Chapter 8 - The Downward Spiral
By the first week of January, the consequences of their greed began to fall like dominoes.
Without my monthly transfers to cushion Michael’s shell of a contracting company, the commercial creditors wasted no time. Arthur Vance kept me updated through short, professional phone calls every afternoon.
"The leasing company reclaimed the excavator and two dump trucks this morning," Arthur told me on Thursday. "Michael hadn't made a legitimate lease payment from his own funds since August. When your automatic payments stopped, the grace period expired immediately."
"And the townhouse?" I asked.
"The lender issued a formal notice of default yesterday. Their mortgage is sixty days delinquent because Michael diverted the November funds you gave him to make a payment on a sports car he didn't even own outright. They have thirty days before foreclosure proceedings initiate."
I sat in my armchair by the gas fireplace, holding a cup of hot tea. Part of me—the mother part that had bandaged scraped knees and packed school lunches thirty years ago—felt an ache deep in the marrow of my bones. But the larger part of me, the woman who had been betrayed and targeted for financial destruction, felt only clean, unyielding resolve.
"Has the prosecutor contacted him regarding the forged medical power of attorney?"
"They issued a summons," Arthur replied. "The doctor whose name was forged on that document happens to be a prominent physician at Johns Hopkins. When my office notified him, he was incandescent with rage. He signed an affidavit denying he had ever examined you, let alone diagnosed you with memory impairment. Michael is facing felony forgery and attempted grand larceny."
Later that evening, my nephew Greg called. He was laughing, though there was a bitter edge to it.
"Aunt Eleanor, you won't believe what happened at the local supply yard today," Greg said. "Michael showed up trying to return ten thousand dollars’ worth of uncut timber and stone slabs for cash. The yard manager told him all commercial returns had to be credited back to the original funding account—which, of course, was your canceled corporate line."
"What did he do?"
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"He lost his mind," Greg said. "Started screaming at the yard hands, kicked a pallet of bricks, and ended up getting banned from the property. The general contractor on his only remaining commercial site saw the whole thing and canceled Michael’s subcontractor agreement on the spot. Michael doesn't have a single job left in the state."
I exhaled slowly. "He built his whole life out of borrowed bricks, Greg. When the wind blew, there was nothing holding the walls up."
