Chapter 5 - The Red Wine Stain
The twenty-four minutes expired not with a dramatic scream, but with the steady, metallic click of handcuffs.
Arthur hadn't gone quietly. When the eight-man staging crew began carrying out the entryway console table—an 18th-century French reproduction Eleanor had bought in Paris—Arthur lunged at one of the movers, screaming about trespass and armed robbery. Deputy Harris had taken him down onto the gravel within three seconds, his knee planted firmly between Arthur’s shoulder blades.
Now, Arthur sat on the low curb of the private road, outside the iron gates, his cashmere robe caked in mud and gray limestone dust, his hands secured behind his back.
Eleanor sat on an overturned plastic suitcase beside him, her face buried in her hands, her shoulders trembling with silent, dry sobs. Around her lay three hastily packed duffel bags filled with whatever designer clothes Tiffany had managed to throw together before Deputy Miller escorted her down the front steps.
Tiffany stood twenty feet away, her arms wrapped around her chest, shivering in her thin silk pajamas. She was staring down at her bare feet on the asphalt.
I walked back down the long driveway toward the main gate, holding a small brown paper bag in my left hand.
I stopped in front of Tiffany.
She looked up at me, her eyes red, swollen, devoid of the smug, cruel arrogance she had carried at my birthday dinner. Four days ago, she had laughed in my face. She had stood over me while a hundred of our family members, friends, and business associates watched, lifting my car keys out of my pocket with two manicured fingers.
*“Don’t look so upset,”* she had purred, her voice dripping with venomous amusement. *“I’ll take the car as a down payment. I need a better one tomorrow.”*
And then she had dropped them into her glass of Cabernet Sauvignon, smiling as the dark red liquid swallowed the silver key fob.
I reached into the brown paper bag and pulled out a heavy crystal tumbler.
It was filled to the brim with dark red wine.
And resting at the bottom of the glass, submerged under three inches of alcohol, was a set of keys.
Not my keys.
Her keys.
The custom-ordered key fob to her brand-new, leased Porsche Macan—the one Arthur had co-signed for her twenty-third birthday, the one parked neatly in the third bay of the estate garage.
Tiffany stared at the glass. Her mouth opened, but no words came out.
"I believe this is yours," I said.
I tilted the glass forward.
The heavy, dark red wine poured out in a steady, thick stream, splashing over the toes of her bare feet, staining her skin and the hem of her silk robe a deep, bruised purple.
The heavy Porsche fob fell with a sharp *clack* onto the pavement between her feet, dripping with wet, sticky residue.
"My car..." she choked out, her voice barely audible. "Julian... please... that's my car. How am I supposed to leave?"
"On foot," I said. "Just like I did."
"Julian, you can't leave us out here!" Eleanor cried, looking up from her suitcase, her voice cracking with desperation. "Look at your father! He’s in shock! We have nowhere to go! All our accounts are frozen! My cards were declined thirty minutes ago when I tried to book an Uber!"
"You have thirty days to find alternative accommodations," I said, repeating the exact words Arthur had spoken to me over the birthday cake. "If you can't pay your debts, Eleanor, you pack your things and you leave. Isn't that the Vance family motto?"
"You monster!" Arthur shouted from the curb, struggling against the cuffs, his face purple with rage. "You unnatural, ungrateful monster! I worked forty years to build this life! I gave you everything! Everything!"
"You gave me a ledger, Arthur," I said, stepping closer to him. I reached into my coat and pulled out the manila folder he had handed me four nights ago. The $248,000 itemized bill.
I opened it, tore the first five pages in half, and let the pieces fall onto his lap.
"The orthodontics: paid in full," I said, dropping another torn sheet. "The prom dress: paid in full. The broken vase from 1999: paid in full."
I tossed the remaining scraps of paper into the wind. They scattered across the black asphalt of the street, blowing past the iron gates, dancing like dry autumn leaves across the lawns of Whispering Pines.
"The account is closed," I said.
I turned my back on them and walked through the gates.
"Close them," I told the security technician standing by the gate pillar.
The heavy, black wrought-iron gates began to slide shut, the electric motor humming with a smooth, relentless purr.
Through the closing bars, I saw Eleanor falling to her knees again, trying to gather the torn scraps of paper blowing across the road. I saw Tiffany standing frozen in the puddle of red wine, staring at the locked gates as if she were looking at the walls of a prison. And I saw Arthur Vance, the master of Whispering Pines, sitting in the mud in his dirty bathrobe, howling curses into the empty morning air.
The latch clicked shut with a heavy, final *thud*.
May you like
The estate was quiet again.
***
