“What?”
“You’re going to do something. I know that face. So what do you need? Coffee? A bigger table? Me to shut up and go to bed?”
I laughed. Then I started crying.
“I need eighteen months,” I said. “And I need you not to let me quit.”
He reached across and took my hand.
“Deal,” he said.
Here’s what I found.
It took me a year and a half of nights and weekends. Public records. Court filings. The foundation’s tax returns, which charities have to make public. Property records. Corporate registrations. I got Grandpa to sign a form giving me access to his own old bank records. His new lawyer, a sharp gray-haired woman named Helen Park who did elder law in Hartford, helped me subpoena the rest.
When Mom and Dad became Grandpa’s conservators, there was about fourteen million dollars in his accounts.
Within three years, nine million of it had been “donated” to the Stone Family Foundation. On paper, Grandpa was the generous donor. In reality, he’d never signed a thing.
