Chapter 8 - The Cracking Foundation
The two men who came through the door of Rebecca Shaw’s office did not look like the deputies who served traffic warrants in Corinth. They wore dark grey suits, black overcoats, and small brass lapel pins bearing the seal of the State Bureau of Investigation.
The taller one—a man named Vance who, despite the name, was no relation to us—held a brown leather folder in his left hand.
“Arthur Vance?” he said.
Arthur had not sat back down. He was leaning against the table with both hands flat on the linoleum, his chest heaving as if he had just run three miles up the Corinth grade. His cranberry sweater—the one he had worn to Christmas dinner, which he had put on again this morning as if it were an armor against the law—was stained at the wrist where Frank’s coffee had splashed.
“What is this?” Arthur wheezed.
“I have a warrant for your arrest issued by the Senior Resident Superior Court Judge of Wake County,” the agent said. He didn't shout. He spoke with the flat, professional boredom of a man who had arrested three school board treasurers and two county commissioners already that winter. “You are charged with four counts of obtaining property by false pretenses, two counts of forgery of a judicial instrument, and one count of corporate embezzlement under Section 14-90.”
Frank Vance stood up so fast his chair tipped over backward, hitting the floor with a hollow *clack*.
“Now, see here, Agent,” Frank stammered, his face grey. “Mr. Vance is a respected member of the community. We were in the middle of a civil discovery conference. We have a medical deferral request pending with the clerk—”
“The grand jury returned true bills forty-five minutes ago, Mr. Vance,” Agent Vance said. He looked at Frank with the mild curiosity one might show toward a moth that had flown into a refrigerator. “The deferral was denied by Judge Miller at eight-thirty. Turn around, sir, and put your hands behind your back.”
Arthur didn't move.
For three seconds, I thought his heart was going to do what Eleanor had threatened it would do—burst through his ribs and leave him dead on Rebecca’s green linoleum before the state could put iron on his wrists. His face went from purple to a mottled, curdled grey, the color of old lard.
“Leah,” he whispered.
It was the first time in thirty-four years he had said my name without an order attached to it.
I didn't answer. I stood beside the window, my coat pulled tight around my ribs, and watched the agent take his right wrist.
The handcuffs were not the shiny, nickel-plated ones you see in the hardware store. They were black, matte-finished carbon steel. When they clicked shut—*one, two, three teeth*—the sound was remarkably like the latch of my grandfather’s cedar chest when you dropped the lid after taking out the winter quilts.
“My coat,” Arthur muttered. “Eleanor... Eleanor’s in the car.”
“Your wife is being interviewed downstairs by Agent Miller,” Kowalski said from the table, his pen already moving across a fresh sheet of paper. “She’s being questioned regarding the thirty thousand dollars in transfers to the household account. If she cooperates, she won't be processed today.”
“She didn't know!” Arthur shouted, his voice cracking into that high, thin screech again as the agents turned him toward the door. “She didn't know anything about the books! She’s a woman! She doesn't understand the bank!”
“Then she shouldn't have endorsed the checks, Arthur,” Rebecca said without looking up from her file.
They took him out.
The hall outside Rebecca’s office was narrow, lined with old portraits of county judges with yellowed sideburns. Through the open door, I could hear Arthur’s shoes dragging on the linoleum—*scuff, scuff, scuff*—like a sack of grain being pulled across a barn floor.
Frank Vance lingered for five seconds, his hand hovering over his fallen chair.
“You shouldn't have done this, Leah,” he said, his voice trembling with that ancient, small-town fear of the clean light. “This town... this town has a memory. People won't forget who brought the state in.”
“The state didn't steal eight hundred thousand dollars from a dead man, Frank,” I said. “Arthur did. If the town has a problem remembering the difference, they can come ask me to show them the checks.”
Frank picked up his briefcase, avoided Kowalski’s eyes, and scurried down the hall after his client like a dog that had been kicked off the porch.
Rebecca waited until the outer door clicked shut before she closed her red legal pad.
“Chelsea’s lawyer called while you were driving over,” she said.
“Chelsea has a lawyer?”
“She hired Dan Whitmire from the capital,” Rebecca said. “Whitmire is expensive. He doesn't take cases unless someone is either very rich or very frightened. Chelsea is both.”
“What did Whitmire want?”
“He wanted to know if the state would accept an offer of complete restitution in exchange for a non-custodial plea.”
I looked out the window. Across Court Street, the yellow gruel in the gutters was beginning to freeze again as the afternoon light failed. Below us, through the glass, I saw Arthur emerge from the courthouse door between the two agents. He didn't have his coat. He was wearing only that cranberry sweater, his head down, his grey hair whipping in the wind that came off the river.
A photographer from the *Corinth Gazette* was already standing by the curb, his flash bulb popping three times in the grey twilight—*white, white, white*—freezing Arthur Vance against the wet brick of the county jail.
“What did Kowalski say?” I asked.
“Kowalski told him that restitution doesn't cure a forged judicial affidavit,” Rebecca said. “The house on Crestview goes to the marshal on the fifteenth. Whitmire says Chelsea is already packing her silver.”
I thought of Poppy’s room.
I had seen it once, two years ago, when Chelsea had asked me to bring some groceries over while she was in the hospital having her gallbladder removed. Poppy had a four-poster bed with a canopy made of pink silk. She had three different dollhouses, all of them lit from inside with miniature electric lamps.
“And Poppy?” I asked.
Rebecca looked at me over her glasses. “Poppy will live in a rental out by the high school, Leah. Just like half the other children in this county. She’ll survive it. Her mother might not, but the child will.”
She reached across the table, took the blue folder, and slid it into a heavy fiberboard expansion envelope.
“The judge signed the decree of restoration twenty minutes ago,” she said. “The estate is closed. The land in Corinth—all five hundred and twelve acres, including the north ridge and the gas royalties—is now titled to the *Thomas Vance Trust for Leah Vance and Maisie Vance*.”
She laid a key on the linoleum.
It was an old key, heavy, made of stamped brass with a square head that was black with age around the ring hole.
“What is this?” I asked.
“That’s the key to your grandfather’s house,” Rebecca said. “The state lifted the padlock off the gate this morning. The electricity is still on—Arthur kept the heat at fifty degrees so the pipes wouldn't burst and ruin the resale value.”
I picked up the key.
It was cold. It smelled of old brass and dry grease, like the latch on the well-cap where Thomas and I had watched the swallows.
May you like
“Go home, Leah,” Rebecca said, her voice softening for the first time in three weeks. “Take your girl and go home. Let Arthur and the lawyers spend the winter in the basement of the courthouse. That’s what they built it for.”
***
