Chapter 62 - The Somerset Irregularity
"He isn't in Millinocket," my mother said. Her voice didn't sound like the fierce woman who had stood up to Julian Sterling’s eviction crew. It sounded frail, cracked at the edges like dried parchment. "Marcus, please. Don't dig into this. What Julian did to us was business. What Thomas did... it tore this family into pieces long before you were born."
"Arthur Vance-Pemberton just filed an injunction against Tracts One through Nine," I said, pacing the private conference room Ross had secured on the third floor of the U.S. Attorney's annex. "If I don't prove the trust is fraudulent by four o'clock tomorrow, Arthur takes legal control of the entire Wachusett basin. The deeds won't quiet. Everything we took back from Julian reverts to Shannon Timber's trustee."
A quiet sob hitched in her throat. "Your father knew. That’s what killed him, Marcus. Not the heart attack. The knowledge of what his brother agreed to do."
She hung up before I could ask another question.
Ross walked in five minutes later, carrying a heavy red-rope expanding file folder under his arm. He dropped it onto the laminate conference table with a thud.
"State police liaison in Augusta pulled the historical files," Ross said, loosening his tie. "You were right to question Arthur's bluff, but he wasn't entirely lying."
I pulled the file open. The top document was a yellowed carbon copy of a police report from the Maine State Police, dated October 14, 1985.
*Subject: Thomas Vance. Incident: Industrial structural collapse and localized blaze at Vance Lumber Yard No. 3, Millinocket.*
I scanned down to the coroner's summary. My fraud analyst instincts took over, cataloging discrepancies automatically.
"Look at line fourteen," I said, tapping the paper. "No dental match. No DNA—it was 1985, so dental was standard. The report says the body was identified solely by personal effects found in the supervisor's locker."
"A pocket watch and a signet ring," Ross nodded. "Belonging to Thomas. The coroner who signed off was Dr. Harold Pemberton."
"Arthur’s uncle," I whispered.
"Exactly. But look at the secondary filing three weeks later," Ross pointed to an amended affidavit stapled behind the report. "A probate clerk in Somerset County flagged the estate filing because there was an open commercial debt of three hundred and eighty thousand dollars owed to Boston Commercial Credit. If Thomas was declared dead, that debt collapsed onto your father's sawmill."
"And if he was declared missing?" I asked.
"If he was missing, the debt went into escrow under a custodial trustee until an official declaration of death could be finalized seven years later," Ross said. "Arthur Vance-Pemberton stepped in as that trustee on November 2, 1985. He absorbed the debt, took the voting shares of Vance Lumber as collateral, and left your father with the physical mill and the operational liabilities."
"And seven years later, in 1992, Arthur never filed the petition for declaration of death," I realized, the financial trap revealing itself with horrifying clarity. "He left the trust open. An active, zombie entity that still possessed forty-nine percent of the underlying land rights."
"And that zombie entity," Ross said grimly, "held the dormant Irish voting proxy for Shannon Timber."
"Which means Julian Sterling didn't steal the Wachusett tracts alone," I said, looking up at the board where we had mapped out Julian’s shell companies. "Julian was the front man. Arthur was the architect. And the signature that authorized the transfer of the 1904 charter in 1998 wasn't Julian's."
"Whose was it?" Ross asked.
I pulled the Irish charter addendum from the courier packet and examined the notary stamp at the bottom of page three.
The stamp belonged to a notary public in Bangor, Maine. Dated August 31, 1998.
And above it was a shaky, cursive signature that didn't belong to Arthur Vance-Pemberton.
May you like
It read: *Thomas Vance.*
***
