The Fortune Under Question
Chapter 13 - The Fortune Under Question
Daniel ordered an audit.
His lawyers begged him not to.
The board threatened him.
One director resigned.
Another called him sentimental.
Daniel kept going.
The results arrived a week later.
Harold Hale had invested money with Daniel's adoptive father in 1918.
Some of that money came from legitimate banking profits.
Some came from foreclosed farms.
Some could not be traced.
The Mercer fortune was not entirely dirty.
But it was not entirely clean.
Daniel sat alone in the General Store after closing.
Clara found him there.
"I thought becoming rich meant I'd never be powerless again."
She poured him coffee.
"Did it work?"
"No."
"Money is useful. It isn't magic."
Daniel looked at her.
"What would you do?"
"With what?"
"The company."
Clara laughed softly.
"Daniel, I once burned biscuits so badly the sheriff thought the store was on fire."
"I'm serious."
"So am I. Don't ask me how to run a railroad."
He leaned back.
"Then tell me how to live with money that may have come from people like you."
Clara considered him.
"Return what you can."
"To whom?"
"The living, first."
"And the dead?"
"Honor them by not repeating what happened."
The next morning, Daniel announced a restitution fund for property owners whose titles had been compromised by Hale-era fraud.
He also proposed a new rail route along publicly owned land north of town.
It would cost more.
It would take longer.
It would save Main Street.
The board rejected it.
Daniel responded by putting his own shares up as collateral to finance the preliminary work.
The news reached Bellweather before he did.
For the first time, people who had cursed his name came to the General Store to shake Clara's hand.
She refused.
"Shake his."
But Daniel was not there.
He had received a telegram from Chicago.
May you like
The board had voted to remove him as president.
And without control of the company, he could no longer guarantee Bellweather would be spared.
