Chapter 4 - THE FILE
The next morning, I met Nora at her office. Ethan came with me, carrying a folder of papers from the house.
Nora laid a copy of the transfer on the table. My name sat at the bottom in neat blue strokes.
“It’s a good imitation,” she said.
“It isn’t mine.”
“I know. The title company has paused the closing. I need to establish where this came from.”
Ethan leaned forward. “I gave Vanessa access to my home office. My mother’s name was on some of the documents there.”
“What kind?” Nora asked.
“Survey maps. The garden agreement. Insurance.”
I remembered leaving one signed letter with Ethan months earlier, giving his landscaper permission to cross my parcel during construction.
“Could they have copied that signature?” I asked.
Nora nodded. “Possibly.”
She turned to another page. Willow Gate Holdings had been formed six weeks earlier. Its registered agent was an attorney named Calvin Pierce.
“I know him,” Ethan said. “He’s George’s lawyer.”
Nora’s expression tightened. “That makes this easier to trace.”
My phone rang. It was the young waiter from the party. He had written his number on the back of the napkin he’d offered me.
“Mrs. Carter? This is Luis. I’m sorry to bother you.”
“You aren’t bothering me.”
“I heard you were looking into the property papers. I saw Mr. Mitchell leave the party with a black file case. He gave it to someone in a gray SUV.”
“Did you see the driver?”
“No. But I got the license plate.”
He read it to me. Nora wrote it down.
“Why are you calling?” I asked. “You must know it could cost you your job.”
“My supervisor told me I was off the schedule,” Luis said. “They said the party didn’t need me anymore.”
“That isn’t right.”
“Maybe not. But when I saw you on the ground, I should’ve helped you. I don’t want to stay quiet again.”
I thanked him and promised to call back.
Ethan stood up. “I can speak to the catering company.”
“Please do,” I said. “And don’t promise Luis a job until you know what he wants.”
Ethan gave me the small, rueful smile I remembered from his teenage years. “I know, Mom.”
Nora’s assistant appeared in the doorway. “The title company sent the submission history.”
We crowded around her monitor.
The forged transfer had been uploaded from an account associated with Calvin Pierce’s office. Attached was a scan of my driver’s license.
I frowned. “I didn’t give him that.”
“Could Vanessa have found a copy?” Nora asked.
“I left one at the house for the insurance renewal,” Ethan said. His jaw tightened. “In my desk.”
A second attachment opened: a notarized statement claiming I had appeared in person and signed the transfer the previous afternoon.
At 4:38 p.m.
At 4:38 p.m., I had been kneeling on Ethan’s lawn, soaked to the skin, with thirty witnesses around me.
Nora looked at the timestamp on my video. “They chose the worst possible hour to forge.”
Her assistant scrolled down the page. “There’s another document.”
The room fell quiet.
It was an agreement bearing Ethan’s signature. It authorized an option to sell the house, my adjoining parcel, and the garden development rights together.
May you like
Ethan stared at it.
“That one,” he said, “is real.”
