Chapter 8: The Day It Came Apart
Patricia called it a pressure campaign.
Over the following ten days, Mark's attorney sent four letters.
The first claimed the share transfer was valid and that I had given verbal consent.
The second accused me of removing company property — the signature samples I had taken from the contract files.
The third suggested I was suffering from emotional distress and recommended a psychological evaluation before any legal proceedings continued.
The fourth offered a revised settlement: forty-five percent.
Patricia responded to each one.
I didn't read the responses.
I trusted her.
What I did instead was sit at my father's kitchen table every morning with the original company records he had kept in a filing cabinet in his garage — every invoice, every contract, every bank statement from the first seven years of Crestview Developments, all of it in my handwriting or bearing my signature.
Patricia's paralegal scanned every page.
On the eighth day, Brenda came to Patricia's office.
I wasn't there for the first hour.
Patricia had asked to speak with her alone first.
When she called me in, Brenda was sitting very straight in the chair across from the desk, her hands folded in her lap, her face composed but tired.
"Brenda has agreed to provide a full written statement," Patricia said.
"I want you to hear the key points directly."
Brenda looked at me.
"Mark told me the share transfer had already been signed by you.
He showed me a document — I assumed it was the original.
He asked me to witness the signature page and notarize it.
I'm a notary.
I did it." She paused.
"I didn't know it was forged.
I want to be clear about that."
"When did you find out?" I asked.
"The night Andrew found the papers.
When I saw the signature up close, next to your name on an older contract in the same envelope — I could see they didn't match.
I didn't say anything to Mark.
But I knew."
"Why didn't you come to me then?"
She was quiet for a moment.
"Because I was afraid of what it meant for me.
I notarized it.
My stamp is on that document." She looked down at her hands.
"I know that doesn't excuse it."
"It doesn't," I said.
"But you're here now."
She nodded once.
Patricia slid a document across the desk.
"Brenda has also provided the name of the individual at Hartwell and Associates who prepared the transfer.
A junior associate named Colin Marsh."
I looked up.
"Marsh."
"Gerald Marsh's nephew," Patricia said.
"He prepared the document under instruction from Gerald's office.
Which means Gerald Marsh knew the signature was being fabricated.
That's a significant problem for Mark's legal team." She paused.
"It's also why Gerald filed a motion to withdraw from the case this morning."
The room was quiet.
"He withdrew?" I said.
"Filed at nine a.m.
Mark is currently without representation." Patricia's expression was measured, but something moved behind it.
"He has thirty days to find new counsel.
In the meantime, the freeze on the accounts holds."
I looked at Brenda.
"Thank you," I said.
"I mean that."
She nodded.
She didn't smile.
There was too much between us for smiling.
But she held my gaze, and that was enough.
Two days later, Mark called my father's house from a number I didn't recognize.
My father answered.
I stood in the kitchen doorway and listened to one side of the conversation.
"She's not available," my father said.
A pause.
"No, Marcus.
That's not something I'm going to pass along."
Another pause.
Longer.
"I know you're in a difficult position," my father said.
His voice was very even.
"You put yourself there." He paused once more.
"Don't call here again."
He hung up.
He stood with his hand on the receiver for a moment.
Then he turned and looked at me.
"He wanted to apologize," he said.
"I know."
"He said he made a mistake."
"He made three years of mistakes," I said.
"One phone call doesn't cover that."
My father nodded slowly.
He went back to the stove where he was making soup, and he didn't say anything else about it.
That was one of the things I had always loved about him.
He knew when words were finished.
The following morning, Patricia called.
"Mark has retained new counsel," she said.
"A firm out of Cincinnati.
They've requested a sixty-day extension."
"Will they get it?"
"Probably thirty.
But here's what matters — they also contacted us with a message from Mark directly.
He wants to meet.
In person.
No attorneys."
"No," I said immediately.
"That was my recommendation as well.
But I want you to know he's asking." A pause.
"Laura, I think he's beginning to understand what he's actually facing."
"Good," I said.
"There's something else.
The forensic accountant finished her preliminary review of the Crestview accounts last night.
The four hundred and twelve thousand is only part of it."
I sat down.
May you like
"How much?" I said.
"Over the full three-year period," Patricia said, "the total figure is closer to nine hundred thousand dollars."
