The Easter Egg

  #bytesizedcrime

  A SHORT STORY by SARAH EAGLESFIELD

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  ©2015 – Sarah Eaglesfield

  ⓟ Sudden Vibe Publishing

  When we got to moving from Greensboro to London, I never thought I’d see my father crack a smile again. My Mom was six feet under, taken by her sickness, and he couldn’t stand us being in the USA no more. He’d moved there for her love alone, and everything surrounding him reminded him how lonely he was without her. So with me in tow, we got to moving, regressed ourselves to his childhood home, and we cried like babies every night, abandoned and alone.

  The summer passed in our new surroundings like winter would at home. If the sun ever shone, we never saw it; our curtains closed those first few months, our barrier from the world. We held each other close as thieves, adjusting to our loss.

  English through and through, my Dad; distinguished, wry and witty, but for all of that, he was a broken man, the stiff upper lip forever trembling.

  We started getting better slowly, and when September rolled around, he drove me down to my new school, and watched me through the gates. When he picked me up that afternoon, he confessed that he’d been lost without me, so he’d found himself a new friend to talk to during the day. Even then, at age 11, it sounded kind of strange. We were loners in our family, and though I didn’t know what a loner was, I knew what felt right for me.

  My worries faded instantly when a puppy greeted us at the door. I guess that was the first day that we started to live again.

  The more I tried to be alone, the more the girls would chase me. Some said it was the Southern accent that made them fall in love - others blamed my eyes, my looks, my build, my ass, my height. I wasn’t so delusional to believe all they claimed; I wasn’t bad looking, but I wasn’t some poster hunk either. What they really loved was the mystery, the not knowing who I was.

  The boys, on the other hand, they hated me for all the love that came my way. They’d try and fight me after school, a foolish plight at best. Shorter, slower, less skilled with their fists, they’d swing a few punches, I’d walk away. These fights just added to my appeal. Stereotypically strong and silent, even the fifth form knew my name, and it was one of their own who helped me out a few months down the way.

  Like many others had before him, Henry Rowling, fifth form computer geek, challenged me to a fight. Four years older and the same height as me, the odds were still in my favour. Nerdy enough to be teased about it, still built enough to hold his own, he was fighting for the girl who had won his heart, his mission to impress her. For fifty quid, I let him win; I took his money and took a beating, he got the girl, and the respect of his peers. After that, if any boy tried to jump me, Henry would have my back, and be there threatening to squash them. The challenges stopped soon after that, and I was left in peace for the rest of my school years. The girls forgot me soon enough, and I was left to my own devices, exactly like I’d wished for.

  ♣ ♦♥♠

  She’s snoring like a bulldozer, the smile I gave her last night still dimpling her face. I kiss her gently to see if she’ll wake, but she’s lost and dead to the world. It’s already 9am, I need to be out of here in two hours, so instead I order room-service, two full English breakfasts, all the works. If I can’t wake her, I’m sure that the smell of freshly cooked bacon will do the trick. I slip the wedding ring back on my finger, pull on my jeans, and fire up my laptop whilst I wait.

  I’d met Jessica at an antiques fair, only three weeks ago, but time had become irrelevant this month. My father, my hero, had died the following weekend. Since then, nothing seemed real. I felt ashamed of what I was doing, a shame I’d never felt at my actions before; if my father was watching me, he’d be so disappointed.

  “I swear this is the last time, Dad,” I whisper.

  I mean it. We had values in our family and I would never break a promise to my father. I wouldn’t have gone through with this one if I could have avoided it, but the wheels were in motion, and there’s no stopping them when they’re started up. To back out on a deal like this would mean getting caught. Getting caught would mean doing time. All along, I was just making a better life for myself, a better life for my father. Now I had enough money to last me a lifetime, and Dad, God rest his soul, was no longer a financial concern.

  ♣ ♦♥♠

  “Here’s that website I was telling you about honey,” I say, eventually finding it on Google after a search threw up close to 10,000 results. It’s an online shop in America, which specialises in acquiring genuine Laurel Eggs. It lists the 200 eggs that were made, detailing who they were originally made for, and where they’re currently kept. The shop claimed they’d successfully sourced 23 of the originals for private collections, with prices ranging from $100,000 to $450,000 for each.

  “How much do these things fetch on Ebay?” She asks, leaning into me, her breasts rubbing teasingly against my arm.

  “No one would risk selling something this valuable through Ebay,” I say, carefully, making sure not to mock her naivety. “They use the big auction houses, The Southebys, The Christies.”

  I pull up some news articles about the Laurel Eggs being auctioned at the famous houses. Then, I surf over to Ebay, and show her some of the eggs that craftsmen have modelled on the Laurel. The workmanship is incredible, and though they are obviously fakes– even advertised as such – they still have bids ranging from $5,000 to $10,000.

  Finally, I go to Wikipedia, and load a page which tells the history of the Regal Laurel. How it was looted from a Polish family by the Nazis during World War II. How it was eventually reclaimed by the grandson of the original owner in the 1990s, who then, underestimating its value, sold it to an antique’s dealer for $30,000. The web page states that, despite attempts to uncover the identity of the dealer, the whereabouts of the egg remain unknown. Then I surf back to the shop, which boasts even more pictures of the missing Regal Laurel, and a handsome reward for information leading to the identification of its whereabouts.

  The egg is right here in the hotel room, and Jessica and I are the only people in the world who know that.

  “And the Regal Laurel is the egg that you have in your case?” She asks, lost in the pictures on the screen.

  I nod the affirmative, once again ashamed by my actions. “I never meant to rob a poor man of his money; I just didn’t know what the circumstances were. When you’re offered a Laurel by someone who doesn’t know what they’re doing,.. it’s… it’s just business to get a cheap price.”

  She falls silent for a minute, and I let her think about it.

  “The egg, it’s still big news at the moment. If ever I get named as the dealer who ripped off the man, my career will be over. I mean, you’ve seen the websites, the thing is worth around £500K at the very least – and although it’s a large sum of money, it wouldn’t be enough for me to retire on. No one would deal with me again if this came out.”

  Her hand rests on my thigh and she strokes it, lost in thought.

  “How long do you think reasonable before it appears on the market?” She finally asks.

  “Four, maybe five years,” I reply. “But whoever bought it would have to sign a non-disclosure agreement. I’d reciprocate of course. I wouldn’t ever name them as the owner.”

  “Do you think it will increase in value in the meantime?” She asks.

  “I can’t guarantee that,” I say. “They’ve gone up in price every year since they were made back in the early 1900s – but the market on anything like this can fluctuate.”

  “Let me see it,” she says. The determination in her voice tells me she’s serious.

  “For all you know, I could be trying to sell you a fake,” I caution.

  “I have a good eye for these things,” she replies.

  I’d been hoping she’d say something like that. I unlock the case, open the box, and she finally gets to see what she’d already fallen in love with. I let her hold it for a while and she takes over the laptop and surfs the net, comparing the egg to the pictures on various websites as I finish up the last of my breakfast.

  “This is the real deal, alright,” she finally concludes.

  “What makes you so certain?” I ask.

  “There’s a small crack on the egg,” she says, pointing to the base. It’s barely visible to the untrained eye, but it’s there nonetheless. “This enthusiast, Peter Greaves, he mentions it on his blog. And there’s a news source on this website, it says that when the egg was transported to the Polish owner, it got damaged in transit. It talks about the irony of how the egg had been kept perfectly for 60 years, then sustained the damage. There’s even a close up of the crack. You couldn’t fake something like that.”

  I nodded. She was right. You couldn’t fake something as intricate as a crack, not in such great detail.

  “Nate,” she says affectionately. “I know you said you wanted £150K for this, but the bank won’t let me take out that much cash without a written three-day notice.”

  “I don’t mind holding it until you get the money,” I say, guardedly. “I mean, you are going to see me again right?”

  “I’m not so sure, Nate,” she replies, sounding genuinely sad to be saying it. “You’re a fantastic lover, but you're a family man. You made it clear from the outset that this was just a bit of fun. I don’t want to end up getting emotionally involved with you. I’ve had my heart broken one too many times.”

  She’s surprised me with that one.

  “Jessica, I love Shelley more than anything in the world, but the attraction I felt towards you…. I had to act on it,” I reason. “You’re sexy, you’re smart… are you sure you won’t see me again? Just one more night?”

  “I’m sorry,” she says. “My mind’s made up on this. And if I buy this off you, and people see us together, then the finger of suspicion will still point in your direction. I have £100,000 here in the safe. Will you take £100,000?”

  She was even smarter than I’d believed her to be. Calling things off with me had given her the opportunity to lower the price. I wondered if, in her mind at least, she’d set up this whole one-night stand just so she could drive me down.

  “That’s nowhere near what I was asking,” I say, resignedly.

  “It’s all I can offer you Nate, take it or leave it,” she says, business-like now, all affection drained from her voice.

  “Ok, you got yourself a deal,” I say reluctantly. “I’ll have my guys draw up the papers and send them over to you?”

  “That sounds wonderful,” she says, and she smiles.

  The deal is done.

  ♣ ♦♥♠

  I have £100K on the back seat of my Prius, and although I’m driving carefully, I’m scared I’m running late. Mind astray, I leave the car unlocked when I pop into the dry cleaners to collect my suit. The money’s still there when I return. God is smiling on me today.

  Shelley’s not used to me staying away overnight, she misses me. I make a fuss of her and feed her a carrot as soon as I get back. I adopted her from the RSPCA three years ago and I nursed her back to health. She’s the love of my life, this bunny rabbit, like the kid I’ll never have.

  I walk round the house and turn off the computers. Thanks to Henry, back in school, I’d learned all about computers. These machines had been hard at work for a couple of years now, generating and uploading random fake web page after random fake webpage with generic information about the Laurel Egg collection. My Dad had designed these eggs in the 1980s when he’d started working in the Jewellery Quarter, it was just a hobby for him, he never intended on selling them. By the time he retired he’d made around 200, and he’d put them in the loft with the rest of our junk.

  It started as a joke, my first webpage, ‘The Legend of the Laurel Egg’. Something I made to cheer my father up when he started to get ill; Laurel was his name, he liked seeing it in print. I priced the eggs between $1,000 and $20,000 for an American market, even though each egg was probably only worth £20, that was what my Dad’s work was worth to me. When the first buyer contacted me, greed took over. I accepted his promise of $12,000, sent him an egg, and 7 days later the money appeared in my account. The second buyer wired me $20,000, the third, a further $13,000. Realising I was playing with fire, I took down the original website, but it was too late. Someone had already created a page on Wikipedia, the buyers had written blogs about their purchases, and the legend had begun to spread of its own accord.

  I played along with it. I created another 10 fake webpages. These didn’t deal with sales; they simply had information about the collection and its purported value. I created phony news articles that I’d put on websites that looked just like the Times or the Guardian. Finally, I wrote a program to automate the whole process, the fake news articles, the fake blogs, the fake websites. I left the computers running 24/7, propagating the myth even further.

  Then other people started making replicas of the eggs for real and actually sold them online. Other people started writing about the eggs and their replicas; hack reporters all over the world produced articles for the arts sections of their local newspapers, the collection even got a brief mention on one of those afternoon shows on the BBC. The Laurel had gone viral, and there was money to be made.

  I’d meet single ladies at the quaint antiques fairs that travelled from village to village in the rich areas of the country, and I’d start an affair with them. Then they’d learn of my secret possession – a Laurel Egg – each time a shameful story of how I’d acquired it, preventing them from seeking the authenticity. Each time, the online pictures showed distinct markings on the egg which would be impossible to fake. If they were technically inclined, they’d go home, look it up for themselves, and realise I was selling at a bargain price. If they weren’t, I’d make sure they’d end up in a situation with me and my laptop, so I could show them. They all happily fleeced me and dumped me. They didn’t want to be somebody’s bit-on-the-side once they had the goods.

  As the cooling fans on the computers die down, Shelley’s ears flatten against her back. She looks to me for comfort, her surroundings suddenly sounding unfamiliar.

  “Just keeping my promise to Dad,” I explain.

  She twitches her nose as if she understands me, and happily claws at a toilet-roll in her play area. I take off my father’s wedding and put it next to his picture on the mantelpiece. I say a little prayer for him and Mom, and then I put on my suit, and I start getting ready for his funeral.

  I start getting ready to go straight.

 

 

  Sarah Eaglesfield, The Easter Egg: a short story - #bytesizedcrime

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