Chapter 7 - The Audit
The preliminary audit began on Tuesday morning at Arthur Vance’s conference table, but the explosion happened at four o'clock on Wednesday afternoon on my front porch.
I was in the kitchen canning the last batch of late-autumn apple butter when the sound of spinning tires screamed up the driveway.
A truck door slammed with the force of an iron gate hitting a post.
I didn't run to the window. I wiped my hands on my apron, walked to the hallway closet, and pulled out Gordon’s double-barreled twenty-gauge shotgun from behind the coats. I didn't load it—I had never pointed a gun at a human being in my life—but I set it behind the umbrella stand right beside the front door where the barrel caught the light from the transom.
Russell didn't knock. He hit the front door with the flat of his palm three times.
"Open the door, Mom!" his voice bellowed through the heavy pine panels, cracking with a fury that sounded like an animal caught in a bear trap. "Open the goddamned door!"
I opened it.
Russell stood on the porch with his jacket unzipped in the freezing wind. His face was mottled red and purple; his tie was pulled sideways, and his boots were splattered with red clay from one of his job sites. He had a stack of white legal folders clutched in one hand and his phone in the other.
"You had Vance freeze my payroll," he snarled, stepping forward so fast he was almost across the sill before I held up my hand.
"Stop right there, Russell," I said.
He stopped, his eyes dropping to the umbrella stand where the blued steel of Gordon’s shotgun gleamed against the wallpaper. His breath hitched.
"You’re pulling a gun on your own son?" he whispered, his voice shaking.
"I haven't touched that gun," I told him. "It’s sitting where your father left it after the dove hunt three years ago. But you are not coming into this house with that language on your tongue. Not today. Not ever."
Russell ran a trembling hand through his hair. "Mom, you don't understand what you’ve done. Arthur Vance sent a court order to First National Bank at noon. They froze Piedmont Glass’s operating account. I have eight men on my installation crew whose paychecks are scheduled to clear at midnight! If those checks bounce, my crew walks, the general contractor on the High Point medical center cancels my contract, and the bonding company sues me for liquidated damages! I’ll be bankrupt by Friday!"
"Then you should have thought about those eight men before you wrote three checks from Gordon’s trust account to pay your personal credit cards," I said.
Russell’s eyes widened. "How did you—"
"Gordon’s restated trust gave Arthur Vance the authority to conduct an immediate forensic audit upon any credible allegation of trustee malfeasance," I explained, leaning against the doorframe. "It took Arthur’s forensic accountant four hours to find the eighty-five thousand dollars you moved through the shell company you set up in Wilmington—'Piedmont Logistics LLC.' You thought because you put 'Logistics' on the invoice, Arthur would think it was for hauling timber."
"I was going to pay it back!" Russell shouted, his arms flailing wildly. "I was bridge-financing! It was a ninety-day loan! Dad did that all the time when the building trades were slow in the eighties!"
"Your father never touched a dollar that belonged to his children’s education," I said, my voice rising with an authority that Gordon himself couldn't have matched. "Your father would have dug ditches with a spade in the middle of January before he stole from an eleven-year-old child! And Gordon never used trust money to buy a country club membership or two-thousand-dollar weekend trips to Charleston while his sister was driving an eleven-year-old station wagon with three hundred thousand miles on the odometer!"
"This is about Meredith!" Russell screamed. "It’s always been about Meredith! You think she’s holy because she took in some stray kid from social services! You think that makes her better than me!"
"Don't you call that boy a stray," I said, stepping right up to the screen door, my face inches from his through the brass mesh. "Caleb is more of a Cooper than you will ever be. Because Caleb knows what it means to be chosen. We chose him, Russell. Meredith chose him. Gordon chose him. And your father spent his last days making sure that a selfish, greedy coward like you couldn't tear down what love had built."
"I have rights," Russell panted, though his voice had lost its thunder, sounding thin and shrill against the wind. "I am Gordon’s firstborn son. North Carolina probate law recognizes lineal descendants. I’ll hire my own lawyer. I’ll take this to the superior court judge. I’ll tie this estate up in litigation until that timber rots on the stump and there isn't a nickel left for any of your precious grandchildren!"
A horn sounded from the driveway.
A white Guilford County Sheriff’s cruiser had pulled up behind Russell’s diesel truck.
Deputy Miller—Deacon Miller’s nephew, who had sat two pews behind us on Sunday morning—stepped out into the gravel. He didn't have his hand on his holster, but his thumb was hooked into his utility belt, and his expression was as cold as the November drizzle.
"Russell," Deputy Miller called out, his boots crunching on the stone. "Arthur Vance called the station. Said you were trespassing on property subject to a temporary restraining order issued by Judge Albright at two o'clock."
Russell froze. He looked from the deputy back to me, the realization finally sinking into his thick skull that the world he had controlled with his temper and his bluster was gone.
"A restraining order?" Russell whispered to me, his voice cracking like dry kindling. "Mom... you took out a restraining order against your own boy?"
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"I took out a restraining order against a thief who happens to share my blood," I told him. "Now take your folders, Russell. Go home to your wife. And figure out which one of your designer watches you’re going to sell to pay your crew’s wages tomorrow morning."
***
