Chapter 22 - The Man Who Came Back From Ruin
Arthur Vance was found before sunrise.
Not by the police.
By Logan.
That fact caused a spectacular argument in my kitchen.
“You followed him?”
“I followed his rental car.”
“That is the same thing!”
“No, technically—”
“Logan.”
He stopped.
Inspector Fiona Grant stood beside the Aga stove with the expression of a woman deciding whether marriage itself should require a criminal license.
“I strongly recommend,” she said, “that nobody in this family conducts independent surveillance again.”
Logan lifted both hands.
“Understood.”
I glared at him.
He gave me the faintest apologetic smile.
I nearly threw a dish towel at him.
But what Logan had discovered mattered.
Arthur was staying at a small hotel outside Edinburgh under his own name.
That was strange.
A man planning violence usually hid.
Arthur had not.
More strangely, he had spent the previous evening sitting alone in a hotel bar, ordering sparkling water and repeatedly checking the entrance as though he expected somebody.
Fiona’s officers detained him for questioning.
By noon, we knew why.
Arthur had not come to Scotland to threaten me.
He had come to warn me.
“I didn’t send that photograph,” Arthur said through a video link from the police station.
I sat beside Alistair in his Edinburgh office while Fiona conducted the interview.
Arthur looked twenty years older than the last photograph I had seen.
His cheeks had hollowed.
His expensive lawyer’s haircut was gone.
He wore a discount-store raincoat and a white shirt with a frayed collar.
“You expect me to believe that?” I asked.
“No.”
His voice sounded exhausted.
“I wouldn’t believe me either.”
“Then start talking.”
Arthur rubbed both palms over his face.
“When Harrison lost his license, he started drinking.”
Alistair leaned forward.
“Your brother.”
“Yes.”
“He blamed Claire?”
“He blamed everyone.”
Arthur laughed bitterly.
“Me. Bianca. Charles. Julian. The courts. The newspapers. God. But mostly Claire.”
“Where is Harrison now?” Fiona asked.
Arthur looked directly into the camera.
“I don’t know.”
Silence filled the room.
Arthur continued.
“About four months ago, Harrison contacted me. He said he had discovered something in our grandfather’s records. A private investment syndicate established in 1976.”
Alistair went still.
“What syndicate?”
“The North Atlantic Development Partnership.”
I had never heard the name.
Alistair apparently had.
His face lost color.
“Good Lord.”
“What?”
He turned toward me.
“The North Atlantic Partnership was a financing group created during the original Harbor Point redevelopment. It supposedly dissolved in the eighties.”
Arthur shook his head.
“It didn’t dissolve.”
He leaned closer.
“It went underground.”
According to Arthur, the Whitmores had not stolen municipal healthcare money alone.
Several Boston families had participated.
Bankers.
Developers.
Attorneys.
Two former state officials.
Money flowed through shell companies, then across the Atlantic into property investments in Britain and Ireland.
My grandfather Douglas had apparently discovered part of the scheme.
That was why he had strengthened the Ashford covenants.
But the ledgers I uncovered years earlier represented only the American side.
A second set of records existed.
And Harrison believed they were hidden in Scotland.
“Why would he think I have them?”
“Because Douglas Ashford wrote a letter.”
Arthur reached into his coat.
Fiona immediately told him to keep his hands visible.
An officer removed a folded photocopy from his inner pocket.
The document appeared on our screen minutes later.
My grandfather’s handwriting ran across the page.
**The harbor records remain incomplete. The northern book must never fall into their hands. I have placed it where iron faces water and kings once slept.**
Logan, who had joined us, frowned.
“Iron faces water and kings once slept.”
Alistair whispered, “Linlithgow.”
My eyes moved to Logan.
His family foundry.
His hometown.
The ruined royal palace beside the loch.
Arthur swallowed.
“Harrison thinks Logan’s family has the ledger.”
“That’s absurd,” Logan said.
“Maybe.”
Arthur looked frightened now.
“But Harrison believes Douglas Ashford entrusted it to your grandfather.”
Logan’s grandfather had died fifteen years earlier.
His father had died five years after that.
The foundry records stretched back generations.
Hundreds of crates.
Blueprints.
Client ledgers.
Restoration archives.
If something had been hidden among them, Logan might never have known.
I turned back toward Arthur.
“Who came to Scotland with you?”
His face changed.
Fear replaced exhaustion.
“That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you.”
Fiona leaned forward.
“Name.”
Arthur stared into the camera.
“Bianca.”
My stomach dropped.
“That’s impossible.”
“She was released six weeks ago.”
Arthur’s voice broke.
“And she’s not the woman you remember.”
“What does that mean?”
Arthur closed his eyes.
“It means prison didn’t make Bianca sorry.”
He opened them again.
May you like
“It made her patient.”
---
