Chapter 15 - The First Strike
By Friday afternoon, eight days after Thanksgiving, the temperature in Raleigh had climbed back into the low sixties—one of those sudden, unseasonable Carolina thaws that makes the air feel thick and sweet with the smell of wet earth and pine needles.
The grand jury of Wake County had returned seven true bills of indictment against Todd Miller at two-fifteen: three counts of obtaining property by false pretenses, two counts of financial exploitation of an older adult, one count of assault with a deadly weapon inflicting serious injury, and one count of corrupt business practices under the North Carolina Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations statute.
His bond had been reset at seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars, secured only by cash or real property located within the state. Since his only asset—the flooded shell on Bramblewood Court—was currently encumbered by two hundred and eighty thousand dollars in senior mortgages and my forty-seven-thousand-dollar judgment lien, Todd Miller was staying on Hammond Road until his trial in September.
In Arthur Vance’s high-ceilinged corner office on the twelfth floor of the Wells Fargo tower on Fayetteville Street, the afternoon sun cast long, golden rectangles across the oriental carpet.
Raina sat in a leather armchair opposite Arthur’s desk.
She was wearing a clean gray wool sweater Sylvia had lent her and an old pair of slacks from a consignment shop on Hillsborough Street. Her hair was pulled back into a neat, severe bun. She hadn't put on makeup, and the purple shadows under her eyes made her look forty-five instead of thirty-four. In her lap, she clutched a legal-sized document bearing the gold seal of the North Carolina Department of Insurance.
"The personal injury attorney representing Sarah Jenkins—the woman in the other car—called this morning," Arthur said, leaning back in his swivel chair. "Because you were operating an uninsured vehicle with a revoked registration, Mrs. Miller, your personal liability is uncapped. They have filed a civil complaint demanding three hundred and fifty thousand dollars for medical expenses, lost wages, and pain and suffering."
Raina didn't cry. The tears seemed to have been burned out of her over the last four days at the Raleigh Rescue Mission.
"I don't have three hundred and fifty thousand dollars, Mr. Vance," she said, her voice dry and brittle as winter grass. "I have eleven dollars in a checking account that’s been frozen by the district attorney, and a physical therapy license that’s currently under review by the state medical board."
"I am aware of that," Arthur said. "Which is why you are going to execute this."
He slid a four-page document across the mahogany desk toward her.
"What is it?" she asked.
"It is a confession of judgment and a full covenant not to contest the permanent guardianship of Oliver and May Evans Miller," Arthur said without a trace of mercy. "Under its terms, you surrender all parental decision-making authority to your mother for a minimum period of twenty-four months. You will complete sixty hours of community service at the Food Bank of Central and Eastern North Carolina. You will attend weekly individual therapy sessions at the Lucy Daniels Center. And you will assign seventy-five percent of your future net earnings, above the federal poverty line, toward the restitution account established for the estate of Harold Evans."
Raina looked up at me. I was sitting by the window, looking down at the afternoon traffic crawling along Martin Street toward the capitol building.
"Mom," she whispered. "Twenty-four months? I won't be able to tuck them in for two years?"
"You didn't tuck them in on Thanksgiving, Raina," I said, not turning from the window. "You let their grandmother tuck them in while you and Todd calculated how many dollars you could squeeze out of the house Harold built. You had four years to be their mother, and you turned them over to me whenever you wanted to get your nails done or go to brunch in Chapel Hill. You will earn your way back into their lives, one floor scrubbed at a time, or you will not see them until they are old enough to decide for themselves."
Raina’s hands shook as she picked up Arthur’s pen.
She signed her name four times. Each stroke of the pen was slow, heavy, and final. When she finished, Arthur took the document, pressed his notary seal into the paper with a sharp, metallic crunch, and slid it into his file.
"You have twenty minutes, Mrs. Miller," Arthur said, checking his watch. "The court-ordered supervised visitation takes place in room three-oh-two at the Wake County Courthouse at four o’clock. If you are one minute late, the deputy will cancel the session."
Raina stood up. She looked at me, her lips trembling, wanting something—an embrace, a kind word, an assurance that the world would eventually go back to the way it was when she was seven years old and Harold was measuring her height against the kitchen doorframe.
I didn't move. I didn't reach out.
"Four o’clock, Raina," I told her. "Don't make Oliver wait."
She swallowed hard, nodded once, clutched her worn coat around herself, and walked out the heavy oak door of Arthur’s office.
When the latch clicked shut, Arthur stood up, walked to the bar in the corner of his office, and poured two fingers of bourbon into a crystal glass. He didn't offer me any; he knew I only drank sweet tea with lemon.
"Well, Gloria," Arthur said, staring out at the golden sunset over the pines of Raleigh. "Todd is in jail. Raina is on a leash so short she can't turn around without the court’s permission. Bramblewood is headed for the sheriff’s auction block, and we have recovered one hundred and eighty-four thousand dollars in the cashier’s check from Todd’s lockbox."
"It’s not over, is it, Arthur?" I asked.
Arthur turned around. His face, usually an unreadable mask of legal precision, was tight with a deep, unsettling tension.
He reached into his leather briefcase, pulled out an unopened courier envelope from an international courier service based in Zurich, and laid it gently on the center of his blotter.
"This arrived at my office twenty minutes before you walked in, Gloria," Arthur said quietly. "It was sent by a corporate law firm in the Cayman Islands representing the primary investor behind Apex Commercial Holdings."
I looked at the thick, cream-colored paper. "Who is the primary investor, Arthur? Is it Marcus Vance?"
"No," Arthur said. "Marcus Vance was just the local paper-shuffler. The man who funded the mezzanine loan on your Cary house—the man who holds the primary security deed against forty-two other unencumbered homes in Wake County—is a private venture capitalist named Julian Vance."
I felt the blood drain from my face. "Julian? Your cousin Julian?"
"My brother, Gloria," Arthur said, his voice dropping into a register so dark it sent a cold shiver straight down the length of my spine. "The brother who left Raleigh twenty-five years ago after Harold audited the Wake County school district’s construction bonds."
Arthur looked at the letter, his fingers curling into a fist so tight the tendons stood out like white cords against his skin.
"Julian didn't fund this scheme to get rich off Todd Miller, Gloria," Arthur whispered, looking straight into my eyes through the gathering dusk of the room. "Todd Miller was just the idiot who walked through the front door. Julian funded this scheme because he’s been waiting twenty-five years to take Harold Evans’s last dollar."
The grandfather clock in the corner of Arthur’s office struck four. Down on Fayetteville Street, the sirens of an emergency vehicle began to wail, rising and falling in the cold evening air, long and high and without end.
May you like
I looked at the unopened letter on the mahogany desk, Harold’s wedding band cold and heavy on my knuckle, and felt the whole world tilt beneath my feet once more.
***
