Chapter 7: Richard Makes His Move
Patricia had the filed document on her desk when we arrived.
She looked at the signature.
She looked at me.
She looked at Carol.
"Sit down," she said.
"Both of you."
We sat.
Patricia set the document in the center of the desk and folded her hands over it.
"The signature is fraudulent," she said.
"That is my professional opinion and it will be the opinion of any qualified examiner who looks at it.
The transfer is void." She turned to Carol.
"And you have a second document showing an intended sale to a third party."
"Yes."
"Do you have access to the original folder?"
"I photographed it."
"I'll need those photographs today.
Every page." Patricia looked at me.
"Emma, I have to be direct with you.
This is no longer a property dispute.
We are looking at deed fraud, forgery, and attempted sale of an asset that was never legally transferred.
This goes to the police."
"I know."
"Your husband's name is on that signature line.
He will be implicated."
"I know that too."
Patricia held my gaze for a moment.
"All right.
I'll make the call this afternoon.
In the meantime, I'm filing an emergency injunction to freeze any transaction on that property.
The February sale will not complete."
My phone buzzed on the chair beside me.
I glanced at the screen.
Daniel again.
Then, thirty seconds later, a different number.
Richard's number.
I turned the phone face-down.
"He's calling," I said.
"Let him call," Patricia said.
Richard called twice more in the next twenty minutes while Patricia worked.
On the third attempt he left a voicemail.
Patricia looked at me.
"May I?"
I put it on speaker.
Richard's voice filled the small office.
He sounded calm.
That was the most frightening version of him.
*Emma.
I think we've let this get out of hand.
I'd like to sit down — just the two of us, no lawyers — and work this out like family.
The house situation is a misunderstanding.
Daniel acted out of love.
I'm sure you can see that.
Call me back and we'll resolve this today.
Before anything becomes official.* A pause.
*You should think carefully about what official means for Daniel.
He has a daughter to think about.
So do you.*
The voicemail ended.
Carol hadn't moved.
Patricia reached over and pressed stop on the recording she'd been running on her desk phone.
"I'll be adding that to the file," she said.
I looked at her.
"You recorded it."
"The moment you put it on speaker in my office, it became evidence." She allowed herself the smallest possible expression.
"He just threatened a mother using her child.
That will not play well."
At four o'clock, two officers arrived at Patricia's office to take our statements.
Carol went first.
She was in the room for forty minutes.
When she came out her eyes were red but her back was straight.
I went in next.
I told them everything.
The Christmas dinner.
The chair.
The table.
The deed.
Daniel's admission.
Carol's documents.
The voicemail.
When I came out, Patricia was waiting with two cups of tea.
"The injunction is filed," she said.
"The property is frozen.
Richard cannot complete that sale."
"What happens now?"
"They'll want to speak with Daniel.
And with Richard." She handed me a cup.
"Richard will almost certainly call his own solicitor tonight and begin constructing a version of events in which Daniel acted alone."
"Will that work?"
"The voicemail makes it considerably harder." She sat down.
"Emma.
You did the right thing.
All of it.
From the moment you walked into this office this morning."
I drank the tea.
It was too hot but I drank it anyway.
"I need to get home to Lily," I said.
"Of course."
Carol was sitting in the waiting area.
She had her coat on and her bag in her lap and she looked like someone who had just set down something very heavy and wasn't sure yet how to stand without it.
"Do you have somewhere to go tonight?" I asked.
"Somewhere he doesn't know?"
"My sister's.
He thinks I'm already there."
"Go tonight.
Don't go back to the house."
She nodded.
Then she said, quietly: "I'm sorry I waited so long."
"You came," I said.
"That's what mattered."
I drove home in the early dark.
Lily was with my neighbor, Janet, who had collected her from school without needing to be asked.
That was Janet.
Thirty years on the same street and she always seemed to know.
I sat in the car outside the house for a moment.
The lights were off.
Daniel's car was not in the driveway.
My mother's house.
Her roses along the front wall, bare now in December.
The door she had painted blue the summer before she got sick because she said the old color made her tired.
I got out of the car and went to get my daughter.
My phone rang as I reached Janet's gate.
A number I didn't know.
I answered.
"Ms.
Calloway?" A man's voice.
Official.
"This is Detective Sergeant Marsh.
We've just attempted to speak with your husband at his brother's address.
He wasn't there.
Do you know his current whereabouts?"
I stopped at the gate.
May you like
"No," I said.
"I don't."
