Chapter 7 - THE OFFICE AT SIX
I called Nora from the car. She told me to meet her outside George’s office and not to go in by myself.
I listened. Barely.
George’s office occupied the top floor of a renovated brick building downtown. By the time I arrived, Ethan’s car was already in the garage. Nora pulled in two minutes later.
“You stay with me,” she said.
The receptionist told us George was unavailable. Nora handed her a business card and asked her to let Ethan know his attorney and mother were downstairs.
“I’m not Ethan’s attorney,” she said when we stepped aside. “I wanted her to get the message upstairs without delaying us.”
“You could have warned me.”
“You would have argued.”
She was right.
Ethan came down a few minutes later, unharmed and furious.
“I was going to call you,” he told me.
“You sent a text.”
“I didn’t. George asked to see my phone when I showed him the agreement. I gave it back to him a minute later.”
I held up the message. Ethan swore under his breath.
“What did he want?”
“He offered to cancel the option on my house if I publicly said Mom approved the land transfer.”
Nora’s eyes narrowed. “Did he put that in writing?”
“No. I told him to email it.”
“Good.”
As we walked toward the garage, Vanessa stepped out of the elevator.
“Ethan,” she said. “Please don’t leave like this.”
He stopped. “Your father used my phone.”
She looked genuinely startled. “What?”
“You knew they had a plan for my mother’s land.”
Vanessa glanced at me. “I knew Dad was working on a deal. He said your mother had already agreed.”
“She hadn’t.”
“I understand that now.”
“You told her to stay out of the closing for my sake,” Ethan said.
Vanessa’s face went pale. “I was trying to warn her.”
“About what?”
She looked up at the security camera above the garage entrance.
“Not here.”
Ethan gave a humorless laugh. “Every time I ask you a straight question, you need a different room.”
Vanessa stepped closer. “My father owes people money. A lot of it. He told me that if the property deal failed, they’d come after us.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know. He never tells me names.”
Nora watched her closely. “What do you know about the forged signatures?”
“I didn’t sign those papers.”
“That isn’t what I asked.”
Vanessa’s silence answered more than her words could have.
She pulled a key from her purse and pressed it into Ethan’s hand. “Dad keeps a second phone in the desk at our house. Check the messages.”
“Why are you telling me now?” he asked.
“Because he used your phone, and I finally understand how easy it is for him to make someone else take the blame.”
A car door slammed at the far end of the garage. George stood beside his SUV, staring at us.
Vanessa immediately stepped away from Ethan.
George called out, “Sweetheart. Come here.”
She didn’t move.
May you like
Then his phone rang. He answered, listened, and looked straight at me.
“We have a problem,” he said to whoever was on the line. “She knows about the second phone.”
