Chapter 6: What Daniel Signed
I showed Daniel the message.
He read it twice.
His expression didn't change, but his hand tightened around the phone.
"March," I said.
"What happened in March?"
He set the phone on the table.
"My mother asked me to sign some paperwork for her.
She said it was related to her own property.
A transfer of some kind.
Her solicitor sent it over."
"And you signed it."
"She's my mother." He stopped.
"I didn't read it carefully.
It was twenty pages.
She said it was routine."
I kept my voice even.
"Did you keep a copy?"
"She said she'd send me one.
She never did."
Chloe looked up from her drawing.
She looked at her father, then at me, then back at her paper.
I called Diane back immediately.
"He signed something in March," I said.
"His mother told him it was routine property paperwork for her own estate.
He doesn't have a copy."
Diane's pause was short.
"Does he remember the solicitor's name?"
Daniel shook his head.
"It came through her email.
I signed electronically."
"Electronic signature service?"
"I don't know.
She forwarded the link."
"Okay." Diane's voice stayed steady.
"I need you to search his email for anything from March with an attachment or a signing link.
Subject lines, sender addresses, anything.
Forward everything you find to me."
Daniel was already at his laptop.
"Diane," I said.
"Could she have used that signature to add herself to our deed?"
"Depends entirely on what the document was.
But yes — a forged or misdescribed document signed electronically can be used to attempt a title transfer.
It's fraud, which means it's also reversible.
But only if we move before she files anything."
Daniel found the email in eleven minutes.
He forwarded it to Diane without opening the attachment.
"Smart," she said when it came through.
"Don't open it on your end.
I'll have my colleague review it this afternoon before our meeting."
We drove to Diane's office at two o'clock.
Chloe sat in the back seat with her tablet in her lap.
She hadn't let go of it since the night before.
Diane was in her fifties, with short grey hair and reading glasses pushed up on her forehead.
She shook my hand, then Daniel's, then crouched down to Chloe's level.
"You're the one who found the photos," she said.
Chloe nodded.
"That was very brave." Diane stood.
"And very smart."
We sat across from her desk.
She had already printed the email Daniel forwarded.
She set it in front of us.
It was not a property transfer for Linda's estate.
It was a deed amendment for our property.
Daniel's signature had been used to add a third party to the title.
The name added was not Linda's.
It was Margaret Holt.
Daniel's chair scraped back from the desk.
He stood up without meaning to.
"She used me to give a stranger partial ownership of my house," he said.
"Attempted," Diane said.
"This hasn't been filed yet.
The county records office has a processing backlog.
It's sitting in queue." She looked at him steadily.
"If we file a fraud injunction today, we block it before it becomes official."
"Then let's file it today."
"There's one more thing." Diane turned the page.
"The document names a co-signatory who confirmed the identity of the signer.
Someone who vouched that Daniel signed this willingly and with full knowledge of the contents."
She turned the page toward us.
The co-signatory was Linda.
May you like
She had not just planned it.
She had signed her name to the fraud.
