Chương 5
“Why?”
“Because the trustee’s determination concerns intent.”
His face changed again.
Every casual sentence had become dangerous.
He sat back and crossed his arms.
“Then I want my own attorney present.”
“That would be sensible.”
“This meeting is over.”
“For you, perhaps.”
He looked at her.
“What does that mean?”
“I still need to speak with Vanessa.”
“About what?”
“Matters concerning her potential beneficial interest.”
“I should be here.”
“No.”
“She’s my wife.”
Margaret’s eyes hardened.
“Your status as her husband does not entitle you to privileged communications between her and counsel.”
Curtis stood.
“You’re her lawyer now?”
“I am counsel to the trustee.”
“Then whose side are you on?”
“The trust’s.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“It is the only answer you’re entitled to.”
Curtis looked at me once more.
He did not seem angry now.
He seemed afraid.
That frightened me more.
“Vanessa,” he said quietly.
I waited.
“Don’t leave when we’re done.”
I almost asked where he imagined I would go.
Then I understood.
He meant the building.
He thought we were going to have a conversation afterward and put our marriage back together like furniture rearranged after a party.
“I have somewhere to be.”
“Where?”
I stared at him.
His face softened by instinct.
For ten years, that expression had worked on me.
It had ended arguments.
It had made me apologize first.
It had made me accept explanations that did not quite make sense because I preferred peace to suspicion.
Now it looked like a tool I had finally learned to see.
“That isn’t your business anymore.”
His lips parted.
Margaret said his name.
Curtis picked up his phone.
“Sixty days?”
“Yes.”
He looked at me.
“We’ll talk.”
Then he left.
The door closed behind him.
No one spoke for several seconds.
I looked at the place where he had been sitting.
My hands were shaking.
Margaret slid a box of tissues toward me.
“I’m not crying.”
“I know.”
“Then why are you giving me tissues?”
“You’re crushing your fingers into your palm.”
I looked down.
Four crescent marks were pressed into my skin.
I took a tissue anyway.
The accountant excused herself, and the younger attorney followed her out.
When the door shut again, Margaret moved the will aside.
“Vanessa, there is something you need to decide very quickly.”
I rubbed the tissue between my fingers.
“What?”
“Where you’re sleeping tonight.”
I looked at her.
“That doesn’t have anything to do with the will.”
“It does if Curtis knows where you are.”
My stomach tightened.
“He wouldn’t hurt me.”
Margaret did not answer.
“That wasn’t a question.”
“I know.”
I waited for her to say I was right.
She did not.
Instead, she opened another folder.
“Three days after Arthur died, Curtis contacted a private bank and attempted to obtain a line of credit secured against assets he believed he would inherit.”
I stared at her.
“He didn’t even have the will.”
“No.”
“Can he do that?”
“Not successfully against assets he does not own.”
“Then why does it matter?”
“Because he represented that he expected immediate control of the estate.”
Margaret pushed a photocopy across the table.
At the bottom of the page was Curtis’s signature.
Above it, among blocks of financial language, one handwritten notation had been circled in red.
Expected dissolution of marriage prior to funding.
I read it twice.
My throat tightened.
“He wrote this before he threw me out.”
“Yes.”
“How long before?”
“The application was submitted the morning after Arthur died.”
I looked at the date.
The funeral had not even happened yet.
Something inside me went very quiet.
All those beautiful tears.
All the handshakes.
All the carefully lowered eyes.
And somewhere between condolence calls, my husband had been planning how to finance the life he intended to start once I was gone.
Margaret pulled another paper from the folder.
“There’s more.”
I did not want more.
I also knew I would never again allow myself not to look.
“What is it?”
“Arthur discovered something about Curtis six weeks before he died.”
My fingers stopped moving.
Margaret placed the document between us.
“It is the reason he added the codicil.”
I stared at the page without touching it.
The first thing I saw was not Curtis’s name but the logo of Bellamy Development Group in the upper left corner.
Arthur had used the same cream stationery for years, even after everyone else in the company switched to electronic memos.
Under the logo was a date from six weeks before his death and a subject line that read, Internal Review of Unauthorized Transfers.
My mouth went dry.
“What transfers?”
Margaret did not answer immediately.
She turned the document toward herself and tapped one paragraph.
“Arthur maintained a private investment account outside the operating companies.”
“I knew that.”
“You knew it existed.”
“Yes.”
“You did not know Curtis had access.”
I looked up.
“He did?”
“Not legitimate access.”
The words took a moment to settle.
Margaret slid the paper back toward me.
“Arthur discovered that money had been moved from the account through a series of transfers over approximately eighteen months.”
“How much?”
“Just under nine hundred thousand dollars.”
I felt a strange little jolt of disbelief.
Not because the number was small.
Because after hearing seventy-five million all morning, nine hundred thousand almost sounded ordinary, and I hated what that said about the room I was sitting in.
“Curtis took it?”
“We don’t yet know the entire path.”
“You just said he had access.”
“He had credentials.”
“That sounds like the path.”
“It’s evidence.”
Margaret’s tone sharpened slightly.
“Not the same thing.”
I nodded.
She was right, and I resented her for being right because anger wanted simpler sentences.
“How did he get the credentials?”
“That is one of the questions Arthur was trying to answer.”
My mind went immediately to the house.
Arthur’s study.
The desk.
The stuck drawer.
May you like
The laptop he hated.
The yellow legal pads where he wrote passwords in ways that would make any cybersecurity professional cry.
