Probably I should tell you some things in case this gets any weirder. Most of it has to do with my grandpa, David McLean. Grandpa D (my mom’s dad) died last June, and in his will, he asked all his grandsons to do some stuff for him. Because I like movies, he wanted me to track down his favorite old movie actress, Gloria Lorraine, and film her giving me a kiss for him. I did it, but things got a little crazy, what with the bikers and the Buffalo mob and the street posse all chasing the stolen Cadillac. Anyway, that’s another story, except it was how I met AmberLea, Gloria Lorraine’s granddaughter. AmberLea lives in Buffalo, and she got mixed up in it all too, along with Al and Mister Bones, the chihuahua. That’s when she saved my life.
Even if I hadn’t met AmberLea, I’d still say I got off easy. Ask my cousin DJ—he had to climb Mount Kilimanjaro. Or Bunny. Especially Bunny. Bunny had to get a tattoo, and he ended up with a street gang called the Fifteenth Street Posse. Now he’s in Creekside Juvenile Detention Centre. That’s another story too.
Anyway, this fall I started film school. Bunny was in Creekside. Deb, our mom, booked a cruise with her sisters for between Christmas and New Year’s. Our dad, Jer, was going to visit his dad, Grandpa Bernie, at the same time. Grandpa Bernie lives out west, on Salt Spring Island. They planned to spend a few days chilling in a yurt, getting in touch with their toes or something. Jer invited me to come along, but compare that to a week of parent-free living and you can probably see why I said no thanks.
But that’s where Grandpa D comes back in. In November, around when Deb and Jer booked their trips, one of my profs showed my class a rough cut of a documentary he’s working on, about this weird country called Pianvia. And I do mean weird: stuff like cards and unicycles has been banned there since 1952 or something. Music too. Don’t ask me why. Now the Save Pianvia Counterrevolutionary Army was fighting back, planning an invasion and streaming in classic rock and Texas Hold ’em online, except that no one in Pianvia has a computer. It was complicated. Anyway, I had downloaded the doc onto my laptop and had it with me one time on a visit to Bun. Deb and Jer were busy having some kind of Official Meeting, so I showed Bun some of it, just for laughs. We got to this part about how Zoltan Blum, Pianvia’s greatest composer, defected in the 1950s and then later on got murdered. Up came a picture of a mystery man thought to be his killer and Bunny said, “Hey, that’s Grandpa!”
“Right, Bun. Get a grip.”
“It is. It’s an old Grandpa.”
Actually, it would have had to be a young Grandpa, but I knew what Bun meant. I clicked back. “Grandpa didn’t have a mustache, glasses and blond hair, Bun.”
“His hair was white. Same as.”
“Come on, Bun-man. That’s because he was old.”
Bun made me email my prof right then, telling him that the mystery guy could maybe be David McLean. My prof thanked me, but he said the Blum murder was just a sidelight to the larger story and he didn’t want to give it more screen time, especially if the ID was just a guess. I thought Bun was wrong anyway, so I forgot all about it.
Meanwhile, some of my cousins and I planned to stay at Grandpa’s cottage over the Christmas break. Then we found out Bunny could come home for ten days on the Constructive Rebound for Adolescents Program. Not only was this good news, but it also made for a great acronym. Deb and Jer couldn’t change their flights. Cousin DJ said he’d “look after” us (sometimes DJ thinks he’s Grandpa), and when I heard AmberLea and her mom were coming to town, I hoped DJ might cover Bunny for me if I came back down to the city. He’s family, after all.
When Bunny got home a few days before Christmas, I was watching the doc again for an assignment. “Hey,” Bun said, “the Grandpa movie!” and we got into it all over again. Finally, I took my laptop into the kitchen. Jer was baking Christmas shortbread. “What color was Grandpa David’s hair before it went white?” I asked.
Jer shrugged. “Dark. He was already pretty gray when I met him.”
Deb came up from her office in the basement, carrying some exams she’d been marking. She’s a philosophy prof at York U. “What color was your dad’s hair?” Jer asked, brushing flour off his flannel shirt.
“And did he ever have a mustache?” I put in.
“Brown,” Deb said. “No mustache. He said he tried one in the war but it was a disaster. Why?”
I showed her the photo on the screen. “Bun thinks that’s Grandpa.”
Deb put on her glasses and peered. “Well, there’s a vague resemblance, but…” She shrugged. “Who is it?”
“Some mystery killer in the 60s,” I say. “In Pianvia. Europe, I mean. He killed a Pianvian guy who defected.”
Deb did a classic double take. Then she laughed. “Dream on, guys. Apart from the war, the closest Grandpa got to a killing was a good business deal.”
“Except for the ants,” Bun said.
“Right,” said Deb. “Remember I told you how he cornered the market on—”
“Souvenir snow globes for the ’72 Canada–Russia hockey series,” Jer finished for her. He pushed his bandanna higher up his forehead. Now he had flour all over it too.
Deb frowned. “Souvenir pucks, actually.”
“Right. And then there were the Chinese golf balls or whatever.”
“Ping-Pong balls. The golf balls were Cuban.”
“What about the wooden Frisbees?”
“Australian. Kind of like boomerangs. Okay, some were mistakes. But don’t knock it, buster. My dad built a solid import/export business and gave us a good life.”
“I’m not knocking anything,” Jer said. Actually, he was knocking butter and sugar and flour around in a bowl. “He did get around though. Maybe he was a secret agent.”
Deb laughed and swatted him with the exams. “Your grasp of logic and evidence is right up there with my students’.” Then she wiped flour off the exam papers.
And that was that, until our folks went away and we drove up to the cottage with DJ. Bun took his skates. I took the movie on my phone, because Bun wanted me to show the picture to everyone.
We got there first. Bun went outside to chop wood. DJ was at the door, giving orders and calling out to Adam and Webb, who’d just pulled in. I was laying a fire with the scraps of wood left inside from the fall. I grabbed the last piece, which was leaning up against the paneling by the fireplace. It stuck, which was weird. I yanked hard. It gave, and I tumbled backward with the wood and a square of paneling attached to it. A jumble of things spilled out from behind the panel, including a Walther PPK, James Bond’s weapon of choice.