Chapter 7 - The Eviction of the Ego
While Evan sat in his cell awaiting his preliminary hearing, there was still the matter of clearing the remaining elements of his presence from our lives.
At two o'clock that afternoon, Daniel Cho, two moving vans, and a team of estate liquidators arrived at the country club estate in Whitemarsh Lane.
Gloria Miller was sitting on the front porch, surrounded by four oversized plastic suitcases filled with her clothes. She had spent the morning trying to contact every socialite, church member, and charity board member she had cultivated during her eleven months living in the house. None of them had answered her calls. In high-society circles, news of a federal financial indictment and domestic abuse charges travels faster than a summer storm.
When my dark sedan pulled up the long driveway, Gloria stood up, her face twisted in venomous hatred.
"You think you’re so high and mighty, don't you, Margaret?" Gloria spat as I stepped out onto the gravel. "You used your money to buy the police, buy the judge, buy everyone! But God knows what you did to my boy!"
I didn't stop walking. I walked right past her up the porch steps, holding a clipboard containing the final asset recovery inventory.
"God knows your boy stole a million dollars from an orphan’s trust fund, Gloria," I said without looking at her. "And he knows you took twelve thousand dollars a month to keep your mouth shut while he bruised my daughter’s arms."
Two estate liquidators began carrying furniture out through the front doors—the velvet sofas Evan had ordered from Italy, the mahogany sideboards, the gold-leaf mirrors Gloria had hand-selected to make the guest suite look like a suite at the Ritz.
"What are you doing with my furniture?!" Gloria screamed, running after a mover who was carrying a heavy gilded mirror down the steps. "That’s mine! Evan bought that for me!"
"Evan bought that with a credit card linked to Hartwell Dining Group’s regional marketing budget, Mrs. Miller," Daniel Cho said, stepping out onto the porch with a iPad showing receipt records. "All items purchased with fraudulent funds are being seized under civil forfeiture and sold at public auction. The proceeds will be returned to the trust to offset the embezzlement losses."
"You can't take my clothes!" she shrieked.
"Your clothes are in those four bags," Daniel replied coldly. "You have five minutes to load them into the taxi that is currently waiting at the security gate. If you are still on Whitemarsh Lane at two-fifteen, the gate guard has instructions to press charges for criminal trespass."
Gloria looked at the movers carrying away the luxury items she had spent a year bragging about to her friends. She looked at the black taxi idling down the driveway. Then she looked at me—standing on the porch of the house she had tried to claim as her kingdom, wearing a simple wool coat and holding the keys to the estate.
"Where am I supposed to go?" Gloria whimpered, her voice suddenly small, thin, and pathetic. "I don't have any money. Evan’s accounts are frozen."
"You have a sister in Ohio, Gloria," I said softly. "I suggest you buy a bus ticket. Because by tomorrow morning, your name will be published in the legal notices of the county newspaper as a co-conspirator in the Apex civil lawsuit."
May you like
She stared at me for three seconds, searching my face for a single trace of pity, a single moment of hesitation. She found none.
With a ragged, broken sob, Gloria grabbed the handles of her plastic suitcases and dragged them down the stone steps toward the waiting taxi, her heels clicking uselessly against the gravel until the car door slammed shut and carried her away into the gray afternoon.
