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to be carted away, the media people hopped up from their seats and began moving toward the man, throwing questions at him.
    â€œHow do you know this?”
    â€œWhy have you come here?”
    â€œWhat was the imposter’s real identity?”
    The nature of their questions sent a chill down Kelsey’s spine. Were they really going to give this man’s words credence? The very notion that the woman who called herself Adele Brennan had been an imposter was absurd!
    The room quickly dissolved into pandemonium after that, with the guards grabbing the man’s arms and trying to drag him out, the reporters continuing to shout questions, a woman Kelsey didn’t know—a tall redhead with short cropped hair—begging the man to “Stop it! Stop it!” and the man himself still shouting even as he slumped down in the guards’ grip. A heavy-set man, he used his dead weight to his advantage.
    â€œI came here to tell the world,” he yelled as loudly as he could, “that I haveproof that the woman who called herself Adele Brennan was actually Jocelyn Brennan, Adele’s first cousin! Jocelyn assumed Adele’s identity after Titanic sank and came here to America pretending to be Adele so she could steal her inheritance!”
    Fortunately, that was all he was able to get out before the guards finally managed to pull him through the door. The reporters followed, the redhead was now screaming at the guards instead of the man, saying, “Don’t hurt him! Don’t hurt him!” and the people in the audience chattered loudly about what had just happened. From the corner of her eye, Kelsey saw Lou jump up from his seat and join the fray, no doubt to help with damage control.
    Someone needed to speak up quickly in Adele’s defense. Kelsey thought about doing it herself, but she knew such words coming from the woman’s great-granddaughter would be seen as biased and wouldn’t carry much weight.
    Mortified and desperate, Kelsey looked down to see that today’s honored guests seemed decidedly uncomfortable. In the front row sat Pamela Greeley, the well-respected head of Queen’s Fleet Management Group and one of the older people present here today. Pamela’s career in the world of finance had overlapped with Adele’s, maybe even as far back as the late sixties. Though they never actually worked together in the same place, they had numerous business dealings over the years, and Pamela had looked up to the legendary Adele Brennan Tate as her own personal hero and the kind of businesswoman she aspired to be. Kelsey knew this because Pamela had been one of the speakers at Adele’s funeral and had said as much to the congregation gathered there. Kelsey had only been nine years old at the time, but she clearly remembered Pamela’s heartfelt words because they had echoed her own thoughts. Grandma Adele had been Kelsey’s personal hero too, the kind of woman she wanted to grow up to be.
    Looking to Pamela now, Kelsey implored her with her eyes, wishing she would come up and publically refute the claims of the man who had just disrupted the entire ceremony. Anyone who had known Adele knew that she was a woman of honesty and integrity. To call her an imposter was like saying Mother Teresa was selfish or Babe Ruth wasn’t much of a hitter. Adele had been the very embodiment of ethics, and everyone who knew her knew that. Pamela didn’t take the cue, however, so Kelsey gave up, knowing it would be rude and presumptuous to call the woman out by name and specifically ask her to come up and defend Adele’s honor.
    If only Gloria were here! She, too, had known Adele, had known the kind of person she’d been. Why wasn’t she around to help?
    Walter had only been with the firm for about five years, so Kelsey wasn’t sure if he’d ever known Adele personally or not. Regardless, he was missing at the moment too, having stayed with the