Chapter 8 - THE RECORDING ON THE MEZZANINE
Hugo did not sit down.
The amber light from the table lamps hit the sweat that had gathered along the rim of his hairline, turning it into a row of tiny, glistening beads. His hand was resting on the back of his chair, his knuckles white against the dark leather.
"Abby," he said. He tried the voice again—the low, tender, private voice that had worked in our bedroom, in our kitchen, in the hospital corridor after Dad died. "Sweetheart. Listen to me. You’re making a scene in front of your family. You’re confused about the corporate structure. Lena Vance is an acquisition consultant; she doesn't own the vision. *I* do. Everything I did was to ensure that you and Jean had seven figures in liquidity before the market turns."
"Turn around, Hugo," I said.
He blinked. "What?"
"Turn around. Look at the mezzanine rail."
Hugo turned his head slowly, like a man who knew an axe was swinging toward his neck but couldn't stop himself from watching the blade.
Lena Vance was standing at the glass railing of the mezzanine, forty feet away, looking down into the private dining room.
Beside her was Carl.
Carl was wearing his good church suit—the one with the wide lapels that smelled of cedar chips—and under his arm was a heavy courier envelope with the blue-and-white crest of the Law Society of Ontario.
"Carl has spent the last forty-eight hours with the registrar at the Land Registry Office," I said, my voice filling the small, stone-walled room like smoke. "It turns out you can't file a variance application on a property held in a registered trust without committing second-degree uttering of forged documents under the Ontario Criminal Code."
Hugo’s face went the color of skim milk.
"I didn't forge anything," he snapped, but the word came out thin and dry, like paper tearing. "I had power of attorney for Jean’s municipal correspondence."
"You had power of attorney to pay her water bills," Jean said from her seat. "You didn't have power of attorney to sell her backyard to a woman who looks like a sports car."
Aunt Frances let out a small, high-pitched gasp. Brenda took her phone and deliberately, with great satisfaction, hit the record button, pointing the lens straight at Hugo’s face.
"Brenda, turn that off!" Hugo hissed, lunging an inch toward her.
"Leave the girl alone, Mercer," Cousin Mark said, rising from his chair.
Mark was six-foot-two and had spent thirty years shifting four-hundred-pound brake assemblies for the Canadian Pacific Railway. When he stood up, the table shook hard enough that Hugo’s gold pen rolled off the walnut slab and landed on the stone floor with a sharp, hollow *click*.
"Sit down, Hugo," Mark said. "Sit down before I put you through that wine rack."
Hugo stood frozen between Mark’s shoulder and the door. He looked at me, his eyes wide and dark with a rage that had finally stripped off its linen suit, its bay rum cologne, and its three-hundred-dollar haircut.
"You set me up," he said. The words were spat through his teeth. "You crouched in that closet like a rat."
"Yes," I said. "I did."
I picked up the USB drive from the table, turned to the restaurant manager who had just appeared in the doorway with the dessert trolley, and held it out.
"Francis," I said, recognizing the maître d' from three previous firm dinners. "Does the private dining room sound system still take digital inputs through the wall panel?"
The manager looked from Hugo’s white, sweating face to Mark’s massive shoulders, and then to Jean, who was sitting with her hands folded over her navy wool lap like an empress waiting for the executioner to finish his work.
"It does, Mrs. Mercer," Francis said politely.
"Don't you dare," Hugo choked out, taking half a step toward me.
Mark’s left hand came down on Hugo’s shoulder like an iron hasp. Hugo grunted, his knees buckling three inches under the weight before he managed to catch himself against the edge of the walnut table.
"Plug it in, Francis," I said.
The manager took the drive, stepped to the small brass plate beside the wine humidor, and inserted it.
A soft, electronic chime sounded through the ceiling speakers.
Then came the rustle of paper reams. The clink of a staple box. The distant hum of the elevator shaft on Richmond Street.
And then, clear and crisp as an autumn morning, Hugo’s baritone came through the high-end speakers, bouncing off the limestone arches:
*“She doesn’t know anything yet... Her biggest weakness is sentiment. You know that. The house, her father’s memory, Jean’s comfort... she can’t touch any of it without tearing up. You just press the bruise. You make it seem like keeping the property is selfish... She’ll fold. She always folds when she thinks she’s hurting someone.”*
Then the laugh.
The thin, wet snicker that had echoed through the supply closet forty-eight hours ago.
Aunt Frances turned her head toward the wall, her face crumpled in genuine horror. Brenda lowered her phone, her mouth hanging open.
Hugo didn't look at any of them. He looked down at the stone floor, at his gold pen lying in the dust by Mark’s work boots.
Then Lena Vance’s voice came through the speakers:
*“Lena, don’t text me so often. We can’t get careless now. Not when we’re forty-eight hours out.”*
The recording clicked off.
The only sound left in the room was the hum of the refrigerator unit behind the glass cases of wine.
Jean reached out, picked up her water glass, and took a small, careful sip.
"You always did talk too much on the telephone, Hugo," she said. "Arthur always said a man who can't keep his plans behind his teeth shouldn't try to be a thief."
Hugo slowly pulled his shoulder out from under Mark’s hand. He didn't look at Frances. He didn't look at Brenda.
He looked at me.
"You're nothing without this family," he whispered, his voice trembling with a hatred so pure it seemed almost cold. "You’re an underpaid drafts-girl living in a city that’s going to chew you up and spit you into the suburbs by thirty-five. You think you can keep that house? You can't even afford to paint the trim."
"The trim doesn't need painting, Hugo," I said. "Dad used three coats of marine varnish before he went into the hospital. It’ll last until I’m seventy."
I stood up, smoothed the green wool of my skirt, and picked up my mother’s black leather bag.
"The Uber for Oakville is downstairs for Frances and the girls," I told Mark. "Carl has the voucher. Hugo, your things from the loft are already in two storage lockers on Eastern Avenue. The keys are at the concierge desk. Don't come back to Richmond Street. Carl has already changed the codes on the fire doors."
Hugo didn't move. He stood by the walnut table, his charcoal blazer hanging off one shoulder, looking like an actor who had forgotten his second act while the curtain was still rising.
"Come on, Mom," I said, offering her my arm. "Let's go home. The apple butter needs to be stirred before it catches on the bottom of the pot."
Jean stood up, adjusted her tortoiseshell combs, and took my elbow.
May you like
We walked past Hugo without looking at him. We walked past the limestone vaulting, down the sweeping marble stairs, and out through the heavy brass doors of the old bank into the cold, clean Toronto drizzle.
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