Chapter 67 - The Lawyer from Boston
I snapped the flashlight up toward the altar.
Standing in the shadow of the high wooden pulpit was not Evelyn, but a man in his late sixties, dressed in an immaculate charcoal suit beneath a cashmere overcoat. He carried a leather briefcase in one gloved hand and a slender walking cane in the other. His eyes were small, hooded, and cold behind gold-rimmed spectacles.
"Julian Vance," I said, recognizing my uncle’s voice before my brain could process his face. Arthur’s younger brother, the one who left for Boston in the seventies and never attended a single family funeral.
"Julian Thorne now, my dear," he said smoothly, stepping down the three carpeted steps from the chancel. "I shed that pathetic surname forty years ago when your father began mortgaging the family graves to pay his bookies."
"You were working with Melissa," I said, rising to my feet, keeping the steel box firmly between my boots.
"Melissa?" Julian let out a short, mocking laugh that rattled off the dusty organ pipes. "Melissa was a blunt instrument. Loud, arrogant, thoroughly incompetent. She thought she was maneuvering Marcus into a county land grab. She had no idea she was merely smoking you out."
"And Evelyn?"
"Your mother is very old, Nora, but her mind remains as sharp as a straight razor. She didn't freeze in the Kennebec. She sat in a brownstone in Beacon Hill while your sister bankrupted the family and you bled yourself dry trying to protect a patch of dirt that never had your name on it."
May you like
He advanced another three steps, stopping at the head of the center aisle. The cane tapped rhythmically against the floorboards: *clack, clack, clack*.
"Hand over the indenture, Nora. Tomorrow morning at nine o’clock, the fifty-year limitation expires. The trust dissolves, and the title vests solely in Evelyn's designated surviving attorney. Namely, me."
