When the hearing resumed after the break, the room felt different. People took their seats more quietly. Landon sat with his arms folded, staring at the table, and Xavier kept glancing at the door. The hearing chair called the room to order, and I stood, and I asked Wesley to come forward, because the next part of the evidence was his, and he had earned the right to speak it.
Wesley set a folder on the table and opened it, and inside were pages of bank records, stamped and signed. He laid them out in a neat row, and his hands were steady.
"These are the bank records of Alpen Trade," Wesley said, and his voice carried clearly to the back of the room. "I traced them through the company's own files, and through the bank's own records, with the help of Detective Octavia. Alpen Trade is a company with no office, no yard, no boats, and no employees. It has one account, and one purpose, and I will show you what that purpose was."
He held up the first page. "On the third of March, three years ago, the Haversham Danube Line paid Alpen Trade forty thousand for an engine overhaul on the Danube Empress. My grandmother has already shown you that no such overhaul ever took place. On the fifth of March, two days later, Alpen Trade transferred thirty-eight thousand from its account to a private account held by Landon Haversham." He set the page down, and he picked up the next. "On the twelfth of June, the company paid Alpen Trade sixty thousand for hull work on the Wachau Queen. On the fourteenth of June, Alpen Trade transferred fifty-seven thousand to the same private account."
He went on, page after page, and the pattern never changed. Money in from the company, money out to Landon, two days later, almost the whole sum, every time. Wesley read the dates in a flat, even voice, and the room listened in a silence so deep I could hear the clock on the wall.
"In five years," Wesley said at last, "the company paid Alpen Trade two million, one hundred and forty thousand. In the same five years, Alpen Trade paid one million, nine hundred and eighty thousand to Landon Haversham's private account. The rest went to Xavier Wexford, in smaller sums, spread across the years, always in cash withdrawals, always on the same days the company paid Alpen Trade." He looked up from the pages. "I have the statements here. Every transfer is stamped by the bank. Every date matches an invoice my grandmother has already shown you. The money never bought a repair. It bought a house in the hills above Vienna, and a car, and a life my father could not afford on his salary."
Landon stood up so suddenly that his chair scraped backward across the floor. "That account is my own business," he said, his voice rising. "My mother has no right to go through my private affairs. I have investments. I have friends who lend me money. This proves nothing."
The hearing chair raised a hand. "Mr. Haversham, you will sit down. You will have your turn to speak. Mr. Wesley Haversham, continue."
Wesley nodded, and he picked up the last page in the folder, and he held it up for the room to see. "This is the most recent statement," he said. "It is dated the week before the anniversary cruise. The company paid Alpen Trade ninety thousand for work on the Vienna Star. Two days later, eighty-six thousand went to my father's account. And on the same day, my father paid a deposit on a property in the hills above Vienna, in cash, in full. That was three days before he pushed my grandmother into the river." He paused, and his voice, which had been so steady, broke for a moment, and then he steadied it again. "She was about to call an independent audit. She had found the invoices. She had found the pattern. And he knew that when the audit came, this would all come out. So she had to go."
The room was utterly still. I looked at Landon, and his face had gone the colour of old paper, and his hands were shaking, and for a moment I saw not the man who had pushed me, but the boy I had once held in my arms on the deck of our first boat, and the grief of that hit me harder than the river ever had. But I did not look away. I had come too far to look away now.
The hearing chair asked the clerk to mark the bank records as evidence, and the clerk tied a tag to the folder, and Wesley stepped back to his seat beside me, and I took his hand under the table, and I squeezed it once, and he squeezed back. Across the room, Xavier had his head in his hands, and Landon sat staring at the floor, and his lawyer was writing quickly in a notebook.
The chair looked at the clock. "We will pause here," the chair said. "When we return, we will hear the evidence concerning the power of attorney and the partnership agreement." The room rose, and the murmur began again, louder this time, and I sat still, listening to the river outside the window, and thinking of how a river never hurries, and never forgets.
Chapter 31
— The Power of Attorney Speaks