Chapter 16 - Fractured Loyalties
I spun around, keeping the flashlight low, gripping the steel pry bar in my right hand.
Standing inside the doorway, his silhouette backlit by the cold gray light leaking through the transom, was Arthur Vance.
Arthur was Donald’s first cousin—a soft-spoken, semi-retired corporate lawyer who had sat at the edge of the family table during Donald’s funeral, quietly sipping black coffee while Julian made his scenes. He was the one who had introduced Donald to the Detroit developers decades ago.
"You have Donald’s stubbornness, Amanda," Arthur said, his voice entirely devoid of the gentle warmth he had displayed at the cemetery. He held an unlit cigar in his leather-gloved hand. "I told Miriam you wouldn't settle. I told her you were a bookkeeper—you’d look for the paper trail until you bled."
"You’re backing her," I said, my voice dead and steady. "Julian didn't find those journals on his own. You fed them to him. You pointed him to Miriam."
Arthur stepped forward into the glow of the work light, his silver hair neatly combed beneath a dark woolen cap. "Donald took everything from my side of the family thirty-five years ago. He bought out our father’s shares for pennies when the timber market crashed in ’88. He thought because he swung the hammers and drafted the blueprints, the land was his. He built a fourteen-million-dollar empire on property my father originally staked."
"Donald bought those shares legally when your father declared bankruptcy," I retorted, keeping the pry bar raised between us. "He paid every creditor out of his own pocket. The release in this box proves Miriam took her payout and forfeited every right she ever had."
"A piece of paper in an unrecorded box in a shed," Arthur sneered. "Who will find it if this shed burns down tonight?"
The air in the workshop suddenly smelled of sulfur and kerosene.
Through the rear window of the workshop, I saw a second figure moving in the drizzle—a broad-shouldered man carrying an industrial fuel canister toward the dry cedar stacks piled beneath the eaves.
May you like
"Give me the box, Amanda," Arthur said softly, holding out a gloved hand. "Walk out of here. Take Ruby, take your little office on 80th Street, and take the life insurance payout Donald left you. Leave the commercial titles to Miriam and me. If you don't, Donald’s workshop won't be the only thing that doesn't survive the winter."
***
