Chapter 9 - MARSHA’S FILE
Marsha asked to meet in the parking lot of a busy grocery store. Nora came with me. We parked near the entrance, where cameras covered the rows of cars.
Marsha was younger than I expected. She clutched a canvas tote with both hands.
“I quit because Calvin asked me to notarize something I hadn’t witnessed,” she said. “He told me George would bring the signer back later.”
“Did he say my name?” I asked.
“Yes.”
She pulled out a folder. It held an early draft of the land transfer. The signature line was blank. A sticky note attached to it read: Use Helen Carter sample from garden letter.
Nora photographed the pages.
“Why did you keep this?” she asked.
“Because I thought I might need to explain why I left.”
Marsha had also kept an email from Calvin telling her to leave her digital notary account active through the end of the week. She hadn’t done it, but the forged submission bore her credentials anyway.
“How could they use them?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” she said. “That’s why I called.”
Nora gave her the investigator’s number and offered to connect her with independent counsel. Marsha nodded, visibly relieved.
Then she pulled out one last page.
“This is what really bothered me.”
It was a schedule of planned payments from Willow Gate Holdings. The first was due when my parcel transferred. The next was marked for thirty days after Ethan and Vanessa’s wedding.
Beside the second payment sat a handwritten note: E.C. personal guarantee.
Ethan had never mentioned a personal guarantee. Nora called him in front of us.
“No,” he said. “I didn’t sign one.”
“We’ll confirm that,” she replied.
After Marsha left, Nora and I stayed in the car.
“George needs your parcel to unlock the sale,” she said. “He may also be counting on Ethan to cover a debt.”
“Would marrying Vanessa make Ethan responsible?”
“Marriage by itself doesn’t work that way. But George could pressure him into signing a separate guarantee. We need the actual documents.”
I looked at the empty parking space where Marsha’s car had been.
“He’s surrounded my son with papers he doesn’t fully understand.”
“And now Ethan is reading them,” Nora said.
That evening Ethan came to my house with dinner neither of us wanted. He looked exhausted. I told him what Marsha had found.
“Vanessa said her father was in debt,” he said. “She might have meant it.”
“She probably did.”
“I keep trying to decide whether she ever cared about me.”
“You may never know exactly what she felt. You know what she did.”
He nodded, but the answer hurt him.
His phone buzzed. An email from George appeared, with three attachments. One was a proposed cancellation of the option agreement. The second was a statement for Ethan to sign, saying the dispute had arisen from a family misunderstanding.
The third was a personal guarantee for $2.4 million.
May you like
Ethan stared at it.
George had included a note: We can put this behind us tomorrow. Bring your mother.
