Chapter 35 - The Deposition in Holding
By two o'clock that afternoon, I was sitting across an aluminum table in an interrogation room at the federal holding facility in Central Falls, Rhode Island.
Julian Sterling looked twenty years older than the man who had commanded the boardroom on Mount Vernon Street two days ago. His tailored suit had been replaced by an oversized orange jumpsuit. His silver hair was uncombed, and his manicured hands were cuffed to a chain looped through an eyelet in the floor.
His high-priced defense attorney, Arthur Pendelton, sat beside him, looking miserable.
"My client has nothing to say to an unauthorized family representative," Pendelton began, leaning forward aggressively. "Miss Vance has no standing—"
"I have complete standing, Arthur," I said, placing my court appointment certificate and the Wachusett 1924 deed between us. "I am the executor of the Thomas Vance and Richard Vance estates. And the United States Attorney has authorized this proffer conference."
Julian looked at the deed. His jaw tightened, but he remained silent.
"Julian," I said calmly. "The game is over. Eleanor’s offshore accounts in Nevis and Grand Cayman have been frozen. Agent Miller has the diner receipt, the wire records, and the forensic handwriting analysis proving Eleanor forged my father’s name on the 2012 transfer."
Julian’s eyes flickered toward his lawyer, then back to me. A thin, bitter smile curled his lips.
"Eleanor was always greedy," Julian said, his voice raspy from twenty-four hours in lockup. "I told her to keep the payments under twenty-five thousand. I told her regular wires over fifty grand would flag the automated anti-money laundering filters. She insisted she needed the money for Marcus’s country club memberships."
"Julian, shut up," Pendelton warned sharply.
"Why should I shut up, Arthur?" Julian snapped, rattling his chains against the table. "They’ve seized my personal accounts! They've put a federal monitor in the Beacon Hill office! You think I’m going to spend the next fifteen years in Otisville to protect Eleanor Vance’s social calendar?"
He leaned forward, glaring at me.
"You think this started in 2012, Hannah? You think I approached your mother out of the blue?"
"I know my grandfather owned the land," I replied. "And I know your father used a fraudulent 1974 indenture to claim the reservoir basin."
"Your grandfather was an idiot who trusted his partner," Julian sneered. "My father and Thomas Vance were fifty-fifty partners in Wachusett Forest Products. But when the Commonwealth came looking for reservoir land in the late thirties, my father realized something Thomas didn't: the state didn't care about timber. They cared about water rights. The state paid four million dollars for the flowage easements. My father kept the check, and he gave Thomas a share certificate in a company that had already been dissolved."
The sheer audacity of the generational theft hung in the air like poison.
"And my father found the original articles of incorporation in 2011," I deduced.
"Richard came into my office with a box of company records," Julian admitted, a cold chuckle escaping his throat. "He demanded fifty million dollars in restitution for his grandfather’s estate. He threatened to go to the attorney general. He had the old ledgers, the water certificates, everything."
"So you paid off Eleanor to destroy him."
"I didn't have to pay her much," Julian said, his eyes glittering with malice. "Your mother was already terrified. She had run up eighty thousand dollars in secret credit card debt trying to look like the wives of the Boston doctors. I told her if Richard went to court, my lawyers would tie the mill up in litigation for ten years, bankrupt them completely, and leave her with nothing."
Julian leaned back, the smile vanishing, replaced by a dark, triumphant leer.
"Your mother didn't just sign the deed, Hannah. She brought me Richard’s medical records. She told me when he was having his panic attacks. And the night before he died, she called me from the mill and told me Richard was having chest pains in the saw room."
My breath caught in my throat. The room seemed to tilt beneath my chair.
"What did you say?" I whispered.
May you like
"She asked me what would happen to the deal if Richard had a stroke," Julian whispered back, leaning over the table, ignoring his lawyer’s frantic tug on his sleeve. "I told her that if Richard died before signing the release, his estate would be tied up in probate, and I would withdraw the settlement offer. She said, *'I'll take care of it.'* And thirty minutes later, she walked out of the mill and left him locked inside."
***
