Chapter 25 - The Federal Annex
The visiting booth at the Federal Correctional Institution in Berlin, New Hampshire, smelled of industrial floor stripper and stale coffee.
Arthur Pendelton sat across from me behind a scratched Plexiglas partition. In three weeks of incarceration, he had aged ten years. His once-immaculate silver hair was unkempt, his orange jumpsuit hung loosely from his sunken shoulders, and his hands shook as he picked up the receiver.
"Hannah," he croaked, his eyes darting fearfully toward the guard standing by the door. "You shouldn't have come here. If they know you’re talking to me—"
"Julian Sterling called me, Arthur," I said, cutting him off through the handset. "He took me into the vault on Mount Vernon Street. He showed me the fire."
Arthur’s face went bone white. He closed his eyes, a dry sob racking his chest. "My God. He pulled the file."
"He told me you were paying the families of three dead watchmen," I continued, keeping my eyes locked on his. "He told me my father burned down the union depot in 1974."
Arthur opened his eyes. There was terror in them, but also a startling, sudden flash of raw indignation.
"Richard didn't burn anything!" Arthur hissed, leaning as close to the partition as the wire allowed. "Your father was twenty miles away in Paxton that night! We were at a high school basketball tournament with three hundred witnesses!"
My heart hammered against my ribs. "Then why did he pay, Arthur? Why did he let you embezzle six hundred thousand dollars a year from our company?"
"Because of me, Hannah," Arthur whispered, tears spilling over his wrinkled cheeks. "The fire... it wasn't Richard. It was my father. Old Donald Pendelton."
I gripped the receiver until my knuckles turned white. "Donald?"
"My father owed half a million dollars to illegal loan sharks in South Boston," Arthur confessed, his voice breaking. "Julian Sterling’s father, Marcus Sterling, bought the debt. Marcus told my dad that if he torched the union mill, the insurance payout would clear the ledger. My father did it. But he didn't know the night watchmen were inside."
Arthur buried his face in his hands before looking up, hollow-eyed.
"When the police found Donald’s lighter at the scene, Marcus Sterling stepped in. He bought off the local investigators. But in return, he demanded that Vance Lumber—which Donald held a minor partnership in—absorb the entire liability under a private indemnity note. Marcus manufactured evidence framing your father as the mastermind so Richard couldn't back out."
"And Richard agreed to this?" I demanded.
"Your father agreed to pay the interest to keep my father out of the electric chair!" Arthur cried. "And after Donald died, Marcus Sterling told Richard that if the payments stopped, he would release the forged confession and ruin Vance Lumber forever. Your father paid because he had a heart, Hannah! And when Richard died in 2012, Julian Sterling called me. He told me that if I didn't continue the payments using company funds, he would come after you."
Arthur slammed his fist against the metal shelf.
"I stole that money to keep you alive, Hannah! Every fake invoice, every ghost employee—I did it so Julian Sterling’s collectors wouldn't touch you! I let you send me to prison because I thought as long as I was the villain, the debt would die with me!"
I stared at Arthur Pendelton through the scratched glass.
The man who had humiliated me at Thanksgiving, who had mocked my salary, who had treated me like a nuisance—had been running a twenty-year embezzlement scheme under the barrel of an invisible gun to shield me from the same predators who had destroyed his family.
He wasn't innocent. He had been weak, cowardly, and arrogant. But he had not been the architect.
"Arthur," I said, my voice steadying. "Did my father ever sign the master deed reaffirmation before he died?"
Arthur wiped his face, shaking his head slowly. "No. That’s why Richard died, Hannah."
The room seemed to drop ten degrees. "What did you say?"
"Four days before the crash," Arthur whispered, his voice trembling violently. "Julian Sterling summoned Richard to Boston. He demanded Richard sign a perpetual deed transfer pledging the two thousand acres of timberland. Richard refused. He told Sterling he had found proof the 1974 fire investigation was a complete corporate fraud."
Arthur leaned against the glass, his breath fogging the plastic.
May you like
"Richard took the evidence, put it in an escrow safe, and drove home. On Route 9, a commercial flatbed truck clipped his bumper from behind and pushed his sedan through the guardrail into the ravine. The truck was never found."
***
