Chapter 7 - The Gathering of the Vultures
By the second week of October, the leaves in Galena had turned the color of dried blood and hammered brass.
Eliza spent her mornings walking along the creek that cut through the lower pasture of the Miller place. The swelling in her face had subsided into a faint, yellowish shadow that sat high on her cheekbone like a stubborn freckle, but her balance had returned. She wore heavy wool socks, her father’s old hunting boots, and a thick fleece jacket that zipped comfortably over her eight-month belly.
In Chicago, Grant Calder was running out of rooms.
He was living out of a two-room suite at the Drake Hotel on Michigan Avenue—the only hotel where his personal membership account had not yet been canceled. His Porsche had been towed from Sheridan Road on October 3rd; he had taken a yellow cab into the city with two suitcases and a garment bag, his face hidden behind dark sunglasses to avoid the junior associates who frequented the coffee shops near Wacker Drive.
Richard Sterling sat across from Grant in the Drake’s mahogany-paneled Palm Court, drinking dry sherry from a small glass.
"They won't negotiate, Grant," Sterling said. He was sixty, impeccably groomed, but his eyes carried the nervous, darting exhaustion of a lawyer who knew he had boarded a sinking ship. "I called Naomi Vance twice yesterday. She didn't even take the call. Her associate sent a one-line email: We will see Mr. Calder in court on the seventeenth."
"They have to negotiate!" Grant snarled, his voice rising enough to make an elderly couple at a neighboring tea table glance over with disapproval. "I have rights! We were married for six years! Everything she has—that trust, those accounts—is marital property under Illinois law!"
Sterling sighed, setting his glass down with a slow, deliberate click.
"Grant, listen to me," Sterling said, leaning forward and lowering his voice. "The Harrow Trust was formed under Pennsylvania spendthrift statutes in 1984. It predates your marriage by thirty years. Eliza is not a named beneficiary of the principal; she’s an income beneficiary at the sole discretion of the independent trustee."
"Her father is the trustee!"
"Wade Harrow resigned as sole trustee on October 1st," Sterling said quietly.
Grant went still. "What?"
"He stepped down," Sterling said. "He appointed Northern Trust and the Pittsburgh National Bank as corporate co-trustees, with Naomi Vance serving as the special protector. You can't sue Wade Harrow for trust assets, Grant. He doesn't hold them anymore. And Northern Trust has eighteen billion dollars in capitalization and forty-two full-time litigation partners who would like nothing better than to bill fifty thousand dollars a week dragging this through the appellate courts until you’re seventy years old."
Grant’s fingers dug into the linen tablecloth.
"What about Sarah?" Grant whispered.
Sterling looked away, his jaw tightening with awkward distaste. "Miss Lindquist was terminated by Aster Vale on Friday afternoon. Section 8 of their employee handbook prohibits undisclosed personal relationships between supervisory personnel and subordinates within the same reporting chain. Her corporate apartment lease was terminated effective yesterday."
"Did she call me?"
"She called my office," Sterling said. "She wanted to know if you had the funds to pay her security deposit on a new place in Lincoln Park."
Grant’s head dropped into his hands.
His total liquid net worth was currently four thousand eight hundred and twelve dollars, sitting in a regional savings account in Lake Forest that had been overlooked during the initial freeze. His credit cards were dead plastic. The twenty-two thousand dollars in monthly draw from Aster Vale had vanished. The four-point-two million dollar mortgage on Sheridan Road was entering its second week of default notice, and the Lake County State’s Attorney had formally issued a warrant for misdemeanor domestic battery, set for arraignment on the twenty-second.
"What do I do, Richard?" Grant whispered. His voice was cracked, small, and utterly devoid of the commanding baritone that had once silenced boardrooms. "What do I do?"
May you like
Sterling stood up, picked up his briefcase, and dropped a crisp fifty-dollar bill onto the table to cover the tea.
"You plead guilty, Grant," Sterling said. "You take the anger management classes, you surrender the house, you find an entry-level compliance job at a boutique advisory firm in Indianapolis, and you pray to God that Wade Harrow decides you’re too small to keep hunting."
