Chapter 18 - The Dinner of Wolves
Arthur called three days before his formal plea hearing. He didn't use his phone; he used the landline of his public defender’s office.
"Claire," he said, his voice stripped of every trace of the bluster that had defined him for fifty years. "The prosecutor offered a deal. Five years at Terre Haute. If Eleanor signs her confession, she gets two years probation. But... there’s an indemnity clause. Apex Capital will drop the civil restitution suit if you agree to sign off on the asset liquidation."
"I know," I said. "Nathan received the draft."
"I want to see you," Arthur said, a strange, desperate rasp in his throat. "One last time. The three of us. Me, you, and your mother. At the steakhouse on 4th Street. The one where we used to go when you were little. Just dinner. No lawyers. Let me look my daughter in the eye before they take me away."
I stared out the window of my office. "Friday. Seven o'clock. But Chloe stays away."
"Chloe is staying with an aunt," Arthur lied smoothly. He didn't know that Chloe was currently out on a fifty-thousand-dollar signature bond under federal pretrial monitoring for the Meridian incident. "Just us."
The private dining room at *The Gilded Chop* was paneled in dark walnut, illuminated by low brass sconces that cast long, predatory shadows across the linen tablecloth.
When I arrived at 6:58 PM, Arthur and Eleanor were already seated.
Arthur looked ten years older. His hair was completely white, his skin hanging loose around his jowls, his neck swimming in a collar that had clearly fit him six months ago. Eleanor sat beside him, clutching a faux-leather clutch to her stomach like a shield, her eyes darting nervously toward the waiter who filled their water glasses.
I sat down at the head of the table. I didn't take off my trench coat; I merely unbuttoned it, revealing a charcoal silk blouse that matched the cold gray of my eyes.
"Thank you for coming, Claire," Arthur said, reaching across the table to touch my sleeve.
I moved my hand three inches to the left, picking up the heavy silver butter knife. His hand dropped onto the cloth, empty.
"You have thirty minutes, Arthur," I said. "Say what you brought me here to say."
Eleanor took a ragged breath. "Claire... we know things got out of hand. We know Arthur made mistakes with the paperwork. But we did it for the family. We always did everything for the family."
"You did it for yourselves," I said calmly. "You took eight hundred and forty thousand dollars of my grandmother’s money and bought Chloe a lifestyle she didn't earn, while I worked sixty hours a week between college classes to pay for textbooks."
Arthur’s face twitched. The old monster, battered and caged, tried to show its teeth one last time. "You were strong, Claire! You always had a spine! Chloe was soft! If we didn't protect Chloe, the world would have chewed her up and spit her out!"
"And look how well your protection worked," I said. "She’s facing federal charges for trade-secret theft because you raised her to believe that laws were suggestions for people with less charisma than her."
Eleanor began to weep silently, pressing a linen napkin to her mouth. "You're our daughter, Claire. How can you have so much hatred in your heart?"
"I don't hate you, Eleanor. Hatred requires an expenditure of energy, and I refuse to spend another calorie on either of you." I reached into my coat, pulled out a heavy manila folder, and set it squarely in the middle of the table.
Arthur looked at the folder, his eyes widening with desperate hope. "The settlement? You signed it?"
"Open it," I said.
Arthur’s shaking hands pulled open the clasp. Inside were not restructuring documents.
Inside were three separate grand jury subpoenas, stamped by the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, along with a certified transcript of Arthur’s wiretapped phone calls from the past seventy-two hours.
"What... what is this?" Arthur stuttered, the blood draining from his face until his skin looked like parchment.
"Nathan Vance didn't just trace the forged Apex note," I whispered, leaning in until my voice was a scalpel cutting through the quiet hum of the restaurant. "He traced the offshore holding accounts you set up in the Cayman Islands under your brother’s name six years ago. The ones where you stashed four hundred thousand dollars in undeclared commercial kickbacks while crying to me that the family was broke."
Arthur’s jaw fell open. He looked at Eleanor, who stared back at him in sheer, unadulterated horror.
"You had offshore accounts?" Eleanor gasped, her voice rising into an incredulous shriek. "You had half a million dollars hidden while you were telling me we had to forge Claire’s signature to keep the lights on?!"
"Eleanor, shut up!" Arthur barked, his face turning an explosive scarlet.
"You lied to me!" Eleanor screamed, slamming her purse onto the table, completely shattering her fragile-matriarch persona. "You told me we were destitute! You told me if I didn't notarize that document, the bank was going to take my jewelry!"
"I did it to save the company, you stupid cow!" Arthur bellowed, standing up so violently his chair tipped backward, crashing onto the hardwood floor with a sound like a gunshot.
The entire dining room went silent. Through the double glass doors of the private room, two men in dark suits stepped forward. Nathan Vance, accompanied by Special Agent Miller of the FBI.
I picked up my leather gloves and stood up from the head of the table.
May you like
"Enjoy your dinner, Arthur," I said, looking down at the two wolves tearing each other to pieces over their own rotting meat. "The United States Government is picking up the tab for the next decade."
***
