Chapter 63 - The Guest with Cold Hands
I did not step aside immediately. I held his gaze, searching the weathered lines around his eyes for the young deputy who had first tipped his hat to me at the county fair forty years ago, the polite young man my husband, Donald, had once treated like an errand boy. All those years, Donald had thought he was tossing scraps to a loyal hound. He had never realized he was feeding a wolf whose lineage had been starved out of Mercer Manor by Donald's own grandfather.
"Come into the study, Thomas," I said quietly, turning my back on him. It was a calculated risk, but showing fear was a surrender I could not afford. "Julian is here. I assume you brought enough legal paper for all of us."
Vance stepped over the threshold. His heavy patrol boots tracked wet gravel and road salt onto the pristine parquetry, leaving dirty, grey smudges across the polished wood. He did not wipe his feet. He took off his hat and held it under his arm, looking up at the high, vaulted ceiling with an expression that was chillingly familiar—the very same look Tyler had worn when he paced the ballroom counting the chandeliers.
Julian was waiting in the study, standing rigidly behind Donald's antique walnut desk. His hands were clasped behind his back, his lawyer's poker face firmly in place, though the twitch in his jaw betrayed his terror.
"Sheriff," Julian said, nodding coldly.
"Julian," Vance replied, walking directly to the leather armchair across from the desk and sitting down without waiting for an invitation. He placed his damp hat on the edge of the antique leather blotter and opened his folder. "I see you finally found the iron box in the coal cellar. I was wondering how long it would take you after Tyler burned down the nursery."
"You knew Tyler would try to burn it," I said, leaning against the edge of the mantlepiece, keeping the heavy brass fire poker within arm's reach. "You orchestrated his release. You let him slip through the county jail's fingers so he would come here and do the dirty work."
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"Tyler was an idiot with an explosive hobby," Vance said casually, pulling out a sheaf of legal documents sealed with red wax and embossed with the seal of the Commonwealth Court. "A boy raised on easy money who thought filming an old woman's humiliation was the height of rebellion. He didn't have the brains to look past the surface. But his father, Richard... Richard had just enough greed to dig. Richard came to me six months ago looking for dirt on you, Evelyn. He wanted to declare you incompetent. He didn't realize that in digging through the county deed vaults, he stumbled right into my family's cemetery."
Vance tapped the paper with a blunt, scarred finger. "The Mercer family didn't buy this land in 1912, Evelyn. Donald’s grandfather forged the foreclosure deed while my great-grandfather lay dying of tuberculosis in a sanatorium. You've lived eighty years in a fortress built on blood money, and tonight, the note comes due."
