Part 6
He had taken two suits, three shirts, his shaving kit, and the overnight bag they used for weekend trips. His silver watch case was open on the dresser.
He had left his wedding ring beside it.
Lena stood there holding the box until her arms began to shake.
Then she set it down, went into the bathroom, and was sick.
At eight the next morning, she parked behind Mercer Uniform Services and sat in her car with both hands around a gas-station coffee.
The company occupied a low brick building beside the interstate, between a plumbing supplier and a warehouse that sold restaurant equipment. The Mercer sign had lost the lower curve of the final S during a storm three years earlier. Paul kept promising to replace it.
Delivery vans lined the side lot. Drivers moved between them carrying bundles wrapped in clear plastic. A radio played somewhere inside the loading bay. The ordinary beginning of the workday continued, unaware that the people who had signed checks and assigned routes for decades might no longer have authority to do either.
Lena had slept for two hours.
At five-thirty, she had found herself kneeling on the bedroom floor, searching through a box for clean socks. At six, she had received a text from Evan.
I’m at my parents’. Don’t contact employees until we talk.
She had not replied.
Now Marisol Vega came out the rear door carrying a clipboard. She was forty-three, compact and quick-moving, with black curls pinned high at the back of her head. She spotted Lena’s car and walked over.
“You sick?” Marisol asked through the open window.
“No.”
“You look sick.”
“Thank you.”
Marisol studied her. “What happened?”
Lena looked toward the building. “Is Paul here?”
“Since seven. Diane too. They’re in the conference room with Evan.”
“They told me not to contact employees.”
Marisol’s eyebrows rose. “You’re contacting me right now.”
“I know.”
“That sentence sounded like a warning.”
“It might be.”
Marisol shifted the clipboard against her hip. “Should I be worried about payroll?”
Lena opened her mouth, then closed it.
Marisol’s face changed. “That bad?”
“Payroll will be covered.”
“You said that too fast.”
“I’m working on it.”
“People have rent.”
“I know.”
“Carlos has court-ordered support. If his check is wrong again, he gets hauled back in.”
“I know.”
“No, you know his name. That’s different.”
The words stung because they were fair.
Lena took a breath. “I need the original route logs for the last twelve months. Not summaries. I need app exports, time-clock entries, manual edits, and the names of everyone with administrative access.”
Marisol looked toward the rear door.
“You have authority for that?”
“Yes.”
“Since when?”
“Since Ruth died.”
Marisol said nothing for a moment. A delivery van backed out nearby, its warning beep filling the silence between them.
“I liked Ruth,” she said at last.
“So did I.”
“She liked you. That isn’t the same thing as knowing how to run this place.”
“I know.”
Marisol watched her carefully, perhaps waiting for a defense.
Lena did not offer one.
“Original logs are archived off-site every quarter,” Marisol said. “Diane ordered the last two boxes brought back on Monday.”
“Where are they?”
“Her office.”
“Has anyone removed them?”
“I don’t know.”
“Can you find out without touching anything?”
Marisol’s mouth tightened. “Probably.”
“Don’t risk your job.”
Marisol glanced at the building again. “Whose company is it this morning?”
Lena looked down at the blue folder on the passenger seat.
“Legally? Mine.”
“And practically?”
“I’m about to find out.”
David arrived at eight forty-seven with a younger attorney named Priya Shah and a rolling case full of documents. The company accountant came ten minutes later. He was a nervous man named Joel Kramer who had worked for the Mercers for nine years and perspired whenever anyone asked him an unexpected question.
At nine, they gathered in the conference room.
Paul sat at the head of the table. Diane occupied the chair to his right. Evan sat beside her, still wearing yesterday’s white shirt, the sleeves rolled to his elbows. He had shaved, but badly. A small cut darkened his jaw.
Lena took the empty chair at the opposite end.
David remained standing.
“This meeting is for formal transition of trust-controlled assets and company voting authority,” he said. “It is not a negotiation over the validity of the transfer. Anyone intending to challenge the trust should retain separate counsel.”
Diane already had.
A woman named Margaret Sloan sat beside her in a red jacket, legal pad open. Margaret had represented three local developers and once sued a church over a parking easement. Lena knew this because Diane had mentioned it twice before the meeting began.
David distributed copies of the trust certification, share ledger, recorded deed, and bank acknowledgments.
The papers spread across the table until the family looked less like people than figures trapped between files.
Paul read nothing. He looked at the accountant.
“Joel,” he said, “tell them the operating situation.”
Joel cleared his throat. “The company remains solvent.”
David waited.
Joel glanced at Paul.
“Continue,” David said.
“There are timing concerns related to receivables, payroll, and certain outstanding obligations.”
“What obligations?” Lena asked.
“Equipment financing. Vehicle leases. Vendor balances.”
“And?”
Joel’s hands moved over his legal pad, aligning it with the table edge. “There is a bridge loan.”
David looked up. “From whom?”
“Mercer Family Holdings.”
“That is the trust.”
“Yes.”
“For how much?”
“Initially six hundred thousand.”
“Initially?”
“The balance is now nine hundred forty-two thousand.”
Lena felt the number before she understood it. It pressed against the inside of her chest.
“How did a six-hundred-thousand-dollar loan become nine hundred forty-two thousand?” she asked.
Joel adjusted the legal pad again.
Paul answered. “Additional advances.”
“Authorized by whom?”
“By me.”
“You were not trustee.”
“I was managing the accounts.”
“That isn’t what she asked,” Priya said.
May you like
Margaret Sloan placed her pen down. “My clients will not participate in accusatory questioning without a complete accounting.”
David turned to Joel. “Were the advances documented?”
