Chapter 11 - THE FIVE PERCENT NO ONE KNEW EXISTED
Five percent sounded small.
It wasn’t.
Not in a company worth billions.
Mason refused to believe it.
“My mother would have told me.”
Arthur sat across from us.
“Maybe she thought the shares were gone.”
Daniel’s attorneys spent three weeks investigating.
The certificate was genuine.
Eleanor had been part of the company before Calder Hospitality officially incorporated.
She was a paralegal, yes.
But also one of the original four people who helped Arthur and Margaret structure the first hotel acquisition.
Charles had been the finance manager.
Eleanor handled legal paperwork.
Margaret handled guest operations.
Arthur did almost everything else.
When the company expanded, Arthur gave Eleanor five percent equity.
Then she left after Margaret died.
“Why?” Mason asked.
Arthur looked ashamed.
“I thought she abandoned us.”
“She was afraid.”
“Yes.”
Eleanor had discovered Charles altered Northline’s trust documents.
She confronted him.
He threatened Mason.
Mason had been nine.
So she disappeared from the industry.
She never sold the stock.
Charles later marked it abandoned in internal records.
But legally, abandonment did not automatically transfer ownership.
Daniel’s attorney looked at Mason.
“If the estate claim succeeds, you could own five percent.”
Mason laughed nervously.
“How much is that?”
Nobody answered immediately.
“That bad?”
Daniel said:
“At current valuation, approximately one hundred eighty million dollars.”
Mason went completely silent.
I stared at him.
Then at Daniel.
Then back at Mason.
Our checking account had held $312 two weeks earlier.
Now someone was discussing $180 million.
Mason stood.
“No.”
Arthur frowned.
“No?”
“I don’t want it.”
I looked at him.
“You might want to think before rejecting one hundred eighty million dollars.”
He looked at me.
“You said money doesn’t decide what people are worth.”
“That doesn’t mean we have to be idiots.”
Arthur laughed.
Even Daniel smiled.
Mason sat back down.
“I mean I don’t want to become like them.”
Arthur’s face softened.
“Money doesn’t make you Charles.”
“No?”
“No.”
Arthur looked toward the window.
“What you believe you’re entitled to do because you have money—that’s the dangerous part.”
The estate process moved forward.
Then something unexpected happened.
Charles Price challenged the certificate from jail.
Through his attorneys, he claimed Eleanor had sold the shares to him privately in 2014.
There was a contract.
Signed.
Notarized.
Mason stared.
“My mother was already sick in 2014.”
Arthur’s attorney nodded.
“She died that December.”
The alleged sale occurred eleven days before her death.
Price claimed he paid her $75,000.
For stock worth millions even then.
Mason looked sick.
“She would never do that.”
I remembered my own job.
How quickly management accepted Vanessa’s accusation because the paperwork appeared to support it.
Documents can lie.
People decide whether to look deeper.
The signature expert examined Eleanor’s contract.
Initial opinion:
Probably genuine.
Mason’s face collapsed.
Then I noticed something.
The notary date.
December 14.
“Mason.”
“What?”
“Where was your mother that day?”
He frowned.
“I don’t know.”
“Think.”
He closed his eyes.
Then suddenly opened them.
“Hospital.”
“What?”
“She had pneumonia. She was admitted December eleventh.”
Arthur’s attorney immediately requested records.
The hospital confirmed it.
Eleanor was inpatient on the fourteenth.
Still possible to sign documents.
Except there was another problem.
Her medical chart showed she had been sedated and mechanically ventilated for sixteen hours.
Including the exact time listed on the contract.
Mason whispered:
“She couldn’t have signed.”
The attorney nodded.
Then Arthur asked:
“Who notarized it?”
The name appeared on the final page.
Dennis Cole.
May you like
Mason’s former supervisor.
The same man Charles used to fire him.
