It was a simply worded document, but its stipulations were shocking: she was awarded the house and all of its contents, but she was restricted from selling El Cielo and the surrounding property for twenty years; the fourteen paintings by Pablo Vasques, appraised at over a million dollars, were also left to her, but were not to be sold during her lifetime; the three people who made up the live-in domestic staff would continued to reside at El Cielo, maintaining its upkeep while earning their full annual wages for the twenty years; cash, stocks, and bonds worth more than one million, eight hundred-fifty thousand dollars would be used to set up a medical foundation in the names of Oscar and Arlene Spencer at the São Tomé Instituto de Médico Pesquisa in Bahia, Brazil. The funds would be disbursed over a ten-year period with Regina Cole-Spencer as the foundation’s sole administrator. It had taken Ernesto less than three minutes to confirm that Oscar was still controlling; he had become the master puppeteer, pulling the strings and manipulating lives from his grave.
