Chapter 5 - The Desperate Counter-Offensive
The Oakridge County lockup was a sterile concrete facility smelling of floor wax and stale coffee.
Diane Mercer had never set foot inside a police station in her seventy-one years of life. She was a woman who spent her afternoons drinking Earl Grey at the country club and lecturing the junior league on social decorum.
Now, she sat in an interrogation observation booth, wearing an ill-fitting orange sweater over her designer beige slacks, her manicured nails picking frantically at the metal table.
"This is an outrage!" Diane shrieked the moment Mark entered the visitation room, accompanied by an expensive bail bondsman Eleanor had refused to authorize from corporate funds. "Mark! Look at what that low-class girl has done to me! She had the police drag me out of my own home in front of Mrs. Higgins!"
Mark looked hollowed out. In the twelve hours since his removal from the firm, he had aged five years. His designer suit was rumpled, his hair unkempt, and the smell of bourbon clung to his breath.
"Mom, keep your voice down," Mark muttered, slumping into the chair opposite her. "There’s a protective order. The judge granted an emergency injunction this morning. You can’t go within five hundred feet of Emma or Lily. If you violate it, it’s an automatic ninety days in jail."
"A protective order?!" Diane gasped, clutching her chest. "Against their own grandmother?! That ungrateful little brat was touching the cake before I gave permission! I was disciplining her! In my day, a mother would be thanked for correcting an insolent child!"
"Mom, shut up!" Mark snapped, slamming his open palm on the table.
Diane blinked, stunned into silence. Mark had never raised his voice to her in his entire life.
"Arthur Pendleton pulled his entire account," Mark whispered, his voice cracking with hysteria. "The board fired me. My credit cards are declined. The bank froze my personal accounts pending a forensic audit. Clara has Eleanor Vance representing her!"
"Eleanor Vance?" Diane’s eyes widened with sudden dread. Even in her sheltered social bubble, she knew the name. Vance had dismantled three of the wealthiest families in the state during high-profile divorces. "How can she afford Eleanor Vance?"
"She isn't paying Vance," Mark said, burying his face in his hands. "Vance worked for her grandfather! Clara... Mom, Clara owns the firm. She always owned the firm. We don't have fifty-one percent. She does."
"That’s impossible!" Diane hissed, leaning across the table. "You told me you built that business! You told me she was just a stay-at-home housewife who got lucky marrying you!"
"I lied, okay?!" Mark yelled, ignoring the guard standing by the door who tapped his baton on the wall warningly. "I lied to keep you happy! I lied because every single Sunday dinner for ten years, you reminded me that Clara came from a family of blue-collar factory owners while the Mercers were old money! But the truth is, Mom, the Mercer money ran out twenty years ago! Everything we have—your country club dues, your car lease, the mansion, my Porsche—it was all funded by Clara’s trust!"
Diane sat back slowly, the color draining completely from her powdered cheeks. Her mouth opened and closed like a fish stranded on dry sand.
"Then... what are we going to do?" she whispered. "We have to fix this. We’ll call her. We’ll tell her we forgive her for the outburst. We’ll invite her back to dinner."
"She’s not coming back, Mom," Mark said bitterly. "She served me with divorce papers an hour ago. And that’s not the worst of it."
"What could be worse?"
"She served an eviction notice on the Oakridge house," Mark said, his voice hollow. "The deed is in her name. We have thirty days to get everything out."
Diane’s eyes flashed with sudden, desperate malice. The shock was rapidly mutating into venomous defiance.
"No," Diane snarled, her hands curling into claws. "No! I will not be thrown out of my social circle by that little nobody! We have friends, Mark! We have the country club board, the city council! We will ruin her reputation before she can ruin ours!"
"Mom, don't—"
"Listen to me!" Diane commanded, leaning forward, her eyes wide with frantic intensity. "We tell everyone the truth. We tell them Clara is mentally unstable. We tell them she’s having an affair with that accountant. We tell the school board that she’s neglecting the children! When the town finds out what a monster she is, no judge will give her custody! She will have to settle on our terms!"
Mark looked at his mother. For the first time in his life, he saw the grotesque delusion that drove her. But in his panic, in his complete inability to accept responsibility for his own downfall, he grasped at the delusion like a drowning man grasping at an anchor.
"Do you think that would work?" Mark asked, his voice shaking.
"Of course it will work," Diane sneered, a twisted smile returning to her lips. "This town knows the Mercer name. Nobody knows Clara Sterling."
They had no idea that while they were plotting in the visitor booth, Eleanor Vance was already sitting in a private meeting with the president of the Oakridge Country Club, the headmaster of Emma’s private academy, and the editor of the *Oakridge Herald*.
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The trap had already closed. They were just waiting for the spring to snap.
***
