Chapter 8: The Name on the Paper
Eleanor's colleague arrived at two o'clock.
Her name was Patricia Voss.
She was in her mid-fifties, wore reading glasses on a chain around her neck, and carried a document scanner in a slim black case the way a doctor carries a bag.
She shook my hand at the door, looked once at Shirley standing in the hallway behind me, and said, "Is there somewhere private we can work?"
We used the study.
Patricia worked methodically, without hurry.
She scanned every page in the NVL folder, then the Harrow Gate folder, then the filing cabinet's remaining contents one section at a time.
She asked me questions as she worked — short, precise questions — and wrote my answers in a small notebook.
"This signature on the Harrow Gate incorporation," she said, holding a page up to the light.
"You said you don't remember signing it."
"I've never heard of Harrow Gate Properties until this morning," I said.
She looked at the signature again.
"Do you have anything else with your signature from around the same period?
The incorporation is dated twenty-six months ago."
I found our joint tax return from that year in the back of the cabinet.
She placed the two documents side by side on the desk and studied them without speaking for almost a minute.
"The signatures are similar," she said.
"But there are differences." She pointed with her pen.
"The way you close the loop on the S in Stella.
The angle of the N in Norris.
On the tax return, the loop closes left.
On the incorporation, it closes right." She looked at me over her glasses.
"I'm not a handwriting expert.
But I'd recommend getting one."
"Are you saying he forged it?"
"I'm saying the signatures are not identical in ways that a professional could speak to." She set both pages in the scanner.
"What I can tell you is that Harrow Gate Properties was registered with you as a fifty percent owner, used to receive two transfers from your joint accounts totaling thirty-one thousand dollars, and then transferred those funds to a third account registered in the Cayman Islands." She looked at me steadily.
"That third account is not in your name."
I sat back in the chair.
"He used my name to move money out of the country," I said.
"That appears to be what happened, yes."
"Patricia." I kept my voice level.
"Is this criminal?"
She placed her glasses carefully on her nose and looked at me over the rims.
"Wire fraud," she said.
"Potentially identity fraud if the signature was forged.
Fraudulent transfer of marital assets.
Possibly more, depending on what the Cayman account was used for." She closed her notebook.
"Eleanor will want to loop in a criminal attorney.
This has moved beyond divorce."
I nodded.
"There's one more thing," I said.
I opened the bottom drawer of the filing cabinet.
Inside, at the back, was a padded envelope I had found that morning but hadn't opened.
I had waited for Patricia.
"I don't know what's in this."
Patricia pulled on a pair of thin latex gloves from her case and opened the envelope carefully.
Inside were photographs.
Eight of them.
Printed on regular paper, slightly blurry, the kind taken from a distance with a phone camera.
They showed Everett.
And a woman I didn't recognize.
And a child.
A little girl, maybe four or five years old, with Everett's exact jaw and Everett's exact eyes, holding his hand outside what looked like a school.
Patricia set the photographs on the desk between us.
Neither of us spoke for a moment.
"How old would you say she is?" I asked.
"Four," Patricia said quietly.
"Perhaps five."
I looked at the photographs for a long time.
Then I picked up my phone and sent Diane a single message: *Did you know about the child?*
Three minutes passed.
Then: *What child?*
So Diane hadn't known either.
There was a knock at the study door.
Gerald's voice, low and urgent.
"Stella.
May you like
There's a man at the front door.
He says his name is Royce."
