Chapter 8: Richard Makes His Move
The injunction filing landed the next morning, as Diane had predicted.
By noon, she had filed the response.
By two o'clock, Richard had done something none of us had predicted.
My phone rang while I was eating lunch at my desk.
My colleague Pam leaned over from the next workstation.
"There's someone in reception asking for you.
He said it's personal."
I walked out to the lobby.
The man standing there was younger than Richard — Paul Whitmore, I realized.
Fifty-eight, but he looked older.
Softer around the edges than his brother, but his eyes were doing the same calculation.
"I told Richard I wanted to try this myself," he said.
No introduction.
He already knew I knew who he was.
"Can we get coffee?"
I looked at him for a long moment.
"You came to my workplace," I said.
"I know.
I'm sorry for that.
I just—" He stopped.
He looked, briefly, like a man who had rehearsed something and lost the thread of it.
"I knew Lawrence.
Before everything.
He was my brother too."
Something in his voice was different from Richard's.
I couldn't tell yet if it was real.
"There's a place across the street," I said.
We sat at a corner table.
Paul wrapped both hands around his coffee cup and looked out the window for a moment before he spoke.
"Richard doesn't know I'm here," he said.
"I find that hard to believe."
"I know you do." He looked at me directly.
"The psychiatrist report.
The one Richard commissioned.
I didn't know about it until after it was done.
I want you to know that."
"It doesn't change what it was used for."
"No," he said.
"It doesn't." He was quiet for a moment.
"Lawrence and I weren't close at the end.
That was my fault as much as his.
I let Richard handle everything after Father d*ed and I told myself it was easier.
It wasn't easier.
It was cowardly." He set his cup down.
"Richard is going to keep pushing.
He has more money than patience and he thinks he can outlast you.
I've watched him do it before."
"Why are you telling me this?"
Paul looked at his hands.
"Because Lawrence left.
He left and he lived on the street and he d*ed in a hospice and I never once picked up the phone." His jaw moved.
"And now Richard wants to take the one thing Lawrence managed to do at the end of his life and turn it into a legal fight." He looked up.
"I'm not going to help him do that."
I studied his face.
"What does that mean, specifically?" I said.
"It means I'm prepared to give a statement to your attorneys.
I can confirm that the psychiatric report was Richard's idea, that Lawrence was not unstable, and that the estate dispute after Father's death was driven by Richard, not by Lawrence." He held my gaze.
"I can also confirm that Richard has been moving assets in the last three days.
Quietly.
In ways that suggest he's not entirely confident the injunction will hold."
My hand was still on my coffee cup.
"You'd testify against your own brother," I said.
"Lawrence was my brother too," Paul said again.
"I was late.
I can't fix that.
But I can do this."
I called Diane from the sidewalk outside before I was back across the street.
"Paul Whitmore just offered to testify for us," I said.
A pause on her end.
"Are you serious."
"He says Richard has been moving assets since the filing."
"If that's true," Diane said slowly, "that's not just a civil matter.
That's potential fraud." Another pause.
"Bring him in tomorrow morning.
First thing."
I looked back through the coffee shop window.
Paul was still sitting at the corner table, both hands around his cup, staring at nothing.
He looked like a man who had been carrying something heavy for a very long time and had finally decided to set it down.
I didn't feel sorry for him.
But I understood him.
My phone buzzed.
A text from an unknown number.
*You should have taken the money, Sarah.
This is going to get very unpleasant for you.*
May you like
Richard.
I put my phone in my pocket and walked back to my office.
