Chapter 6 - Sloane's House of Cards
The visit request came through Julian’s office at three o’clock on Wednesday afternoon.
Sloane Avery was being held at the Rose M. Singer Center on Rikers Island, unable to meet the cash component of her revised bail after the perjury enhancement was filed. Her attorney had called Julian three times in two hours, begging for an audience.
“You don't need to go there, Claire,” Julian told me as we stood in his corner office overlooking the East River. “It’s dirty, it’s noisy, and it gives her the satisfaction of seeing you on her territory.”
“Rikers isn't her territory, Julian,” I said, looking at my reflection in the floor-to-ceiling glass. I was wearing an ivory cashmere turtleneck, tailored gray trousers, and no jewelry except for my father’s simple gold signet ring. “It’s the only place she has left. And I want to hear what she has to say when she isn't wearing my mother’s diamonds.”
The legal visiting room smelled of industrial floor stripper, cold cabbage, and fear.
Sloane sat across a bolted steel table, separated from me by a scratched partition of heavy Plexiglas. She was wearing a faded orange jumpsuit that was three sizes too large for her thin frame. Her hair, usually blown out into soft, expensive waves, was pulled back in a greasy, uneven ponytail. Without her five-hundred-dollar facials and custom foundation, her skin looked blotchy, gray, and twenty years older than her age.
Her eyes flicked to my hands as I sat down. She was looking for the earrings.
“They’re in a private vault at the Sterling Trust,” I said, resting my hands on the cold laminate table. “Where they’ve belonged for sixty years.”
Sloane swallowed hard. Her lips were cracked, dry and peeling. “You think you’re so pure, Claire. You think you’re the saint of Fifth Avenue because your daddy left you an ocean of blood money from timber and rail lines.”
“My father didn't steal from children with leukemia, Sloane,” I said evenly.
“Grant told me you didn't care!” she hissed, leaning forward until her nose nearly touched the Plexiglas, her breath fogging the plastic. “He told me you two hadn't slept in the same bed in three years! He told me you were cold, that you were dead inside, that you only kept him around because you needed a handsome face to front the brochures!”
“And you believed him because it came with an emerald gown and an apartment on 10th Street?”
“He loved me!” she cried out, her voice cracking, drawing the bored gaze of a correction officer standing by the cinderblock wall. “He was going to marry me! We had a life planned in Saint-Tropez! We were going to start our own advisory firm!”
“With my money,” I said.
“With money he earned!” she yelled. “He ran Whitmore Capital!”
“Grant didn't earn a nickel in his entire miserable life,” I said, my voice dropping into that icy, measured cadence that made her recoil despite herself. “Whitmore Capital lost eleven million dollars in its first twelve months. I covered the margin from my personal trust. When he lost eight million shorting natural gas in twenty-twenty-one, I bought out his debt through an LLC so his name wouldn't appear on the public delinquency notices. He was a professional parasite, Sloane. And when he ran out of my patience, he moved on to your vanity.”
Sloane stared at me, her chest heaving beneath the coarse cotton of her jumpsuit. A tear broke over her lash line, cutting through the grime on her cheek.
“He told the prosecutors that everything was my idea,” she whispered, her voice suddenly dropping into a broken, childlike register. “He told them I found the offshore accounts. He told them I set up the Tortola shell. He told them I stole the jewelry from your dresser while you were in East Hampton.”
“I know,” I said.
She blinked, stunned. “You know?”
“I have the recordings from the penthouse security system, Sloane. Grant spent two hours on the phone with his criminal defense lawyer on Sunday night offering to turn state's evidence against you in exchange for a plea deal that avoided federal prison.”
Sloane’s mouth trembled. She looked down at her hands—her manicured nails were already chipped and split down to the quick.
“He left me here,” she choked out. “He hasn't called once. My lawyer said his phone was disconnected.”
“His phone was disconnected because the service was billed to the Whitmore Foundation,” I said. “Just like your car lease. Just like your health insurance. Just like the storage unit in Queens where you hid three crates of my mother’s silverware.”
She looked up, terror flaring in her eyes. “How did you find the storage unit?”
“You used your personal rewards card at the front gate, Sloane. You’re not a criminal mastermind. You’re an assistant who got greedy.”
I picked up my leather gloves from the table and stood up.
“Claire… please,” she sobbed, pressing her flat palms against the Plexiglas. “Tell the DA I didn't know about the shell company. Tell them Grant made me sign those papers! I can't stay here… the women in my unit… they know who I am… they’ve seen the news… please, Claire!”
I looked down at her through the scratched plastic.
“You danced to my father’s waltz, Sloane,” I said softly. “You stood under that chandelier, wearing my mother’s jewelry, and you smiled at me while my husband rubbed your back to the song my father played when I was a little girl.”
I pulled on my leather gloves, smoothing each finger with deliberate care.
“You wanted my life,” I said. “Now you have to live with the cost of it.”
May you like
I turned and walked toward the heavy steel door. I didn't look back as the buzzer sounded, and I didn't stop when her screaming wails began to bounce off the cinderblock walls behind me.
***
