Chapter 7 - The Auction of the Estate
The rain had finally stopped by the following Thursday, replaced by a cold, clear November sky that made the historic brick architecture of Beacon Hill look sharp and clean.
Outside the gates of the Whitmore manor, two large white vans bearing the logo of Sotheby’s Real Estate & Fine Arts were parked along the gravel driveway. A crowd of fifty people—social rivals, antique dealers, and tabloid reporters from the Boston papers—stood on the lawn, their collars turned up against the wind as they watched three men in white gloves carry a seventeenth-century French tapestry down the marble steps.
Victoria Whitmore sat on a wooden folding chair near the rose garden, her hands clasped in her lap, her old wool coat pulled tight around her throat. Her face was entirely bare of makeup, her silver hair uncombed, her eyes fixed on the front door of her home with a vacant, uncomprehending stare. Two state police detectives in dark suits stood five paces behind her chair, their hands resting near their belts.
Daniel stood beside her, his tie gone, his hair greasy, his hands stuffed deep into the pockets of his trousers. He looked like a man who had spent forty-eight hours sleeping in an office chair, which he had.
"They're taking the portrait of Great-Uncle Charles," Victoria whispered, her voice cracking like dry grass. "He fought at Gettysburg, Daniel. He built the first mill in Lawrence."
"Great-Uncle Charles was bought with money that belonged to the Rowan Trust, Mother," Daniel said, his tone flat, exhausted, completely drained of the old corporate volume. "The bank owns the canvas. They own the frame. They own the dirt we're sitting on."
A black town car rolled slowly up the driveway, its tires crunching over the gravel before stopping exactly five feet from Victoria’s chair.
The rear door opened, and Emily Rowan stepped out onto the gravel.
She was wearing a long, tailored cream coat over a dark emerald silk dress, her pearl pendant resting against her collarbone—the single piece of jewelry her father had given her before he died. She didn't look at the movers; she didn't look at the crowd of reporters who were frantically clicking their cameras from behind the security line. She walked directly over to her husband.
Daniel looked up, his bloodshot eyes catching hers. "Did you come to watch them take the keys, Emily?"
"The keys were delivered to my office at nine o'clock this morning, Daniel," Emily said, her voice calm and even. "I came because Arthur told me you refused to sign the personal disclosure forms for the Back Bay lease."
"Why should I sign them?" Daniel shouted, a tiny, pathetic spark of his old arrogance flaring up before dying out instantly under her green gaze. "You've taken the company. You've taken the house. My mother is going to be indicted before the grand jury tomorrow morning. Lauren’s father is in a federal holding cell in South Boston. What else do you want from me, Emily? My shoes?"
Emily looked down at his polished leather shoes, then up at his face, noting the slight, trembling twitch near his left eye—the unmistakable sign of a man who had finally run out of lies.
"I don't want anything from you, Daniel," she said softly. "I never did. That was the one thing you never understood. I spent twelve years asking for nothing but your respect, and you couldn't give it to me because you thought respect was something you bought from a tailor. You thought because I didn't demand an invoice for my love, it had no value."
She reached into her coat pocket and extracted a small, white envelope. She placed it on the armrest of Victoria’s folding chair.
"Those are the non-extradition release forms for the French accounts," Emily said, looking at Victoria, who didn't move. "The bank has agreed to drop the secondary fraud claims against the estate in exchange for a full surrender of the remaining stock. It means you won't lose your pension, Victoria. You won't have to spend your eighty-first year in a federal facility. You can live in Cranston. I believe there’s a lovely semi-detached house available near the harbor."
May you like
Victoria’s head snapped up, her lips parting in a silent, horrified gasp as she realized the absolute, symmetrical irony of the sentence.
Emily turned back to Daniel, her cream coat catching the clean November wind. "The divorce papers are signed, Daniel. I left them on the kitchen table before they moved the chairs out. You can keep the sapphire necklace. I suspect Lauren will need the liquidity to pay her bail."
