Chapter 7 - The Savannah Paper Trail
The law offices of Vance, Fenwick & Cabell occupied the entire twelfth floor of the SunTrust building on East Main Street, their windows looking down upon the muddy, swollen brown loops of the James River and the distant rail yards of Fulton.
It was Monday morning, 10:15 AM.
The air inside the conference room was sixty-eight degrees, dry, and carried the quiet, three-hundred-year-old authority of red leather, bound volumes of the Virginia Reports, and oil portraits of men who had drafted colonial charters with goose quills.
Marcus Vance sat at the head of the mahogany table. He was sixty-four, with thick, silver-streaked hair, hands that could guide a bone saw through a femoral head with half-millimeter precision, and an administrative demeanor that made high-court judges check their jurisdictional references. Beside him sat his younger brother, Julian Vance, the senior partner in the estate and trust division.
My mother was not there.
She was three miles away, resting in Room 412 of the West Hospital, her right knee drained of sixty cubic centimeters of inflammatory synovial fluid, her leg resting in a continuous passive motion machine while two private-duty nurses—hand-picked by Eleanor Gable—ensured that her tea was hot and her pillows were turned every two hours.
On the table between Julian and me lay three separate piles of documents.
"The Emerald Isle property is secured," Julian said, his pen hovering over a yellow legal pad. "Tyler Calloway executed the voluntary quitclaim deed at eight-fifteen this morning before a notary in Morehead City. He was... remarkably cooperative once the Commonwealth's Attorney for Richmond called his managing partner at the mortgage brokerage."
"And the contents?" I asked.
"The Savannah consignment has been interpleaded," Julian continued, sliding a faxed manifest across the leather blotter. "The silver service was still in the crates at the regional depot. It has been sealed under a sheriff's attachment. It will be returned to Monument Avenue by an armored transport service on Wednesday afternoon. The Civil War surveys were recovered from a private gallery on Bull Street. The gallery owner surrendered them immediately once he saw the original commonwealth registration stamps in your father's ledger."
"And the wine?"
Julian paused. His pen made three small, rhythmic taps against the yellow paper.
"The Latour," he said slowly, "was purchased by a real estate developer in Kiawah Island for forty-two thousand dollars. The funds were deposited into Reid’s commercial account on Friday afternoon."
"Did he spend it?"
"Twenty-eight thousand was wired to an escrow agent in Charlottesville at four-thirty on Friday," Julian said. "To secure a preliminary purchase contract on a sports bar near the university campus."
I looked out the window at the rail bridges.
A freight train—three locomotives and ninety black coal hoppers—was crawling across the trestle, heading east toward the export terminals at Newport News. It moved with an agonizing, heavy momentum that nothing could stop, its steel wheels screaming against the curved rails.
"The contract in Charlottesville," I said, "was signed by whom?"
"Reid Calloway and Brooke Calloway," Julian replied. "As equal managing members of an entity called The Blue Ridge Hospitality Group LLC."
I reached into my briefcase, pulled out my corporate token, and laid it on the mahogany table.
"Julian," I said. "Who holds the master debt on that commercial strip in Charlottesville?"
Julian’s lips twitched—not quite a smile, but the subtle, predatory tightening of the cheek muscles that runs in our family.
"The property is owned by Old Dominion Commercial Partners," Julian murmured. "Which, if I remember correctly from the twenty-twenty-two restructuring, is ninety-four percent owned by the Fenwick Heritage Trust."
"Call the managing agent in Charlottesville," I said. "Terminate the purchase option under the standard moral turpitude and illegal source-of-funds clause. Demand the immediate forfeiture of the twenty-eight thousand dollar deposit under Paragraph Fourteen. And then file a notice of default on the Audi Brooke is driving."
Julian made a single, neat notation on his pad. "The Audi is titled through the same LLC?"
"Every tire," I said. "Every spark plug. Every square inch of leather."
The conference room door opened with a soft, pneumatic hiss.
A junior associate stepped in, his face pale, holding an electronic signature pad and a white priority envelope bearing the seal of the Richmond City Police Department.
"Mr. Vance," the associate whispered. "Detective Miller is on line three from the Third Precinct. He says Mr. Douglas Calloway is in the lobby with an attorney from Henrico. They’re claiming unlawful eviction, conversion of personal property, and breach of a fiduciary trust."
Julian didn't look up from his notes.
"Tell Detective Miller," Julian said in his dry, measured baritone, "that if Mr. Douglas Calloway is still standing in that lobby in ten minutes, we will be delivering the nineteen-ninety-eight insurance claim files regarding the Henrico barn fire to the State Police Bureau of Criminal Investigation. The files were found in the trunk in the carriage house on Saturday morning, along with the signed affidavits from the volunteer fire chief."
The associate blinked. "The barn fire?"
"Douglas had a very small, very profitable fire when his insurance agency was audited twenty-eight years ago," Julian said, his voice as smooth and cold as a polished slate. "My father kept the files because he was the commonwealth's attorney who decided not to indict him out of respect for his late mother. Tell him the statute of limitations on commercial arson does not expire if the fraud was maintained across state lines through the mail."
The associate turned and vanished through the door as if the carpet were on fire.
I stood up, pulling my canvas coat over my shoulders.
May you like
"Where are you going, Audrey?" Marcus asked, his surgeon’s eyes assessing the level of fatigue in my jaw.
"Home," I said. "The dining table needs oil."
