Chapter 24 - The Leverage in the Vault
"She's terrified," I told Aaron as I burst out through the glass turnstiles of the detention facility.
Aaron was leaning against the tailgate of the truck, a paper cup of black coffee in one hand and a manila folder in the other. Beside him stood a man I recognized instantly: Arthur Pendelton, the retired forensic auditor who had been Aaron’s mentor fifteen years ago.
"Did she mention Marcus?" Pendelton asked, adjusting his wire-rimmed glasses against the damp wind.
"She said Marcus would kill us if we opened the Comerica escrow records," I said, my chest heaving. "She practically admitted she forged Aaron's signature."
"Then she played her final card too early," Pendelton said with a dry, gravelly chuckle. "Marcus Croft isn't killing anyone today. In fact, Mr. Croft spent the last three hours trying to board a private charter from Willow Run Airport to Nassau. His passport was flagged at the gate forty minutes ago."
Aaron handed me the coffee cup, his eyes burning with intense energy. "Arthur managed to get an emergency court order through Judge Miller this morning. We didn't wait for Harris’s nine o'clock deadline. We went on the offensive."
"What did you find?" I asked.
"Linden Crest Holdings isn't just an offshore shell company, Claire," Aaron said, opening the manila folder. "It was never Julian’s money. Julian Vance was just the patsy who signed the municipal contracts in Wayne County because he shared my last name. Marcus Croft thought that by using Julian, he could frame me if the state audit ever dug too deep. But Victoria double-crossed Marcus."
He pulled out an eight-by-ten printout of a bank transfer receipt from November 2021.
"Your mother didn't leave the money in Zurich," Aaron said. "She moved thirty-two million dollars out of the Swiss accounts three days before Julian was arrested. She moved it directly into a private blind trust registered under the name of Marcus Croft’s estranged ex-wife."
I gasped. "Marcus’s ex-wife? Evelyn Croft? They hate each other!"
"Exactly," Arthur Pendelton explained, tapping the paper. "Victoria was blackmailing Marcus. She held the evidence that Croft had diverted city pension funds to his offshore accounts, and she parked the money in a place where Croft couldn't touch it without Evelyn finding out and reopening their ninety-million-dollar divorce settlement. Victoria wasn't working *with* Marcus. She had Marcus by the throat."
"Which means," Aaron concluded, looking toward the gray spires of downtown Detroit, "Marcus didn't send Agent Harris to our door to arrest you, Claire. Marcus doesn't control the Department of Justice anymore. Harris is working on behalf of the Treasury Inspector General. They don't want you. They want the encryption keys to that blind trust."
"And where are the keys?" I whispered.
May you like
Aaron looked down at his watch. "In an old safety deposit box at the Comerica branch on Fort Street. The box Victoria registered under your name when you turned eighteen."
***
