Chapter 5: What She Was After
Priya came back that evening with her laptop open and a look on her face that meant she'd found something.
She sat at my kitchen table, turned the screen toward me, and pointed.
Walter Finch.
Property records.
The house at number 14, assessed value, ownership history.
His name, clear as anything, going back nineteen years.
"He bought it alone," Priya said.
"Before the marriage.
It's separate property unless he took steps to change that."
"He told me he never transferred it."
"Right.
So legally, she has no claim to it.
Not yet." Priya pulled up a second tab.
"But look at this."
A business registration.
Filed four months ago — two months after the wedding.
**Hargrove-Finch Wellness LLC.** Registered address: 14 Crescent Circle.
"She registered a business out of his house," I said.
"Using his address.
Without — as far as I can tell — his name on the filing anywhere." Priya sat back.
"If she can establish that she's been operating a business from that property, it muddies the water on the separate property question.
It creates a paper trail that says she has an active professional interest there."
"The yoga practice."
"The yoga practice that requires a quiet street from eight to nine every morning, yes."
I looked at the registration date.
Four months ago.
Two months after the wedding.
"She planned this," I said.
"It looks that way."
"Walter doesn't know."
"I don't think so.
No." Priya closed the laptop halfway.
"The question is whether we tell him, and how."
Dana, who had been leaning against the counter, said, "We have to tell him."
"Agreed," I said.
"But carefully.
He's sixty-eight.
He married her last spring.
Whatever he thought this was —"
"He already knows something is wrong," Dana said.
"He told you that himself.
Too long, he said."
She was right.
He'd said exactly that.
I went over the next morning at nine-fifteen — after her practice window, deliberately.
Walter answered the door in a cardigan and reading glasses pushed up on his forehead.
He looked like he hadn't slept well.
"Come in," he said, before I'd said a word.
We sat in his kitchen.
It was the same kitchen it had always been — the same blue curtains, the same wooden table, the same ceramic rooster on the counter that had been there since his first wife, Carol, had put it there fifteen years ago.
Brooke hadn't touched any of it, which surprised me.
I put Priya's printouts on the table.
He looked at them for a long time without picking them up.
"The business registration," he said finally.
"I didn't sign anything for that."
"Your name isn't on it.
Just your address."
He took his glasses off his forehead and set them on the table.
"She told me the business was just a formality.
For insurance purposes.
She said she'd handle it."
"Did you see any paperwork?"
"She said there wasn't much.
That it was all online." He looked at the ceramic rooster.
"I'm not good with that.
She knows I'm not good with that."
I didn't say anything.
I let him sit with it.
"Carol used to handle everything," he said.
"After she passed, I just — I let things pile up.
When Brooke came along and said she'd take care of things, I was grateful." He picked up the printout.
Read it again.
Set it down.
"I was a fool."
"You trusted someone.
That's not the same thing."
"It is when you're sixty-eight and she's twenty-nine and you should have known better."
"Walter —"
"What does she want?" He said it quietly, but there was something hard underneath it.
"What is she actually after?"
I told him what Priya had explained.
The property.
The separate-property question.
The paper trail she was building.
He was quiet for a long time.
Then he said, "I need to make a phone call."
I stood to leave.
He stopped me.
"Stay," he said.
"Please.
I'd like a witness."
He picked up his phone and dialed.
It rang twice.
"Richard," he said.
"It's Walter.
I need to come in this week.
It's about the house." A pause.
"And about Brooke."
He listened.
His face didn't change.
"Yes," he said.
"All of it."
He hung up.
Looked at me across the table.
"My attorney," he said.
"Richard's known me for thirty years.
He'll know what to do."
From somewhere deeper in the house, a door opened.
Footsteps on the hardwood.
Brooke appeared in the kitchen doorway.
She looked at me.
Then at the papers on the table.
Then at Walter.
May you like
Her face went very still.
"What is this?" she said.
