Chapter 6 - THE FORTY PERCENT THAT WAS NEVER ENOUGH
“You're telling me Nora owns Riverside?”
Grant sounded personally offended by the possibility.
He snatched the receipt from the desk.
“This is thirty-year-old nonsense.”
I took it back.
“Then you'll have no objection to an independent review.”
He stared at me.
Charles reached for his glasses.
“Let me see.”
I handed him the receipt.
He studied the certificate reference, then turned to the survey map.
“Eleanor established a trust after the accident,” he said.
Elaine looked at him.
“What trust?”
“I assumed it was for the injured workers.”
“You assumed?”
Charles removed his glasses.
“My mother handled the paperwork herself.”
I looked at the receipt again.
The beneficiary designation carried my full childhood name.
Nora Margaret Ellis.
But there was a difference between being named as a beneficiary and owning the land outright.
I knew enough about financial records to understand that a receipt wasn't proof of title.
Still, it gave us something specific to investigate.
“Grant,” I asked, “were you aware of this trust?”
“No.”
“You're lying.”
“I swear I didn't know Nora was involved.”
That answer was revealing.
I hadn't asked whether he knew I was involved.
I had asked whether he knew about the trust.
Avery noticed too.
“You knew someone held the land interest.”
Grant looked at her.
“Enough.”
“No.”
She stepped closer.
“You approached me because you knew my mother had a claim. You promised me money so I'd sign it away. And you were trying to make Nora surrender her voting rights at the same time.”
Grant's voice rose.
“I was trying to protect the company!”
“From what?” I demanded.
He stared at me.
“From people who want to destroy it.”
I folded my arms.
“People like your mistress?”
His expression hardened.
“You keep saying that like it's the only thing that matters.”
My chest tightened.
There it was.
The familiar dismissal.
For ten years, every time I questioned an expense, challenged a decision, or complained about being disrespected, Grant turned my concern into a character flaw.
I was controlling.
Suspicious.
Overly emotional.
This time, I wasn't going to participate.
“Your affair isn't the only thing that matters,” I said. “It's simply the first thing that made me stop believing you.”
Elaine moved beside me.
For once, she didn't ask me to think about the family.
She said, “Nora is right.”
Grant stared at his mother.
“Seriously?”
“Yes.”
“You're siding with her?”
“I'm siding with the truth.”
He looked toward Charles.
“Dad?”
Charles sat silently.
Grant laughed.
“Wonderful. Everybody's suddenly a saint.”
I gathered the documents into separate piles.
Original letters.
Photocopies.
Bank entries.
Ownership references.
I photographed the pages and recorded where each had been found.
Then I asked Avery to identify every item she recognized from her mother's belongings.
We worked for almost an hour.
By the end, three facts were clear.
Rebecca had contributed $75,000 to Riverside.
Margaret Ellis had helped preserve evidence of the transaction.
And Eleanor Whitmore had arranged for some form of beneficial interest to be held for me.
Why she had chosen me remained uncertain.
Avery sat across from me.
“I don't understand why your mother would receive my mother's investment.”
“Neither do I.”
She traced the edge of the old photograph.
“We were friends when we were little.”
“So it seems.”
“Maybe they wanted us to stay connected.”
I looked at the two girls holding hands.
Our mothers had tried to preserve something after the accident.
But thirty years had passed.
Rebecca had died.
My mother had died.
And their daughters were meeting again under circumstances neither woman could have imagined.
Avery wiped her face.
“I need to tell you something else.”
I looked up.
“What?”
“Grant didn't find me at the charity auction.”
I waited.
“He contacted me three weeks before it.”
Grant's head snapped toward her.
“Avery.”
She ignored him.
“He said he had information about my mother's estate. He offered to meet me privately.”
I felt a dull ache behind my ribs.
At the auction, Grant had introduced Avery as though they had just met.
Another calculated lie.
“Why didn't you tell me that earlier?” I asked.
“Because I was ashamed.”
“Of what?”
She looked at Elaine.
“I knew he was married. He told me the marriage was over in everything but paperwork.”
Grant rolled his eyes.
“Don't pretend you were innocent.”
“I'm not.”
Avery turned back to me.
“But I didn't know he was trying to take something from you.”
I believed that part.
Not because Avery deserved immediate trust, but because her anger was beginning to cost her something.
She was turning against the man who had promised her financial security.
Charles suddenly spoke.
“Martin organized that charity auction.”
We all looked at him.
“He selected the guest list. He persuaded Grant to attend.”
I remembered the evening.
Martin had insisted Whitmore Development sponsor the event because historic preservation would improve the company's public image ahead of the waterfront approval process.
He had personally introduced us to several donors.
Had he known Avery would be there?
Had he arranged for Grant to meet her?
The thought made me uneasy.
“Where is Martin's authorization to act for the Riverside trust?” I asked.
Charles shook his head.
“He shouldn't have any.”
I checked the shareholder consent again.
Harbor Crest Holdings was listed as the recipient of the assets.
Its authorized representative was Martin Vale.
But another page contained a provision I'd previously overlooked.
If the transaction closed, Harbor Crest could grant an exclusive development easement across Parcel Three.
That easement would allow construction crews to excavate beneath the old drainage corridor.
I opened the survey map.
A handwritten note in Margaret's writing identified the corridor as:
Unstable fill. Original soil reports withheld.
My skin prickled.
The old accident involved a collapsing temporary support platform.
Now the proposed new development required excavation in the same area.
“What if the original engineering problems were never corrected?” I asked.
Charles looked at the map.
“They were supposed to be.”
“Supposed to be?”
“An engineer certified the site before construction stopped.”
“Which engineer?”
He hesitated.
“Martin's firm arranged the review.”
I closed my eyes.
We weren't just dealing with an old ownership dispute.
If the proposed development relied on inaccurate environmental or structural records, hundreds of millions of dollars could be invested in unsafe land.
And Grant was pushing the transaction forward without resolving the historical questions.
I turned to him.
“Does the current development team know about the drainage corridor?”
“Of course.”
“Have they reviewed the original reports?”
“I assume so.”
“You assume?”
He slammed his palm on the desk.
“I'm not an engineer, Nora!”
“But you're asking me to approve the transfer.”
“Because you're a shareholder, not a detective!”
I stood.
“No. Because I'm a shareholder who won't authorize a transaction she doesn't understand.”
His expression changed.
He realized he had lost the argument.
Then he tried something else.
“You think you can stop this?” he asked quietly.
“I know I can withhold my vote.”
“You own forty percent. Not sixty.”
Charles stared at him.
“Grant, what have you done?”
Grant smiled without warmth.
“Something I should've done years ago.”
He opened his desk drawer and removed a thin packet.
At the top was a board resolution dated the previous Friday.
I recognized the company letterhead.
I recognized Charles's printed name.
And I recognized the signature beside mine.
Except I had never signed it.
I stared at the page.
Grant watched me.
“You've been so busy investigating everybody else's paperwork, Nora.”
May you like
He tapped the signature.
“You never noticed somebody had already voted your forty percent.”
