Читать книгу Indiscretion - M.G. Crisci - Страница 5

Life is full of ugly surprises.

I was stunned when I got the call early Saturday afternoon.

Our dynamic forty-five-year-old leader had died an hour earlier in a tragic race car accident at the Old Lyme Speedway in Northern Connecticut. A blue Maserati doing 190 miles per hour tried to pass Pete on the inside lane as they headed into the final turn. The driver lost control, bounced off the retaining wall, and crashed headlong into Pete’s Lamborghini, doing some 180 miles an hour at the time of the crash. Pete was dead on impact according to his racing buddy and business associate Dave Lineman, who watched the tragedy unfold a hundred feet in front of him.

“One minute we were smelling the finish line, and the next minute Pete’s skull was split open, bits and pieces splattered all over the car. I’ll never forget it as long as I live.”

~

Pete’s funeral was vintage Pete. I could tell his first-wife, Dorothy, and their kids, Pete Jr. and Julia, had choreographed the whole thing. Pete’s beloved yellow Lamborghini, covered in red, white, and blue carnations, sat front and center on the altar.

Pete Jr., sang his father’s favorite song, “Smile.” Julia reminisced about her “Pops.” Dorothy talked lovingly about their roller-coaster life and his unequivocal love for his children. Notable for her absence at the altar was Jolene. She sat in the second row in a form-fitting black and white sequin dress, looking like a cheap trick from the Vegas strip.

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There was also a parade of personal eulogies. Person after person, many who had flown in from all over the country, thanked Pete for changing their lives.

Unfortunately, Pete’s fast-track philosophy had also attracted its share of charlatans. I can still remember Pete’s phony friend Charles Bronson II monopolizing the podium for almost thirty minutes. He urged all to “follow the light,” as the Bible said, if we wanted to visit Pete in the “Promised Land.” Six weeks later, old Charles had his bulb dimmed. He was arrested for selling nonexistent payphone booths to senior citizens in a multimillion-dollar investment scam.

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In the two weeks following Pete’s death, there were surprise disappearances, nasty personal family disputes, and an avalanche of unconfirmed rumors.

Before the actual funeral, Jolene — on the advice of her father, Lou Marshman, and his attorney — declared Pete had died intestate, which technically, under Connecticut law, left sole control of AFA, independently appraised at $150 million, to Jolene.

She also visited Rhode Island Trust, where she and Pete had $1.9 million in joint accounts, and had the funds transferred into a father-daughter joint bank account at Boston Trust Company in Wellesley, where Marshman claimed official residence.

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Days after the funeral, the Marshmans, Maroneys, and their respective attorneys entered a no-holds-barred, highly personal court battle to settle AFA ownership.

Jolene, in what appeared to be a rare display of largess, agreed to give the two kids 33 percent of the sale proceeds. In reality, she wanted an expeditious ruling because unconfirmed rumors surfaced that Jolene paid her father’s attorney $500,000 to ‘insure’ Pete died intestate (with no will).

Daughter Julia, age 24, challenged the intestate characterization in court. She testified that she and her brother had signed trust documents which named them controlling owners (51%) of the business.

Since there was no supporting documentation, Marshman’s attorney went straight for the jugular. “Your honor, this is a case of a disgruntled family who was rejected by their father, attempting to build a financial claim based upon loose recollections, nonexistent documents, and casual conference room conversations with Mr. Craft, the godfather of Mr. Maroney’s money-mongering daughter. Judge, as difficult and tragic as this case may be, you must render a decision based purely on the facts as we know them. The lack of a will meant Mr. Maroney intended to leave the business and all related assets to his current wife, Jolene.”

The judge ruled in favor of Jolene but did cut the Maroney family some slack. He ordered both families to meet privately to discuss the sale of AFA and determine an appropriate split of the net proceeds.

He cautioned, “If the families cannot agree on a fair share within three months, the courts will appoint an independent arbitrator to resolve the dispute.”

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Between Pete’s death and the public legal proceedings, all the office employees were emotionally rattled and concerned about the loss of a regular paycheck. The most concerned were the senior business consultants — like Alexandria Plummet — who were making more than they had ever made in their life.