Chapter 8 - THE DEMOLITION
We walked out of the Caldwell mansion into the cool night air.
Natalie walked between me and Elaine, her head held high, her hand tucked firmly into the crook of my elbow. The air felt cleaner out here on the street than it had inside that five-thousand-square-foot house.
"Is it really over, Dad?" Natalie asked as we reached the pickup truck.
"The wedding part is over, Nat," I said, opening the truck door for her. "The rest of it is just housecleaning."
And housecleaning is what followed.
On Monday morning at 9:00 AM, Arthur Vance delivered the financial dossiers to the State Attorney General’s office anyway. We hadn't made any promises to Richard Caldwell about protecting Marcus Vance.
By Tuesday afternoon, the local news broke the story.
"Local Real Estate Developer Marcus Vance Arrested in Multi-Million Dollar Fraud and Money Laundering Scheme," the news anchor announced over the radio in my shop. "Also charged in connection with the investigation is commercial broker Derek Caldwell and his mother, Beverly Caldwell, a prominent local bookkeeper..."
I sat at my workbench, sharpening a drill bit on the grinding wheel, listening to the report.
Derek was arrested at his office on 4th Street. The local news channel happened to have a camera crew across the street when the state troopers led him out in handcuffs. He was wearing the same expensive beige sweater he had worn to my front porch on Sunday morning, but his hands were cuffed behind his back, his head bowed low to avoid the news cameras.
They didn't zoom in on his face. They didn't ask him for a statement.
He was just another broken component being hauled off to the scrap yard.
That evening, Natalie came to the shop.
The bruise on her face had faded from dark purple to a light, greenish-yellow. She was carrying a box of pizza and three bottles of root beer.
She sat on a wooden crate near my workbench, watching me adjust the belt tension on a fifty-year-old drill press.
"My bank called today," Natalie said, popping the cap off a root beer. "The state prosecutor cleared Harper & Co. Interiors of all wrongdoing. The paper trail Frank pulled proved that I was a victim of identity theft and corporate fraud. The three hundred thousand dollars in escrow was turned over to the court receiver."
"That's good, Nat," I said, wiping my hands on a red shop rag.
"I had three new clients call me this afternoon," she added, a soft smile finally touching her lips. "They saw the news. They said they wanted to hire an interior designer who had the guts to stand up to Marcus Vance."
I sat down on the stool across from her, taking a root beer from her hand.
"You always had guts, Nat," I said. "Since you were six years old with that claw hammer."
Natalie looked around the quiet shop—at the heavy iron machines, the grease-stained concrete, the yellow legal pad still lying on my desk.
"Dad?"
"Yeah, Nat?"
"Why didn't you punch him at the ballroom?" she asked softly. "I saw your face when you walked toward us. I thought you were going to tear his head off."
I took a sip of my root beer, looking at the heavy hydraulic press sitting in the corner of the bay.
"Punching a man is easy, Nat," I told her. "It makes a lot of noise, breaks a few bones, and then everybody spends the next three weeks talking about the noise instead of the problem. If I had hit Derek in that ballroom, he would have played the victim. He would have used it to distract everyone from what he did to you."
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I leaned forward, looking into her clear green eyes.
"When a machine is running dangerously, you don't hit it with a sledgehammer. You turn the power off. You dismantle it bolt by bolt until there's nothing left standing. That way, it can never hurt anyone again."
