Chapter 4 - The Boardroom in Downtown Cleveland
The conference room on the twenty-second floor of the Huntington Building smelled of old paper and polished mahogany.
Evelyn Vance sat across the wide glass table, looking at me over the rims of gold wire glasses. She was seventy-two now, her silver hair pulled back into a severe chignon, but her eyes were just as predatory as I remembered.
She looked at my medical boot, then at the soot still faint around my fingernails, and finally at Marcus, who stood silently near the door like an unpaid sentinel.
"You have Helen’s cheekbones," Evelyn remarked dryly. "And her unfortunate habit of surviving things designed to kill her."
"You knew about the trust," I said without preamble.
"Of course I knew. I drafted it. Helen never trusted Frank. She knew he was a gambler with other people's money. When Miriam married him, Helen locked the primary assets—the land, the original stock portfolios, the family trust—behind a steel door with your name on the key."
"They set the fire, didn't they?"
Evelyn folded her hands over a leather-bound notebook. "The state fire marshal hasn't released his final report, but my contacts in the prosecutor's office tell me the point of origin was not the furnace."
"Where was it?"
"The basement storage room. Directly underneath the main load-bearing joists of the central staircase. Accelerant was found on the baseboards. A mixture of mineral spirits and motor oil."
My stomach lurched. "My father's workshop supplies."
"Frank increased the homeowner's insurance policy three months ago," Evelyn continued smoothly. "A maximum-value rider with an expedited casualty payout. But the insurance payout is pocket change compared to the Helen Vance Trust. The trust is currently valued at four point eight million dollars."
Four point eight million dollars.
While I was paying off second-hand furniture and clipping coupons for groceries, they were sitting on a fortune that was days away from transferring into my name.
"What do we do?" I asked.
May you like
Evelyn leaned forward, a razor-thin smile touching her lips. "We let them finish filing the paperwork. We let them swear under penalty of perjury that you do not exist."
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