Chapter 4 - The Deposition of Sins
The deposition took place in the neutral conference room of the Manhattan Arbitration Center on Lexington Avenue.
The room smelled of stale lemon polish, dry paper, and the sharp, chemical tang of expensive cologne trying to mask nervous sweat. The long glass conference table was flanked on one side by Elena Vance and me; on the other sat Eleanor Montgomery, Garrick Montgomery, and their high-priced defense attorney, Arthur Ross—a man with silver hair, a fifty-thousand-dollar Patek Philippe watch, and the weary, hollow eyes of someone who knew his clients were completely, irrevocably guilty.
A court reporter sat at the head of the table, her fingers poised over the silent keys of her stenotype machine.
Eleanor was wearing a high-collared black dress, her face caked in heavy foundation that failed to conceal the dark, bruised circles under her eyes. She refused to look at me. Her gaze was fixed entirely on the polished wood between her hands.
Garrick looked like a man who hadn't slept in seventy-two hours. The sharp, arrogant edge of his posture was gone; his shoulders were hunched, his jaw covered in an uneven shadow of stubble. Every time the door to the hallway clicked open, his head jerked toward it as if he expected federal marshals to march in with handcuffs.
"We are on the record," the court reporter announced quietly.
Elena Vance adjusted her reading glasses, slid a thick stack of indexed binders to the center of the table, and looked directly across at my brother.
"State your full legal name for the record," Elena began.
"Garrick Arthur Montgomery," my brother mumbled.
"Louder, please, Mr. Montgomery," Elena said crisply. "The machine cannot record a mumble."
"Garrick Arthur Montgomery!" he snapped, his voice sharp and brittle.
"Thank you. Mr. Montgomery, let us direct your attention to Exhibit 14," Elena said, sliding a document across the table. "This is a bank authorization form from First Manhattan Trust, dated November 14, 2003, transferring eight million two hundred thousand dollars from the Arthur Montgomery Liquid Capital Account into an entity called *G.M. Capital Holdings*."
Garrick glanced at the paper, then looked at his lawyer. Ross leaned over, whispered something in his ear, and then cleared his throat.
"On the advice of counsel," Ross stated smoothly, "my client invokes his Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination and declines to answer."
Elena didn't even blink. "Understood. Let the record reflect that in civil proceedings, the court may draw an adverse inference from the assertion of the Fifth Amendment."
She turned her eyes to Eleanor.
"Mrs. Eleanor Montgomery," Elena said, her voice dropping into a lethal, silky calm. "Let us look at Exhibit 7. Do you recognize this document?"
Eleanor didn't look down. "I don't have my reading glasses."
"I have a spare pair right here, Mrs. Montgomery," Elena offered, pulling a pair of reading glasses from her briefcase and setting them gently in front of my mother. "Please. Take your time."
Ross touched Eleanor’s arm. "Eleanor, don't—"
"No, Arthur, let her look," Elena interrupted, her eyes fixing Eleanor like a specimen on a pin. "This is the signature card for your father’s primary checking account, dated six days before his death. On this card, Arthur Montgomery allegedly revoked Clara Montgomery’s power of attorney and transferred it entirely to you."
Eleanor’s lips pressed into a thin, white line. "My father was in full possession of his faculties. He realized Clara was too young."
"Did he?" Elena pulled another sheet from the binder. "Because this is the medical chart from St. Jude’s Hospice Care, dated the exact same afternoon. It notes that Arthur Montgomery had been administered forty milligrams of liquid morphine every four hours for end-stage pancreatic pain. The attending physician noted, and I quote: *‘Patient is entirely non-verbal, semi-comatose, and incapable of recognizing immediate family members.’*"
Eleanor swallowed hard. Her throat clicked audibly in the quiet room.
"Are you telling this deposition under penalty of perjury, Mrs. Montgomery," Elena continued, leaning forward, "that a comatose man who could not speak his own name sat up in bed, requested a legal power-of-attorney revocation, held a pen with a steady hand, and executed a document transferring control of an eighteen-million-dollar trust to you?"
"My father loved Garrick!" Eleanor burst out, her voice cracking with hysterical defiance. "He wanted his name carried on! He wanted the Montgomery legacy to survive! Clara was married to a nobody! A grease monkey from Queens! What was he supposed to do? Leave an empire to a girl who worked at a bookstore?"
The room went dead silent.
The court reporter’s fingers flew over the keys, the soft clatter sounding like small bones dropping onto glass.
"Mom," I said.
The word was quiet, but it hit the room with the force of an artillery shell.
Eleanor flinched. For the first time since she had walked into the room, she looked at me.
Her eyes were wild, filled with an ancient, toxic mixture of guilt, hatred, and terror.
"You think this was about an empire?" I asked her, my voice completely devoid of emotion. "Grandfather didn't have an empire, Mom. He had a family. And you killed him in that back room."
"I did not kill him!" Eleanor screamed, slamming both fists onto the table. "I took care of him! I wiped his chin! I changed his sheets while you were off playing house with your little family!"
"You put him in the servant's quarters so Garrick could host cocktail parties in the main parlor," I said. "He wrote it down, Mom. In his own handwriting. With the dates. The times. The names of the medications you withheld when he refused to sign the property releases."
Arthur Ross suddenly stood up, knocking his leather briefcase backward off the chair.
"We are concluding this deposition," Ross announced, his face pale. "Counselor, you are making criminal allegations without—"
"I am not making allegations, Mr. Ross," Elena interrupted calmly, pointing toward the heavy mahogany double doors at the back of the conference room.
The doors opened.
Three men walked in.
They were not process servers. They were not court couriers.
They wore tailored dark suits, short haircuts, and badges clipped to their belts. The man in the lead was tall, broad-shouldered, carrying a thick leather warrant folder with the gold seal of the United States Department of Justice emblazoned on the leather.
"Garrick Montgomery?" the lead agent said, his voice echoing in the vaulted room.
Garrick didn't move. He sat frozen, his mouth open, his hands pinned against the glass table.
"I am Special Agent Marcus Chen, Federal Bureau of Investigation," the agent said, walking forward and resting a hand on the back of Garrick’s chair. "Pursuant to an indictment returned this morning by the grand jury for the Southern District of New York, I have an arrest warrant for you on sixteen counts of wire fraud, bank fraud, and interstate transport of stolen securities."
"No..." Garrick gasped, his voice cracking into a high, pathetic squeak. "No, wait! It was my mother! She signed the orders! Look at the signatures! She’s the trustee! I was just the beneficiary!"
Eleanor whipped her head around, staring at her son as if she had been struck with an iron pipe.
"Garrick?" she gasped, her voice trembling. "What did you say?"
"She did it!" Garrick yelled, pointing wildly at his mother as Agent Chen pulled his arms behind his back. The sharp, mechanical *click* of the steel handcuffs echoed through the room. "She brought Henderson to the house! She forged the waivers! She told me Grandfather would never know! She gave me the money, Agent! I didn't steal it, she gave it to me!"
"You coward," Eleanor whispered. The words came out of her like blood from a punctured lung. "You ungrateful, miserable coward... I gave you everything. I ruined my soul for you."
"Shut up!" Garrick sobbed, tears and snot running down his face as two agents hoisted him up by his elbows. "Shut up, you old hag! You ruined my life! You told me she would never find out!"
Arthur Ross didn't say a word. He stepped three paces back from his clients, his hands raised in a gesture of professional detachment, already drafting the formal motion to withdraw from the case.
Agent Chen looked across the table at me. He nodded once, a gesture of solemn, unyielding respect.
"Mrs. Montgomery-Hayes," Chen said. "We have seized the Cayman account. The funds are under the custody of the United States Marshals Service. The repatriation order will be entered by Judge Holbrook tomorrow morning."
"Thank you, Agent Chen," I said quietly.
As they dragged Garrick through the double doors, his heels dragging against the expensive carpet, screaming curses at the ceiling, Eleanor Montgomery collapsed forward onto the table.
She wept. Not for Garrick. Not for me.
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She wept because the mirror had finally shattered, and she was left looking at the monster behind the glass.
***
