Chapter 6: Harlan Voss
Douglas called me Sunday morning.
"I found him," he said.
"Harlan Voss.
He's not on Meridian Street anymore — that office closed eight months ago.
But he's still practicing.
Works out of a shared space downtown.
Three complaints filed against him in the last four years.
None of them went anywhere."
"What kind of complaints?"
"Two from clients who said he structured transactions in ways they hadn't authorized.
One from a husband whose wife used Voss to move assets before a divorce filing."
I sat with that.
"So he does this regularly," I said.
"Regularly enough to have a method.
The transfers your wife made — I looked at the pattern you sent me.
They're textbook.
Small amounts, irregular intervals, different memo lines.
Someone coached her on exactly how to do it."
"Voss."
"Almost certainly.
The question is whether the lake house transfer was far enough along to constitute attempted fraud, or whether we can only go after the household account."
"How far along was it?"
"I made some calls this morning.
The deed hasn't been altered.
Your name is still on it.
But a transfer request was submitted to the county recorder's office eleven days ago.
It was flagged for a secondary signature requirement — standard on properties above a certain value.
That's what stopped it."
"She needed my signature."
"And she was going to get it somehow.
Either through Voss finding a workaround, or by getting you to sign something without knowing what it was."
I thought about the envelope on the recording.
The man standing in my hallway three weeks ago.
"She was going to put it in front of me as something else," I said.
"That's my read too."
"What do we do?"
"We file a complaint with the state bar against Voss.
We report the transfer attempt to the county recorder and have it flagged as unauthorized.
And we file for divorce on Monday with a full financial disclosure request attached."
"Will she fight it?"
"She might.
But she wrote down that account number for you.
That was either very foolish or she's already decided she's done fighting."
I looked out the kitchen window.
My daughter was still asleep.
The house was quiet.
"There's something else," Douglas said.
"The man in the first recording.
The one your wife handed the envelope to.
Do you have any idea who he is?"
"No."
"I'd like to identify him if we can.
If he's connected to Voss, it strengthens the case considerably."
"My daughter might know.
She was home when that recording was made."
"Ask her when you can.
Gently."
"I will."
I hung up.
I poured a second cup of coffee and left it on the counter.
Then I walked down the hall to my daughter's room and knocked softly.
"Come in," she said.
She was already awake.
Sitting up in bed with her camera in her lap.
She had been looking at the recordings again.
"Dad," she said.
"There's something I didn't tell you last night."
I sat down on the edge of her bed.
"The man in the first video," she said.
"I've seen him before."
"Where?"
"He came to the house twice.
When you were at work.
She always sent me to my room, but the second time I heard them talking in the kitchen." She looked down at the camera.
"He called her by a different name."
I went still.
"What name?"
May you like
She looked up at me.
"He called her Diane."
