted the owners and convinced them to let me buy the building. Offering them above market value helped clinch the deal. I kept my apartment as our city retreat. Sabrina had developed a nice relationship with Mo, so I had a feeling we would be spending a fair amount of time there. Since I now owned the building and didn't need the money, I informed Mo and Seymour that they could live there rent-free. Seymour actually smiled. Scary.

  *****

  We were lying in bed in our new house about a month after the announcement of the finding of the eggs and the resulting furor. It was still my father's furniture (except for the bed and the couch in the den, both of which we replaced immediately), as we hadn't had time to shop for anything. Somehow we hadn't been discovered there by the media. Some of the neighbors knew who we were, but being a neighborhood of academics, they had little use for reporters tramping all over their yards, so they kept quiet.

  Sabrina had just turned down her 52nd interview request and was quickly developing a reputation as the new J.D. Salinger.

  "I guess I failed," she said.

  "Failed what?"

  "My 'trust' class. You did great in your class. You discovered the secret of self-defense. I didn't learn to trust at all. If anything, I want to back ever further away from people."

  "Maybe my teacher was better than yours."

  "You were great. I just didn't want to embrace it."

  "It's going to take time. And it doesn't mean that when you learn it you will suddenly want to do interviews. You may never want to, but that has nothing to do with trust. Look at the sincere people you encountered—people who weren't out for themselves: The Simpsons, Emil, Luis and Paulo, even all the people on the flight to Miami. Those people were protecting you. They weren't doing it for what they could gain. They were honestly moved by your story and saw those photographers for the parasites they were. They came to your a
id honestly."

  "They did, and I appreciate all of the 'real' people we met. But I'm just not…"

  "…Ready yet," I finished. "I understand. Despite my progress, I don't feel I'm ready yet either in my training. We just have to accept every little step we can."

  She leaned over and kissed me and we made love slowly and tenderly. There was no clinging on her part, no holding on for dear life. It was love and it was trust. She may not have seen it, and maybe she never would, but as far as I was concerned, she had come a long way.

  Afterward, with Sabrina sleeping in my arms, I thought about my family. I finally felt that I knew them. I didn't like any of them, but I knew them. In every case, lies and bad decisions had destroyed them. And not just my family. Sabrina's family, Bill Flynn's family, and even Mario's family, were all affected by the greedy actions of a group of men 85 years earlier.

  I'll never know what my father was trying to tell me on his deathbed, but it had become moot. I was never going to follow in the footsteps of my ancestors. And the proof of that was the woman lying by my side.

  The End

  Author's Note:

  Several real historic places and events are referenced in All Lies. 1) Fordlandia is a real town and a fascinating footnote in American history. I have tried to be as accurate as possible in my brief retelling of the story of Fordlandia, but in the effort to tell a good fictional story, some of the facts may have become a little smudged; 2) The Brooklyn Museum heist was also a real event, and is still considered an unsolved mystery to this day. The New York Times article referenced in All Lies was the exact article published in 1933 after the heist; 3) The story of the stolen Faberge Eggs is also true, including the tidbit about one being recently uncovered at a flea market and subsequently sold for more than $30 million. 4) The first entry in Ray Worth's log was taken verbatim from my father's log (a bombardier on a B-24). One other entry was paraphrased from his navigator's log.