Chapter 5 - The Dinner of Reckoning
The silence in the conference room was so heavy you could hear the hum of the fluorescent lights overhead.
Richard Sterling slowly took off his glasses, carefully folded them, and placed them back inside his breast pocket. He closed his leather briefcase with a sharp, final click.
"Mr. Vance, Mrs. Vance," Sterling said, standing up without looking at either of them. "Under the ethical canons of the American Bar Association, I can no longer represent you in this matter. A conflict of interest has emerged that makes my continued counsel impossible. I strongly advise you to contact the Federal Public Defender’s office immediately."
"Wait! Sterling, you can't just walk out!" Garrick lunged up from his chair, grabbing the attorney’s sleeve. "I paid you a thirty-thousand-dollar retainer!"
Sterling yanked his arm free with undisguised disgust. "The check you wrote me this morning was drawn on an account that was frozen thirty minutes ago, Mr. Vance. You haven't paid me a single dime. Good afternoon."
The door swung shut behind Sterling, leaving Garrick standing frozen in the middle of the room, his mouth hanging open like a fish out of water.
Evelyn sat hunched over, her manicured fingers clawing at the fabric of her black dress. She slowly turned her gaze toward me, her eyes hollow, defeated, and swimming with a pathetic, desperate sorrow.
"Clara..." she whispered, her voice cracking. "My sweet little girl... please. You can't let them take me to jail. I’m seventy-one years old. I won't survive a prison cell. I have high blood pressure. I have heart palpitations. You're a nurse—you know what stress does to my body."
I looked at the woman who had brought me into the world, searching for any lingering flicker of filial affection, any remnant of the daughter who had spent thirty years desperate for a single word of maternal approval.
There was nothing. Just a vast, empty expanse of scar tissue.
"When Toby had double pneumonia two winters ago," I said softly, "I didn't have enough money for his prescription antibiotics and the heating bill at the same time. I came to your house, Mom. I stood in your heated kitchen and begged you for two hundred dollars."
Evelyn flinched as if struck.
"Do you remember what you told me?" I asked.
She didn't answer. She couldn't.
"You told me that hardship builds character," I continued, each word measured and lethal. "You told me that if David had been a real man, he wouldn't have left me in such a pathetic state. And then you showed me the diamond tennis bracelet Garrick had bought you for your birthday with Grandfather's stolen money."
"Clara, please..." Evelyn choked, tears streaming down her wrinkles. "I was wrong. I was blinded by Garrick. He manipulated me!"
"She's lying!" Garrick barked, spinning around. "She was the one who demanded the money! She wanted the country club membership! She wanted the remodel on the house! Clara, listen to me—we can have a family dinner tonight. Just you, me, and Mom. At the Grandview Bistro. Let's sit down like civilized adults without the lawyers, and we'll work out a fair split. Fifty-fifty. You take half of the remaining estate, and I'll use the other half to settle my firm's debts. We can save the family name!"
I slowly stood up from the conference table, smoothing down the front of my sweater.
"There is no Vance family name left to save, Garrick," I said. "You dragged it through the mud all by yourself."
"Are you refusing to even talk to us?!" he shouted, panic flaring into wild aggression again. "You're going to destroy your own family over pride?!"
"No," I replied, looking him directly in the eyes. "I'm going to destroy your criminal enterprise over justice. Amanda, please have building security escort these trespassers off the premises."
Amanda pressed the intercom button. Within ninety seconds, two armed private security guards entered the conference room and firmly guided Garrick and Evelyn toward the service elevators.
As the doors closed, Evelyn let out a high-pitched, wailing scream that resonated through the hallway until the elevator machinery drowned it out.
I walked over to the floor-to-ceiling windows, looking down at the bustling streets of downtown Oak Creek below. The snow was beginning to fall again, covering the gray asphalt in a blanket of clean, blinding white.
"Are you okay, Clara?" Amanda asked, coming up beside me with a hand on my shoulder.
"I’ve never felt better in my life," I answered honestly. "What happens next?"
"Tomorrow morning at ten o'clock," Amanda said, "we have the emergency receivership hearing before Judge Thornton in County Circuit Court. He will officially rule on the full restoration of Arthur’s estate, the voiding of all past fraudulent distributions, and the formal eviction execution on your mother’s former residence."
"And the criminal charges?"
May you like
"Assistant U.S. Attorney Miller has already prepared the indictments," Amanda smiled. "By noon tomorrow, federal marshals will be serving arrest warrants. Garrick Vance and Evelyn Vance are about to discover that when you steal from a dead man’s trust, the bill always comes due with interest."
***
