He understood the distinction between repairing a company and exploiting its employees, or believed he did.
At least that was how he explained himself when Naomi brought us together the following afternoon.
His investment counsel, Leon Farrow, had a different way of describing the transaction.
Leon said the trust had dissolved years earlier and that a successor company had acquired the building through a conventional transfer.
Samuel asked him to name the trustees who authorized that transfer.
Leon opened his folder and read a list of four signatures.
One belonged to a man who had died before the document’s recorded date.
Another belonged to Esther Bell, who was now in assisted living outside Milwaukee.
The third belonged to my mother.
I felt my throat tighten as Leon pronounced her name.
“Do you have the original authorization?” Naomi asked.
Leon showed her a scanned page containing four signatures and a corporate seal.
Samuel held the copy close to his face.
“Miriam had broken her right hand that winter,” he said.
“She signed with her left hand for months.”
Leon replied that the mark looked ordinary to him.
I remembered the plaster cast my mother had kept in a closet because someone had drawn a laughing rabbit on it.
She had told me she slipped on ice carrying laundry.
I could not prove the date from memory, but the detail made me search for evidence instead of dismissing my concern.
Robert sat very still while the attorneys discussed the signature.
“I was told the transfer was clean,” he repeated.
Naomi asked whether his firm had commissioned independent title research.
Robert looked at Leon.
Leon explained that outside counsel had obtained a title insurance policy and relied on representations from the seller.
Samuel leaned forward.
“Who was the seller?”
“Pike Hospitality Partners,” Leon answered.
The name matched the signature on my mother’s old letter.
I took out a copy and set it in front of him.
Leon stared at Edwin Pike’s name, then looked away.
Robert noticed.
“What aren’t you telling me?” he asked.
Leon answered with a lecture about confidentiality.
Robert stopped him.
“I asked you a question, not for a policy statement.”
The silence that followed was the first time I saw Robert appear less powerful than the people paid to advise him.
Samuel said the original trust agreement required approval from two separate employee committees before sale of any real property.
There had been no such vote while he was capable of attending meetings.
