“May I ask who the client is?”
We’d arrived at the moment of truth. Was I breaking client confidentiality by revealing Louisa’s name? Almost certainly. But was it breaking confidentiality to share the names of Sophie Frankow and Anneliese Prei Frankow? It was a fine line, but one I had to cross.
“Before I say anything more, I need to know that what I tell you stays between us. I can’t have you talking to Corbin or Yvette about this. Or anyone else for that matter.”
“You have my word. There’s been far too much buried in my past. Now, tell me, who is your client?”
“I can’t reveal the name of my client, but I can tell you that the investigation has led us to Anneliese Prei Frankow and her daughter, Sophie.”
“So you knew, when you came here that very first day, that Anton was Sophie’s father?”
I felt myself blush. “We found a Certificate of Baptism for Sophie. Anneliese was named as the mother. Anton was named as the father. I knew from my family tree research that Anton was my great-grandfather.”
I was expecting Olivia to get all huffy with me, possibly even throw me out. Instead, she laughed, a rich, throaty sound that belied her age. “How very enterprising of you. I admire a woman with chutzpah. Have you figured out what Sophie’s relation to you is?”
I laughed along with her. “No. Every time I try I get a headache. It seems so complicated.”
“Complicated or not, I don’t believe it’s a coincidence that your client came to you with this case.”
“What do you mean? I don’t believe my client is aware of my connection to Sophie Frankow, though I will have to include that information in my final report.”
“I don’t mean it wasn’t a coincidence in that way. I meant it was fate.” Olivia tilted her head to the right and studied me through narrowed eyes. “I’ve always believed fate is the universe’s way of putting things in order. The reason Anton died young and left me a widow so early.”
Coincidence or fate? I didn’t know. “I’m not sure what to believe any more. The past few months, this case, have altered my perspective in so many ways. I’ve never believed in spirits or psychics, but a few days ago, I went to see a psychometrist.”
“There was a guy on television back in the seventies, the Amazing Kreskin. He billed himself as a mentalist, claimed he could read minds. I recall he did not want to be considered a psychic.”
“This isn’t the same thing. A psychometrist is someone who purports to read objects, not minds. The theory is that objects are porous and can store an owner’s history and emotions. I took some jewelry that belonged to Anneliese.”
“Fascinating. Did you learn anything?”
“Perhaps. I’m still skeptical about the science behind it. There are plenty of naysayers who believe the information is garnered through cold readings and confirmation bias. I was careful not to give anything away, but Past & Present has a website and Facebook page, and Randi—that’s the psychometrist’s name—did a lot of talking about the actual objects versus their history.”
“And yet, something about what Randi said resonated with you, despite your inner cynic.”
I nodded. “Randi told me Anneliese was killed by someone she trusted, perhaps even loved, though she wasn’t as sure about the love part. I’ll admit it took me by surprise. How would holding a piece of jewelry lead her to that conclusion? It also made me wonder what other objects could tell me about the past. Like your lovely crystal vase, for example. I’ve been admiring the etchings. The birds, the envelope and pen, the cornflower. It tells a story. Perhaps two lovers who could only contact each other by writing letters.”
“I’ve never been much of a romantic,” Olivia said. Her posture had gone from relaxed to rigid, her expression from interested to incensed. “Are you implying that this vase was a gift from Anton to Anneliese? If so, how on earth would it have come into my possession?”
If I told Olivia what I really thought—that Anton was the killer, and not Horst, that the vase was the murder weapon—she would almost certainly ask me to leave and never come back. Even worse, she’d likely tell Corbin all about it. The last thing I needed to experience was Corbin’s wrath. I formulated my response carefully.
“I think the vase originally belonged to Anneliese, and that it was a gift to her from Anton. It’s the sort of thing he’d bring back from a buying trip in England. Perhaps he even gave it to her on the ship. I believe that she returned it to him when she married Horst, and he gave it to you. Even so—”
“Even so, you want to take this vase to your psychometrist.”
“I realize it’s a lot to ask, but it would still hold some history of Anneliese, provided psychometry can be trusted. I’m not convinced it can be, but I owe it to my client to try every avenue, no matter how unorthodox.”
I’m not sure what I was expecting, but the gratitude in her eyes wasn’t it. I was sure she knew what her husband had done, and she’d been protecting him, and his memory, all these years. I’d given her a plausible explanation for owning the crystal vase. Her voice quivered as she pointed to it with a trembling hand.
“Take the vase and keep it. I’ve lived with it for far too long.”
32
A saner person might have taken the vase and run, and rest assured, I wasted no time storing it into the canvas bag I’d stashed in my purse on the off-chance I’d get lucky, but I wanted to find out more about Sophie’s “Uncle Toni” reference on Anton’s obituary. I wasn’t sure what Olivia knew, but I had to find out.
“I have a couple of things to show you, Gran.”
Olivia attempted a smile. “Do I want to see them?”
“I don’t know. They connect Sophie Frankow to Anton…and Corbin. It may explain why Corbin stopped me from seeing you.”
“You have a way of piquing my interest and piercing my heart at the same time,” Olivia said. “Let’s see what you have.”
“You once told me that despite his philandering ways, Anton wouldn’t have walked away from the responsibility of a child. Not if he knew. By your own admission, he did know about her because you told him about Anneliese’s visit.” I opened my purse, took out the obituary Sophie had marked “Uncle Toni,” and handed it to her.
“Anton wanted to adopt Sophie,” Olivia said, her voice so quiet that I had to strain to hear. “I would have none of it. No one knew he was her father. I certainly had no knowledge of his name on her Certificate of Baptism. Besides, we had Corbin to consider. He was entering his preteen years, for heaven’s sake. That’s a tough enough time in a boy’s life. He didn’t need the stigma of an illegitimate half-sister. We argued for weeks, but Anton eventually agreed to drop it.”
“So you didn’t know that he’d connected with Sophie.”
“Oh, I knew eventually, although Anton kept me in the dark for several years. Sophie went into foster care after Horst was arrested. I convinced myself it was for the best. She’d find new parents to adopt her, people who chose her, not people who felt…obligated.”
“Except new parents didn’t come her way. Sophie stayed in the system until she aged out at the ripe old age of sixteen with a grade ten education. From what I can gather, her time in foster care was less than ideal.” I saw Olivia flinch and felt like a bully, but surely she didn’t expect me to believe the fairy-tale-ending story she was trying to spin.
“I didn’t know any of that—at least not until much later. I’m embarrassed to admit I’d all but forgotten about her, at least until the day Anton, Corbin, and I went to the Yorkdale Shopping Centre. It was the latest shiny new thing in 1964, an enclosed shopping mall, by far the biggest in Canada at the time, and one of the largest in the world.”
I’m not a huge fan of shopping malls in general, preferring small, indie, and specialized shops to mass-market chains, but even I’ve been to Yorkdale, if only to window shop at one of the many upscale merchants. Even so, I’d never given a moment’s thought to when it was built. It had just always been there.
It was as if Olivia read my thoughts. “Did you know, when it opened, that Yorkdale was the first Canadian mall to include two major department stores under the same roof, Eaton’s, and its biggest rival, Simpsons? Sadly, neither survived the ’90s, but at the time Eaton’s and Simpsons were considered iconic.”
“Let me guess. Eaton’s and Simpsons both had well-stocked crystal and glass departments. Anton wanted to check out the competition.”
Olivia laughed. “Exactly. Corbin, of course, was bored out of his mind. He was nineteen at the time, and more interested in pickup trucks and trashy girls than teacups and trinkets. Anton was trying to entertain him with tales of his buying trips when I spotted Sophie giggling over china patterns with an acne-ridden teenaged girl. Sophie was only eleven at the time, but I would have recognized her anywhere. Or should I say, I would have recognized Anton’s daughter, and Corbin’s sister, anywhere.”
“It must have been a shock to see her.”
“Not as much of a shock as when she ran up to Anton, hugged him, and called him ‘Uncle Toni.’”
“What did you do?”
“What could I do? Make a scene in public? Embarrass everyone, including my son? There would be plenty of time for recriminations once we got home. Sophie’s friend seemed to think I knew Sophie, and no one corrected her. Later, Anton said she lived in the same foster home as Sophie. He didn’t mention her name and it was the last time I saw the girl or Sophie.”
“What about Anton?”
“He never admitted it, but I know that he continued to see Sophie, albeit infrequently, until her sixteenth birthday. As long as he was discreet about it, I could turn a blind eye. It was easier for everyone that way.”
“What about Corbin?”
“That day in Simpsons there was no sign of recognition on either side. To the best of my knowledge, they never saw each other again.”
Except that they had, and I had the photo booth filmstrip to prove it. In that moment, I decided not to show it to Olivia after all. There was no reason to hurt her, no reason to let her know that both her husband and her son had deceived her. Corbin, on the other hand, was fair game. I would wait until the time was right. I got up to leave. “You look exhausted. I should probably go, let you get some rest.”
“Before you do, there’s something...” Her voice trailed off, uncertain.
I sat back down, curious. What other secrets could my great-grandmother be hiding? “What sort of something?”
Olivia pulled a photo album from behind the throw pillow beside her and handed it to me, her arthritic hands shaking at the effort. “I wasn’t sure when to give this to you, but I think the time is right.”
My fingers traced the embossed gold lettering on the brown leather cover.
Abigail Osgoode: 1967-1980.
My mother.
33
I’ve only seen a handful of pictures of my mother as an adult, and those only as recently as this past year. Her wedding photo, four family photos, taken the year I was five, a few grainy images in the local newspaper talking up Abigail Osgoode’s volunteer efforts. Olivia shook her head when I told her.
“Your father was always too proud and too stubborn by half,” she said, sorrow etched into every line of her face. “I had reprints made of every single photo in that album, sent them by courier, made certain Jimmy would have to sign for the package. I can almost forgive him for not showing them to you…almost…but to think he destroyed them. It breaks my heart.”
And mine, not that I would ever admit it. “He probably thought he was protecting me.” Or maybe he was protecting himself. My fingers retraced the gold embossed lettering. Abigail Osgoode: 1967-1980 “Would you do me a favor?”
“If I can.”
“Would you look at these with me?”
“I was hoping you’d ask.”
I drove home, the album on the seat beside me, my mind spinning in a million different directions. I’d always thought of my grandfather as spoiled, but the photographs of my mother illustrated an idyllic upbringing. It was all so very different from my own suburban, single parent childhood, my early years filled with delivering newspapers and babysitting, the teen years working part-time as a cashier at a cut-rate grocery store. No such minimum wage labor for Abigail Osgoode, her summers spent lounging on the shores of Lake Miakoda, her winter vacations at Alpine ski resorts. Annual school photos showed a pretty, blue-eyed blonde with nice clothes and the confident air of the entitled.
Listening to Olivia share the stories behind the pictures, her voice filled with pride, I could begin to imagine how Corbin and Yvette must have felt when their pampered princess announced her pregnancy at seventeen. How had a girl from Moore Gate Manor wound up with a working class guy like Jimmy Barnstable?
“Abigail was given the choice of abortion or adoption,” my great-grandmother had said, her voice tinged with regret. “No one considered that she would choose keeping the baby and marrying Jimmy.”
My father had told me as much, the same set of demands coming from his own parents. He never forgave either family. I felt myself shut down emotionally and closed the album with a decisive snap. I was gone before my great-grandmother could see me cry.
Once back home I pushed all thoughts of Abigail Osgoode from my mind and forced myself to consider what else I’d learned from my visit with Olivia. She knew that Anton had connected with Sophie, though she’d been unaware of Corbin’s involvement. The revelation held more questions than answers. Had Corbin seen Sophie many times, or just the once? How had Anton convinced his son not to tell his mother, and when did the visits stop? Olivia seemed to think that Sophie’s sixteenth birthday marked the end of their association. I wasn’t so sure. I was about to call Chantelle to update her when the phone rang. Shirley.
“I’ve gone through the archives,” she said, her excitement palpable. “Let me tell you, it’s a lot easier when everything is online. Beats the old microfiche system by a mile. I’ve made notes, printed copies of everything relevant, and put it in a binder for you. I can come over whenever you’re ready.”
As much as my visit to Olivia had emotionally exhausted me, I had an appointment with Randi in the morning, and I didn’t want to dampen Shirley’s enthusiasm by putting her off until Thursday. Besides, I was eager to find out what she’d learned.
“No time like the present. I’ll see if Chantelle can make it.”
Shirley agreed to come over within the hour. Chantelle, on the other hand, had back-to-back classes at the gym, but a free day on Wednesday.
We scheduled a meeting for Wednesday afternoon, when I would fill her in on everything I’d learned, including whatever Randi had to tell me about the crystal vase, and Chantelle could share her findings from Ancestry.ca.
True to her word, Shirley arrived within the hour, a bounce in her step and a glint in her eyes that hadn’t been there previously. The blue plastic binder she carried was thinner than I’d hoped for, but it was quality, not quantity, that counted, right?
We took seats side by side at the table and got right to it.
“I wanted to get used to navigating the online archives, so I started with the names from the autograph page,” Shirley said. “I didn’t expect them to lead anywhere, and I was right. Not a single mention of any of them in the Star or the Globe. My next step was to search for Anneliese Frankow.” Shirley opened the binder. It was filled with newspaper clippings tucked inside plastic sleeves.
“There were fewer stories than I anticipated, and nothing from when she was alive. I’ve sorted into batches. This first batch reports the murder. The next four batches include Horst’s arrest, preliminary inquiry, trial, and subsequent death in prison. There are no references to him after that, not even an obituary.”
Shirley was right in that there weren’t a ton of stories, though I hadn’t expected Anneliese to make the papers for any reason other than her untimely death. I counted twelve in the first batch, eight from the Star and four from the Globe,
and started with the first one from the Toronto Star. The headline read Mom Murdered At Home. There was no photograph. There was also no by-line.
“Not having a by-line back then isn’t unusual,” Shirley explained, when I commented on it. She pointed out several other stories without. “In fact, by-lines weren’t commonplace in newspapers until the 1970s, although staff writers were typically credited. Then, as today, newspapers often relied on freelancers, or in industry jargon, stringers. Stringers usually had an ongoing relationship with one or more news organizations, and they would be paid by the piece rather than receiving a salary. A stringer’s work was largely uncredited.”
It meant there would be no way of finding out which journalist had covered the story. While disappointing, the reality was sixty years later they would almost certainly be a dead end, both figuratively and factually. I proceeded to read the article.
Anneliese Frankow, a twenty-four-year-old wife and mother of one, was found murdered in the kitchen of her home. No arrests have been made. At the police department’s request, neighbors of Mrs. Frankow have declined comment at this time. However, we have since learned that Mrs. Frankow was born in Germany, immigrated to England, and came to Canada in 1952 to marry Horst Frankow. Mr. Frankow was not available for comment.
Not available for comment. Was he being questioned at the time? Or had he refused to speak with the press? I wasn’t sure if publication bans existed back then, or if it was a courtesy daily newspapers extended to police in a time when twenty-four hour news cycles and tabloid journalism didn’t exist. Either way, the outcome was the same.
An almost identical story appeared in the same day’s issue of the Globe and Mail. Once again, there was no photo and no by-line. Given the story’s similarity to the one in the Star, I assumed the same stringer had filed it with both papers.
Past & Present Page 19