The printer had just finished a run. The ink was so fresh on the top sheet that the sharp, chemical smell of ribbon wax still hung over the roller.
I leaned down and read the latest entry:
SUITE 901 – OCCUPANT: VANCE, ARTHUR (ESTATE DIRECT) BILLING ENTITY: CRESTLINE ASSET MANAGEMENT LLC AUTHORIZING OFFICER: JULIAN VANCE, SOLE EXECUTOR TRANSACTION: MONTHLY CASH ADVANCE DISBURSEMENT – $45,000. 00 DISBURSEMENT STATUS: PENDING LOBBY HAND-OFF AT 02:00 AM
My father hadn't left a forgotten debt to a syndicate. Julian hadn't sold the operating rights to save the hotel from bankruptcy.
Julian was using my father's forged identity to siphon forty-five thousand dollars in liquid hotel reserves out of the master account every single month, using an unrecorded executive suite to disguise the transactions as private family living expenses before the probate court could inventory the assets.
The man upstairs in Suite 901 wasn't a guest. He was Julian's courier, waiting to take the envelope.
From the top of the concrete stairwell four floors above, the heavy fire door slammed against its frame with a violent metallic bang. Heavy footsteps began descending the steel treads, moving fast, accompanied by the unmistakable, arrogant laughter of my uncle Julian.
CHAPTER 2 CONTINUED
I killed my phone screen with my thumb. The dispatch alcove plunged into blackness, broken only by the amber pulse of the backup battery monitor. If Julian caught me here with the tractor-feed paper dangling from the chassis, there would be no police report and no court hearing; a staged slip on the sump basin would close the Vance estate forever.
I didn't tear the paper. Ripping carbon in a dead-silent room would sound like a pistol shot. Instead, I found the platen knob with trembling fingers, turning it tooth by tooth until the three-part continuous sheets cleared the feed rollers. Holding the paper taut to damp vibration, I drew my pocketknife blade along the perforation, slicing the white, yellow, and pink vouchers free without sound.
I folded the packet twice, sliding it flat beneath the oilcloth lining of my canvas coat.
The steel fire door clicked open, and halogen flashlight beams slashed across the ceiling pipes.
"Check the condensate valves while we’re down here," Julian ordered. His camel-hair coat brushed the jamb, pinned at the lapel with a gold Alder leaf crest. Behind him stood Marcus, the shaved-temple contractor with an earpiece, carrying a leather lockbox. "The humidity in the wine cellar was high yesterday. I'm not letting mold touch twenty cases of sixty-one Bordeaux before the auction catalog goes to print."
I backed into the narrow gap between the secondary boiler and the riser pipe. Through a three-inch gap in the partition, I watched Julian pull a slender tubular key from his pocket and walk to the 1968 wall safe behind Arthur's desk.
"Hold the light, Marcus," Julian said. The dial's dual tumblers had been pinned back with a steel drift pin so only the key was required; the heavy steel door swung open without a creak.
Inside lay three bundles of fifty-dollar bills and a mahogany box lined with green velvet. Julian lifted the lid, and my breath seized.
Resting in the velvet was Arthur Vance’s bronze corporate seal. I had sat on my father’s drafting stool when I was nine while he filed the split notch into the underside of the capital V with an Arkansas stone—a private security mark to prevent forged certificates from passing deed review.
Julian drew out a legal sheet with a blue backing cover: the original Petition for Summary Disposition of Distressed Assets, bearing tomorrow's court date.
"Arthur was so meticulous with his signature cards," Julian chuckled, spreading the document under Marcus’s light. "If he hadn't left this stamp in the office safe before his kidneys failed, we’d have fought the referee over every fixture."
Julian pressed the bronze seal into an ink pad, brought it down on the acknowledgment line, and bore down with his palms. Purple ink left the exact duplicate of the signature Tyler had filed upstairs: Arthur Vance, Managing Member. Beside it, Julian slammed down a black rubber rectangle: Denise Morales, Notary Public, Commission Exp. 04/28/2027.
Denise Morales was Julian’s secretary on Market Street. She had notarized a living document using a dead man’s seal, dating it three days before Arthur died, while my father was drifting in an oxygen coma in hospice.