George-Harrison stood waiting for me in front of the pickup. We closed up his studio and hit the road again, making it to the outskirts of Baltimore by nightfall.
First thing the next day, we paid Professor Morrison a visit and upheld our end of the bargain. We filled him in on all we had discovered—or at least all the news that was fit to print, since the rest was just for us. We tried asking subtly if he had any leads for tracking down the bank my mother might have used to store the painting. Morrison didn’t even blink an eye at the question, taking on his normal crabby disposition and shoving his manuscript at us like we were fools.
“See for yourselves! It’s written right in here, if you had bothered to pay attention. The Stanfields were major stockholders on the board of the Corporate Bank of Baltimore, an establishment still in existence today, I believe. I trust you’ll be able to procure the yellow pages and look it up yourselves? Now, once more: Do I truly have your consent to publish this book?”
“Yes, as long as you can answer one final question,” I told him.
“Well then, for goodness’ sake, ask away!” he said, flustered.
“Are you the one who wrote the anonymous letters?”
In response, Morrison pointed toward the door.
“Out! Just get out. You two are absolutely out of your minds!”
We arrived at the bank and were received by a cold, no-nonsense teller. Before he could confirm or deny the existence of the safety-deposit box, we had to prove that we were the rightful owners. I tried in vain to explain that it had belonged to my mother, who had recently passed away, but the man wouldn’t budge. He asked for proof that I was the legitimate next of kin. As soon as I showed him my passport, everything spiraled into a Kafkaesque merry-go-round. My last name was Donovan . . . Mum had opened the safety-deposit box under her maiden name . . . which she’d changed when she moved to England . . . Even if Dad had sent me an original copy of their marriage certificate, it wouldn’t have been enough to convince the overzealous gatekeeper.
Finally, clearly wanting to get rid of us, the teller explained that the only person with the authority to override the bank’s strict rules was the branch president and CEO, who only stopped in twice a week and wouldn’t be back until the day after tomorrow. It was pointless in any event, he added. After all, Mr. Clark was a Mormon, and Mormons never bent the rules, not even a tiny bit.
“Sorry, did you say Mr. Clark?”
“Why, are you hard of hearing?” sighed the teller.
Knowing we had no time to waste, I begged and pleaded with the teller to get a message to Mr. Clark that Sally-Anne Stanfield’s daughter was in town. I told him to remind the bank president that his wife—or at least his wife at the time—had worked closely with my mother to launch a weekly paper, and that my mother had entrusted him with a painting of a girl sitting by a window. I was convinced it was enough to land us a meeting, at the very least. I left my number with the teller, as well as the address of our hotel, and even offered to leave my passport. The man waved away my offer, immovable as ever, but took the scrap of paper and promised to pass along the message, as long as I agreed to vacate the premises immediately.
“I just don’t think it’s going to work,” said George-Harrison as we finally walked out of that horrible bank. “I mean, especially considering the boss is a Mormon.”
“Say that again! Repeat what you just said.”
George-Harrison balked. “What? I didn’t mean to offend anyone! I’ve got nothing against Mormons.”
I leaned in and kissed him, leaving him totally clueless as to what caused my sudden burst of energy. What he said had reminded me of a conversation between Maggie and my dad, when my sister was cooking up an excuse for sneaking around his apartment.
“Mormons wouldn’t call the work of other Mormons into question!” I whispered, breathing fast.
“Slow down, you’re not making any sense.”
“Mormons! They’re obsessed with genealogy. There’s a whole genealogical center in Utah they founded at the end of the nineteenth century. But they didn’t stop there! They continued into Europe and managed to convince nearly every major country to provide them with all these vital records for their studies. To this day, they’ve still got millions upon millions of records on microfilm, all stored in safes hidden away in the mountains.”
“How the hell do you know all this?”