Chapter 3 - Ashes of the Penthouse
The midnight air outside the Westbrook was crisp and merciless. Judith was waiting by the curb in the back of my black Maybach, her window rolled halfway down, her lips pressed into a thin line of grim satisfaction.
“You did it,” she said as I slid into the leather seat beside her.
“I didn't do anything,” I replied, leaning my head back against the headrest, closing my eyes. “She set the fire. I simply refused to let her use my money to buy the gasoline.”
“Your head, Eleanor…” Judith’s voice softened, losing its usual razor edge. She reached over and gently touched my shoulder. “We need to see a doctor. Those cuts could be infected.”
“Tomorrow,” I said. “First, I want to see the crime scene.”
We arrived at my duplex penthouse on Fifth Avenue twenty minutes later. The building, a limestone monolith constructed in the 1920s, had been my sanctuary for thirty-five years. Frank and I had bought it after our first major European shipping contract closed. Every baseboard, every molding, every piece of art had been selected with love.
When the private elevator doors opened into the foyer, the air didn't smell like home. It smelled of burnt fabric and industrial solvent.
Detective Miller from the 19th Precinct was already there, accompanied by Marcus Ward, my attorney for the past twenty years. Marcus was a man of few words, lean, gray-haired, and possessed of a courtroom demeanor that made hardened criminals weep.
“Eleanor,” Marcus said, stepping forward. His eyes flicked to my shaved scalp, and a shadow of cold fury passed over his features. “My God.”
“Save the sympathy, Marcus,” I said, walking past him into the living room. “Tell me what they found.”
The living room was a desecration.
My portrait—an oil painting Frank had commissioned for our twenty-fifth anniversary, painted by a master in Florence—had been slashed diagonally from corner to corner. The sofa, covered in imported French silk, had red wine poured deliberately across the cushions.
In the master bedroom, the destruction was methodical.
My dressing table had been swept clear, perfume bottles shattered on the hardwood. The closet doors stood open, clothes pulled from their hangers and stomped on. And in the center of the bathroom floor lay the remains of my mother-of-the-groom gown, hacked into ribbons, soaking in a tub filled with dirty bleach water.
“The housekeeper, Maria,” Detective Miller said, consulting his notebook. “She broke under interrogation an hour ago. Natalie paid her fifty thousand dollars in cash three days ago. Maria admitted she dissolved three tablets of Ativan into your evening chamomile tea, left the service door unlatched at 2:00 AM, and disabled the foyer cameras from the control panel in the basement.”
“And the jewelry?” I asked, my voice steady, though my heart was hammering against my ribs.
“Gone,” Marcus said quietly. “The floor safe behind the closet panel was opened with the emergency combination. Maria gave her that, too. The Cartier diamond-and-sapphire necklace. Frank’s Patek Philippe watch. The emerald earrings your mother brought through Ellis Island. All estimated at roughly four point two million dollars.”
I walked over to the empty velvet boxes scattered on the floor. I picked up the small, worn case that had once held Frank’s watch. He had worn it on our wedding day. He had tapped the face of it every time he looked at me across a crowded room to tell me it was time to go home.
Tears threatened to burn the corners of my eyes, but I forced them back down into the dark well where I kept my strength. Crying was a luxury for people who had someone to protect them. Frank was gone. Jackson had defected to the enemy. I had only myself.
“This wasn't just spite,” I said, turning to Marcus. “The theft wasn't an impulse. Why take the heirlooms if she believed she was getting a hundred and twenty million dollars in the morning?”
Marcus adjusted his glasses, pulling a thick manila folder from his leather briefcase. “Because, Eleanor, Natalie King wasn't planning on sticking around to manage a trust. Our private investigators have spent the last four hours digging through her past in Delaware and Florida. Natalie King isn't her real name.”
I stared at him. “What?”
“Her real name is Natalie Kowalski. Seven years ago, she pulled an almost identical scheme on a textile heir in Palm Beach. She married him, drained three million dollars from his private accounts within ninety days, and before the family could file for an annulment, she had him committed to a private psychiatric retreat in Vermont, citing substance abuse and violent instability.”
Judith let out a gasp. “She was going to commit Eleanor.”
“Exactly,” Marcus said grimly. “The shaved head wasn't just to humiliate her at the wedding. Natalie spent the last two months laying the groundwork with Jackson’s social circle, whispering that Eleanor was suffering from late-stage manic depression and self-harming. The note, the shredded dress, the bald head—Natalie was going to claim Eleanor had a psychotic break on her son’s wedding day, shaved her own head in a fit of dementia, and was no longer competent to control the Vance estate.”
The blood in my veins turned to liquid nitrogen.
She hadn't just wanted to embarrass me. She had planned to lock me in a cage, drug me into oblivion, and leave me to rot while she and Jackson spent Frank’s blood-earned fortune.
“And Jackson?” I asked, my voice barely above a whisper. “Did he know about the conservatorship?”
Marcus looked down at the floor, unable to meet my eyes for a fraction of a second. “We pulled his phone records thirty minutes ago under an emergency subpoena. There are text messages between him and a crooked probate attorney in Queens dating back three weeks. He didn't know about the jewelry theft, Eleanor. But he knew about the commitment papers. He signed the preliminary petition to declare you incompetent.”
The room seemed to tilt. The walls of the penthouse, which had held thirty years of laughter, Christmas mornings, and Frank’s booming voice, felt like they were collapsing inward.
My own son. The boy I had nursed through scarlet fever, the boy whose hand I had held as we walked behind his father’s casket. He had signed his name to my living death.
“Marcus,” I said. My voice did not shake. It was the coldest sound that had ever come out of my throat.
“Yes, Eleanor?”
May you like
“Call the district attorney. Tell him I am pressing charges for grand larceny, burglary, drugging with intent, and conspiracy to commit elder abuse. And tell him that if he shows Jackson Vance a single ounce of leniency because of his father’s name, I will buy every newspaper in this city and expose him before breakfast.”
***
