Chapter 9 - The Final Accounting
The closing took place in the small, second-floor conference room of the First American Title Company on Clark Street.
It was nine-thirty on a Tuesday morning in late January. Outside, the city was buried beneath six inches of fresh, dry snow that muffled the sound of the elevated trains on Wells Street into a rhythmic, metallic rumble that sounded like distant thunder.
There were only four people in the room.
To my right sat Marcus Vance, his leather briefcase open, three fountain pens resting neatly beside a four-inch stack of legal-sized settlement documents.
Across from us sat Harold Sterling, looking ten years older than he had in November, wearing a rumpled tweed overcoat that he hadn't bothered to remove, his fingers stained with nicotine and black coffee.
Beside Harold sat Toby.
The younger brother was wearing an ill-fitting navy blazer that he had borrowed from a former college roommate, his hair unbrushed, his hands tucked deep into his pockets to hide the absence of his expensive watch. He had spent the last six weeks working the night shift as an inventory clerk at a commercial distribution center in Elk Grove Village, earning twenty-one dollars an hour to pay the security deposit on a shared two-bedroom apartment near O’Hare.
“The paperwork is complete, Marcus,” Harold Sterling said, his voice flat, exhausted, completely stripped of the patrician baritone he had used at Le Miroir. “Garrett executed the voluntary quitclaim deed at the detention center yesterday afternoon. The signature was witnessed by the assistant warden.”
He slid a single sheet of cream-colored parchment across the laminate table.
It was the deed to the townhouse on Lake Shore Drive.
The line marked Grantor bore Garrett’s signature—shaky, small, the ink thin and gray where the prison-issue ballpoint had skipped across the fibers.
The line marked Grantee bore three words:
CLARA HALE STERLING
My mother’s full name.
The name that had been on the original family trust before Arthur Vance had convinced my father to merge his commercial logistics assets with their bankrupt rail holding company thirty years ago.
I picked up my pen—a simple, unadorned steel Parker that had belonged to my grandfather—and signed the acceptance line.
C. H. Sterling.
“And the corporate shares?” Marcus asked, not looking up from his closing checklist.
“Surrendered,” Harold said, reaching into his leather portfolio and pulling out two certificates with red corporate seals. “Every unit of Vance Strategic Solutions has been canceled. The corporate name has been dissolved by the Illinois Secretary of State. The assets have been consolidated into Hale Industrial Logistics.”
He turned to look at me, his watery blue eyes searching my face for a flicker of triumph, a smirk, a single gesture of vindictive satisfaction that he could report back to the men at the Chicago Club.
He found nothing.
I sat with my back straight, my charcoal wool coat buttoned to the collar, my hands resting calmly on the table. The bruise on my cheek had vanished three weeks ago, leaving only the clean, pale bone beneath the skin, unblemished and unmarked.
“What about the restaurant?” Harold asked quietly.
I looked at him. “What about it?”
“The civil suit,” he muttered, his hand drifting toward his yellow legal pad. “Monsieur Delacroix filed an action in the municipal division for forty-eight thousand dollars in property damages and business disruption. The owners of the two tables next to Garrett’s banquette have filed third-party claims for emotional distress.”
I picked up the deed, slid it into my leather briefcase, and snapped the brass latches shut with two clean, rhythmic clicks.
“That is between your client and Monsieur Delacroix, Harold,” I said, rising from the table. “Garrett ordered the wine. Garrett threw the wine. And Garrett will have eleven years in federal custody to calculate the cost per ounce.”
I turned toward the door, but Toby’s voice stopped me at the threshold.
“Claire,” he said.
He hadn't stood up. He sat with his shoulders hunched, his hands still in his pockets, looking at the empty space on the table where the four-thousand-dollar deed had just rested.
“My mother,” Toby whispered, his voice cracking on the syllables. “Her birthday is next week. She’s seventy-two. She asked if... she asked if you still had the silver tea service from the house in Lake Forest. The one with her initials on the tray.”
I paused with my hand on the brass doorknob.
I looked back at the boy who had spent his youth watching his brother kick waiters and humiliate women while he waited for the check to disappear.
“The tea service was melted down two weeks ago, Toby,” I said softly.
He blinked, his face turning an ugly, sickly gray under the fluorescent lights. “You melted it?”
“The metal was silver-plated copper, Toby,” I told him, my voice completely devoid of rancor. “It was worth eighty-four dollars at the industrial scrap yard in Cicero. I used the money to buy forty gallons of heating oil for an elderly widow who lives on 18th Street.”
May you like
I opened the door.
“Tell your mother,” I added, stepping out into the carpeted silence of the title company’s hallway, “that the tea tastes better when you pay for the kettle.”
