Chapter 28 - THE LAST DIVIDEND
The public auction of Eleanor Holloway’s personal property took place on the lawn of the county courthouse on a bright, cold morning in mid-April.
A crowd of nearly two hundred people had gathered: antique dealers from Atlanta, curious neighbors who had spent three decades being snubbed at the country club, and local farmers who stood at the back of the folding chairs with their hands stuffed deep into the pockets of their Carhartt jackets, watching the kingdom be dismantled for cash.
I stood on the courthouse steps, leaning against the cold granite railing, wearing a plain charcoal wool coat and boots that were still flecked with sawdust from the barn.
Beside me, Inspector Vance leaned on a heavy walking stick, having officially retired from the Department of Justice three weeks earlier.
"She kept the silver," Vance remarked quietly as the auctioneer’s gavel fell with a sharp *crack* on a lot of Georgian silver serving dishes. *"Sold to the gentleman in the fourth row for eighteen hundred dollars."*
"She never used it," I said. "She kept it in velvet-lined boxes in the pantry. She said our hands were too acidic to touch it without gloves."
On the raised wooden platform below, the auctioneer held up a framed oil portrait of my mother and Claire, painted in 2012 by an artist from Charleston. Claire was twenty, smiling with that cold, perfect porcelain symmetry; Eleanor sat behind her like a queen mother on an ebony throne, her hand resting on Claire’s shoulder with the heavy, possessive grip of an owner showing off a prize filly.
"Lot forty-two," the auctioneer intoned through the tinny PA system. "Original oil on canvas. Gilt frame."
Silence fell over the crowd.
Nobody raised a paddle.
Not the dealers. Not the neighbors. Not even the woman from the local historical committee who had been buying up Eleanor’s antique quilts.
"Do I have one hundred dollars?" the auctioneer asked, his eyes scanning the crowd with growing discomfort. "Fifty dollars? Twenty-five?"
The auctioneer sighed, lowered his gavel, and looked at his clerk. "Pass lot forty-two. Move to the brass fire irons."
The portrait was pulled off the easel and laid flat on the grass behind the stage, its gilt frame resting in the red mountain dirt.
A black taxi pulled up to the curb at the edge of the square.
A man got out—a junior associate from the corporate liquidation firm handling the dissolution of Claire’s partnership. He carried a heavy leather briefcase, walked up the granite steps, and offered a polite, nervous nod to Vance before turning to me.
"Miss Holloway?"
"Yes."
He handed me a cashier’s check drawn on the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond.
The number was eight hundred and forty-two thousand, six hundred and eleven dollars and twelve cents.
"The final liquidation of the offshore accounts," the lawyer said, his voice hushed. "After the restitution fund and the federal tax liens were satisfied. Arthur’s original capital investment, compounded at statutory interest."
I looked at the piece of paper. It felt weightless. It had no smell. It had none of the grit of the red clay Marcus and I had hauled from the creek bed; it had none of the sweet, sharp musk of the pine needles drying in the morning sun.
"What do I do with it, Vance?" I asked, looking at the retired inspector.
Vance watched a farmer in faded overalls carry away my mother’s mahogany dining table, holding it carefully by the corners so it wouldn't scrape the tailgate of his pickup.
"You build the library your father wanted," Vance said. "The one down at the crossroads. The one Eleanor told him would attract 'the wrong kind of people' to the county."
I looked down at the check once more, folded it neatly into four quarters, and slid it into my breast pocket beside Arthur’s brass key.
May you like
"Come on," I said to Marcus, who had walked up the steps behind us, holding a paper bag containing three warm cinnamon rolls from the bakery across the square. "Waverly wants to see the timber by the pond before the sun gets too high."
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