Kendall and Woody looked at each other, puzzled.
The door opened, and Julia Stanford walked into the office.
Steve stood up. “This is your sister, Julia.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” Woody exploded. “What are you trying to pull?”
“Let me explain,” Steve said quietly. He spoke for fifteen minutes, and finished by saying, “Perry Winger confirms that her DNA matches your father’s.”
When Steve was through, Woody said, “Tyler! I can’t believe it!”
“Believe it.”
“I don’t understand. The other woman’s fingerprints prove that she is Julia,” Woody said. “I still have the fingerprint card.”
Steve felt his pulse pounding. “You do?”
“Yeah. I kept it as kind of a joke.”
“I want you to do me a favor,” Steve said.
At ten o’clock the next morning, a large group was gathered in the conference room of Renquist, Renquist & Fitzgerald. Simon Fitzgerald sat at the head of a table. In the room were Kendall, Tyler, Woody, Steve, and Julia. In addition, there were several strangers present.
Fitzgerald introduced two of them. “This is William Parker and Patrick Evans. They’re with the law firms that represent Stanford Enterprises. They’ve brought with them the financial report on the company. I’ll discuss the will first, then they can take over the meeting.”
“Let’s get on with it,” Tyler said impatiently. He was sitting apart from the others. I’m not only going to get the money, but I’m going to destroy you bastards.
Simon Fitzgerald nodded. “Very well.”
In front of Fitzgerald was a large file marked HARRY STANFORD—LAST WILL AND TESTAMENT. “I’m going to give each of you a copy of the will so it won’t be necessary to wade through all the technicalities. I’ve already told you that Harry Stanford’s children will equally inherit the estate.”
Julia glanced over at Steve, a look of bemusement on her face.
I’m glad for her, Steve thought. Even though it puts her way out of my reach.
Simon Fitzgerald was going on. “There are a dozen or so bequests, but they’re all minor.”
Tyler was thinking, Lee will be here this afternoon. I want to be at the airport to meet him.
“As you were told earlier, Stanford Enterprises has assets of approximately six billion dollars.” Fitzgerald nodded toward William Parker. “I’ll let Mr. Parker take it from here.”
William Parker opened a briefcase and spread some papers out on the conference table. “As Mr. Fitzgerald said, there are six billion dollars in assets. However…” There was a pregnant pause. He looked around the room. “Stanford Enterprises is in debt in excess of fifteen billion dollars.”
Woody was on his feet. “What the hell are you saying?”
Tyler’s face turned ashen. “Is this some kind of macabre joke?”
“It has to be!” Kendall said hoarsely.
Mr. Parker turned to one of the men in the room. “Mr. Leonard Redding is with the Securities and Exchange Commission. I’ll let him explain.”
Redding nodded. “For the last two years, Harry Stanford was convinced that interest rates were going to fall. In the past, he had made millions by betting on that. When interest rates started to rise, he was still convinced they would drop again, and he kept leveraging his bets. He did massive borrowing to buy long-term bonds, but the interest rates went up and his borrowing costs jumped, while the value of the bonds tumbled. The banks were willing to do business with him because of his reputation and his vast fortune, but when he tried to recoup his losses by starting to invest in high-risk securities, they began to get worried. He made a series of disastrous investments. Some of the money he borrowed was pledged by securities he had bought with borrowed money as collateral for further borrowing.”
“In other words,” Patrick Evans interjected, “he was pyramiding his debts, operating illegally.”
“That is correct. Unfortunately for him, interest rates underwent one of the steepest climbs in financial history. He had to keep borrowing money to cover the money he had already borrowed. It was a vicious circle.”
They sat there, hanging on Redding’s every word.
“Your father gave his personal guarantee to the company’s pension plan and illegally used that money to buy more stock. When the banks began to question what he was doing, he set up decoy companies and provided false records of solvency and fake sales of his properties to drive up the value of his paper. He was committing fraud. In the end, he was counting on a consortium of banks to bail him out of trouble. They refused. When they told the Securities and Exchange Commission what was happening, Interpol was brought into the picture.”