Chapter 9: The Day Douglas Stopped Smiling
Marsh filed the new evidence the following morning.
By afternoon, the case had changed shape.
The photograph of the bruise, combined with Eleanor's journal entry and the date, gave Marsh enough to request that the court expand the scope of the dispute.
It was no longer just a deed challenge.
There was now a record of potential elder @buse.
The county's Adult Protective Services was notified.
A separate investigation opened.
Douglas's attorney, Vane, filed three motions in two days.
Marsh answered each one.
I stayed out of it as much as I could.
I had a prenatal appointment.
I had a mortgage servicer to call now that Marsh had arranged the funds from Eleanor's account.
I had a nursery to finish.
But Marsh kept me informed.
"Vane is stalling," he told me on the phone, a week after the box.
"He knows the evidence is bad for Douglas.
He's trying to push the hearing date far enough out that—" He stopped.
"That the baby comes and I'm too exhausted to fight," I said.
"That was my read as well."
"Can we push for an earlier date?"
"I already have.
Judge Harlan is not unsympathetic." A pause.
"There's something else.
One of the men who did the exterior assessment — the contractor Douglas hired — he called my office this morning.
He wants to talk."
His name was Pete Garland.
He came into Marsh's office two days later looking like a man who hadn't slept well.
He sat down across from me and Marsh and turned his cap in his hands.
"I didn't know what I was walking into," he said.
"Higgins hired me to do an assessment.
Standard stuff.
But when we were there, he called me.
Asked me to note anything that looked like neglect.
Deferred maintenance.
Anything that could suggest the owner hadn't been capable of managing the property."
"He wanted you to build a narrative," Marsh said.
"He wanted me to find problems whether they were there or not." Pete set his cap on the table.
"There weren't any.
That house is in excellent condition.
I told him that.
He told me to look harder." He looked at me.
"I've got a family.
I'm not going to lie in a court document for someone like that."
"Will you put that in writing?" Marsh asked.
"Already typed it up," Pete said.
He slid a folder across the desk.
"I want my name off this as fast as possible."
After Pete left, Marsh sat back in his chair.
"That's three witnesses," he said.
"Ruth Patton.
Pete Garland.
And Eleanor herself, through the journal."
"Is it enough?"
"It's more than enough to win the deed dispute." He looked at me carefully.
"The question now is whether the APS investigation produces anything that results in separate action against Douglas."
"Do you think it will?"
"I think Douglas Higgins grabbed his eighty-two-year-old mother hard enough to leave a bruise, and she was careful enough to photograph it." Marsh's voice was flat.
"I think that matters regardless of what happens with the house."
The hearing was scheduled for a Thursday, three weeks out.
I was thirty-seven weeks pregnant.
I spent those three weeks finishing the nursery, walking the neighborhood in the evenings, and sometimes sitting on my front steps looking at Eleanor's house.
The African violets were still on her windowsill.
I'd been watering them through the window she'd left cracked.
On the Wednesday night before the hearing, Douglas called me directly.
I almost didn't answer.
Then I thought about Eleanor's journal.
Every call recorded.
Every word written down.
I answered.
I put it on speaker.
I hit record.
"Ms.
Collier." His voice was smooth.
"I think we should talk before tomorrow."
"I'm listening," I said.
"This has gone further than it needed to." A pause.
"I'm prepared to offer you a settlement.
Seventy-five thousand dollars.
Cash.
You walk away from the property claim, and we both move on."
Seventy-five thousand dollars.
I looked around my kitchen.
At the foreclosure notice I'd finally taken off the counter and filed away.
"Your mother's house is worth four hundred thousand," I said.
"My mother's house has complications now.
Legal fees.
An APS investigation.
It's going to be tied up for a long time." His voice shifted, just slightly.
"You have a baby coming.
You need stability, not a fight."
"She left me the house because she wanted me to have it," I said.
"Not the money.
The house."
A silence.
"You're making a mistake," he said.
"I'm going to need you to not call this number again," I said.
"Anything further should go through Mr.
Marsh."
I ended the call.
I sent the recording to Marsh that night.
He called back in ten minutes.
"He offered you a settlement the night before the hearing.
May you like
With a recorded call." A pause that sounded almost like satisfaction.
"Douglas just made our morning considerably easier."
