Cat couldn’t help but admire the wonders of the modern world consumer market. Even with the bridge blocked, the website fulfilled its same-day shipping. They still didn’t have drone deliveries but it was on the horizon. A van pulled into the side driveway after the security staff cleared it, then started to unload boxes. Cat heard the commotion and went to the kitchen. She had Jake take the packages to her room after checking that her entire order was fulfilled.
The ghost’s rapidly declining morals was not an uncommon event. It was like a river. Build a dam and repress the flow, and once the dam breaks, you get a flood. The person’s inhibiting factors no longer apply and they want to make up for the lost time. Furthermore, she was dead, just hitching a ride on Cat’s head. Dying could skew people’s priorities as Cat knew very well from William’s brief stint as a ghost. The eerie feeling of detachment from material issues and even his beloved fiancée still haunted them. Very likely, the real Catherine wouldn’t be so eager to indulge in such activities with her own body. At least they shared both pleasure and pain.
And Cat suspected it would be painful. But it was a problem for future Cat. As the last box went into the house, Jack called her.
“What’s up, doc?” She asked as a jest.
“Your media friends are really stubborn. I don’t know what you did or did not but they aren’t going away. If anything, they’re getting craftier.”
He pointed in the general direction of the street and also up. Cat kept her head level. If Gene Hackman taught William anything was to not look up when under surveillance.
“How so?” She asked.
“We got a dozen drones hovering in the road airspace. They’re within their zoning limits and there’s nothing we can do about that. They can legally record everything that happens in the house that’s not covered. I talked to miss Stewart and she’s going to sue them for trespassing anyway because it seems they can’t record through the windows. We’re also flying some of our drones and creating as much interference as possible within FCC limits. The machines have internal storage, however. It only delays their access to the footage.”
First, the guy trying to invade the property, now these drones. It was ridiculous and something was indeed going on. Cat only hoped it had nothing to do with a certain black-eyed lawyer but she was pretty sure that if anyone could exert such influence it was him.
“Thanks, Jack. I’ll check with Agatha and see what we can do.”
The former ranger raised a finger, “If I may suggest,” he paused. Cat nodded and smiled to ease his worries. “You might consider going out on vacation. They're camped here because it's easy to just stay here. Neighbors are complaining because their privacy is also being invaded. I think you guys deserve some time to decompress somewhere far away from here.”
“Already trying to dump me?” Cat teased, pretending to be offended.
Startled, she took a step back. [No I’m not.]
“Not at all. If anything, working for you is good and easy money. If we don’t count the bridge.”
Remembering the bridge soured her mood. “Oliver...”
“It will take more than a terrorist attack to knock that old goat off the mountain,” Jack cheered and pointed at Jake, who was already off to do something in the backyard. “Go see your new shoes.”
“Thanks, Jack.”
Cat went away to unpack her new purchases and squirrel them somewhere Esmeralda wouldn’t find them. She called Agatha and she supported the vacation idea, but it had to be somewhere where they could do some social work on the side, to keep public opinion on their side. Going on a lavish autumn retreat on the beaches of Tel Aviv, for example, was a no-no. She also told them they could talk about that face-to-face as she would drop by tomorrow to talk about Mrs. Wallenstein's incoming TV appearance.
----------------------------------------
With Agatha’s assistance unraveling the reasons behind the invitation (they didn’t uncover much), Mrs. Wallenstein scheduled TV interview looked more and more sketchy. The showrunners organizing this interview were not forward with their reasons or even the questions that were going to be asked. Cat had to agree it was a recipe for disaster, as the family had a lot of things they didn’t want to discuss in public. From Catherine’s name being both vilified and deified on social media, to alcoholism, domestic terrorism, and even the controversial plea bargain and subsequent FBI taking the man under custody.
The woman was as attention-starved as her daughter was and very eager to do it. Mrs. Wallenstein’s idea of giving a TV interview was sitting on a couch next to a handsome late-night host, looking glamorous, and snapping witty remarks that would send the audience bursting at the seams. What both Cat and Agatha feared was a hostile probing that would destroy whatever confidence she’d built over the last two weeks.
Agatha spent hours on the phone with the producers trying to get them to open up but they claimed secrecy to keep “authenticity”. What a load of bullshit. While they couldn’t get to a middle-term, they hired a public speaking coach to help Mrs. Wallenstein understand the pitfalls of a hostile interview. These lessons allowed Agatha to pick the woman’s brain and learn what made her tick.
That’s when she had a genius idea. The three women were decompressing after a two-hour lecture on what not to speak as a person of interest in a public setting when Agatha snapped her fingers.
“Wait. Mrs. Wallenstein, you like working with the charity and helping to raise funds for worthy causes, right?” She asked just to set the subject of their conversation.
“Yes, I do. That’s what I think the TV show will be about.”
Excited, the lawyer continued, “Why don’t you create your own charity? There’s a big opportunity here to seize the momentum on the web and create something amazing with you at the helm.”
Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.
“Yes, but that seems like a lot of work,” Cat commented.
“Sure, but nothing forbids you from hiring a team to help you,” Agatha told Mrs. Wallenstein. “Look, where do your passions lie? What cause do you want to champion?”
They talked about what charities the woman liked to support, which was whichever looked more glamorous at the moment. She really didn’t have a passion and liked the social butterfly aspect of charities than the real legwork of running one. They eventually settled on a non-profit NGO that would give legal and psychological aid to women in vulnerable situations, like victims of domestic or sexual violence.
It sort of overlapped with the ones Dr. Hill brought onboard to help Catherine during her post-suicide hospitalization but it never hurt to do a collaboration. In fact, they could create a foundation that would work together and coordinate with those NGOs, sharing the slices of the fundraised pie. What really mattered was getting Mrs. Wallenstein a job with good visibility.
Agatha was about to leave when Mrs. Wallenstein ambushed both of them. “Catherine, my dear. Would you play the piano for us? It’s been so long since I’ve heard you play.”
Cat had prepared for that. She stared into her mother’s eyes and frowned, forcing herself to cry by evoking sad memories. These were plentiful.
“I’m sorry, mom. I can’t. After the accident, I forgot how to play. I tried, I sat next to it. While I remember the lessons, the skills are gone. As are other things. I can’t dance either. I think my motor skills suffered the most from the neurological and muscle damage of the accident. I didn’t bring it up with Dr. Coleman because I was too ashamed to do so.”
Agatha cooed with pity. That disarmed whatever Mrs. Wallenstein had intended to do with this request. Cat had a suspicion she really wanted to declare her daughter insane, incapable, and regain control of the family money. Or at least put her hands on Catherine’s personal trust, as the family dynasty trust was out of her reach. It was a concern she hadn’t planned to share with Catherine because she didn’t want to ruin whatever relationship the three of them had built so far.
Of course, all that paranoia would do her no good but she couldn’t help but worry. Mrs. Wallenstein’s change of heart could be a ploy to get her to lower her guard. The literal devil could be enticing the media to keep her on her heels. She could feel her anxiety spike up. Eighteen years old and on antidepressants. And there was a lot of room downhill.
“Please remember me to talk about that at our upcoming appointment at the hospital,” Cat added before someone could speak. That should delay that problem until next week.
Agatha left with a promise to have the documents and forms to create the foundation ready to sign by next Wednesday and to send a public speaking coach tomorrow to start working with the two Wallenstein women to polish up their skills on the subject. Cat remarked to her soul-tenant that at this point they were pretty much having a home education with that many tutors and coaches coming and going.
----------------------------------------
After dinner, she went to her room and remembered she had a stack of packages to open. She took a retractable box opener and started to unpack. A naughty Santa’s helper seemed excited as the spectral girl kept squealing with each new eighteen-plus toy that came out of the drab cardboard boxes. Finally, the cat-tail accessory came up and she couldn’t contain her excitement.
“No. It’s not going to happen, at least not today. Listen, crazy girl. These things aren’t to be worn without proper training. Which we have not. I’m not literally busting my ass to satisfy your newfound fetishes. Look, I know a few stories the guys back at the bank used to tell, of things gone really wrong with these things. This is what we’ll do. Let’s get some information online. There must be something on Reddit or other sites about how to use those for the first time.”
She went to the desk and fired the web browser. The first thing that caught her attention was a priority email notification. It was a message from Phillip, with an encrypted file to which Agatha gave her the key in person during her earlier visit. With the certainty of being monitored by the government, not even the client-lawyer privacy was sacred. She downloaded the big file and took the computer offline to decrypt it. One could never be too sure.
“It’s probably the report on the Wallenstein trust. Its health, assets, and the procedure to take control as the trustee,” She thought of something funny and chuckled.
“No. I was thinking of the irony of it. I was a rather successful investment banker and you were a trust fund baby. With our powers combined...”
Catherine dismissed his excitement,
Cat sighed. The cartoon joke was lost on the “zoomer” girl. She looked at the decrypted file and unpacked the contents on the safe directory of her Linux computer. A routine would be purged and overwritten with random gibberish several times over when she turned the machine off. Everything seemed pretty normal.
The dynasty fund held 100% of the shares in an investment firm, who in turn owned all the family assets. Money, investments, offshore subsidiaries on tax havens, the mansion, and a few other properties around America. Most fungible assets were tied up with a private equity fund that did leveraged investments in SPACs, mergers, and acquisitions of promising startups. Thirty percent was in several funds with excellent long-term gains. It was meant to appreciate over generations, not yield some gains yesterday.
“That’s amazing,” Cat remarked, looking at the total estimated value of all assets. Over two hundred million. “The total net worth is more than I expected.”
The trust was obligated to distribute all profits to its beneficiaries, the two Wallenstein women. However, the trust only profited when the company paid dividends, and it only did so when the trustee, who controlled the company told so. Said company was currently reinvesting most of its profits, snowballing the compound interest gains. At the moment, it only paid three hundred thousand to each one of them.
That’s why getting over as the trustee was so important to her. She would start earning 2% of the trust fund earnings as the trustee fee, which was currently going to the bank. Then she could adjust the annual distributions to almost nothing, bringing Mrs. Wallenstein’s income lower than the limits for filing for chapter 7. The creditors weren’t stupid though. They knew this can happen and would see it coming miles away. Some of them would surely go to court to stop this maneuver. They would at most delay it because it wasn’t illegal even though it wasn’t nice.
However, there was one key element. The Wallenstein investing company held a dominant position in the private equity fund, who in turn controlled about two billion dollars when you considered all the individual contributions of its partners. That gave the trustee of the dynasty fund a lot of political power as she could, if not steer at least nudge where those two billion would go. If the creditors gave her too much trouble, she could make it hard for them to get any business from her partners. It would still muddle the waters but the effects weren’t that bad.
The creditors knew Mrs. Wallenstein was overdrawing on her loans and still gladly granted them, expecting that the family trust would come and rescue her. They were in a precarious position and exposed to the risk of her defaulting on the loans and declaring bankruptcy.
If Cat died or was declared incapable, then the bank could rescue her, getting the family money and generously giving a chunk of it to itself and their credit partners. It was for this very reason she was suspicious Mrs. Wallenstein had a hidden agenda. And she didn’t have the heart to tell a word to Catherine. The ghost was so happy to finally have her mother back.
A demon was sent to collect her soul. The media, who wouldn’t give up stalking their house. This suspicious TV interview. The plea bargain. All that weighed so much on Cat’s mind that even the prospect of controlling hundreds of millions of dollars couldn’t cheer her up.
Distracted, she didn’t notice when the pet door opened and Mr. Mouser came inside. The cat hissed and attacked something he perceived as a threat lying on the bed. That’s when hell broke loose.