Chapter 2: What the Clerk's Face Said
We pulled into the courthouse parking lot just after two o'clock.
Grandma Eleanor didn't wait for me.
She was already pushing through the front door before I'd turned off the engine.
The clerk at the records desk looked up.
"Can I help you?"
"I need to see any property transfers filed on my address in the last sixty days," Grandma said.
She placed her ID on the counter with a steady hand.
The clerk typed.
Waited.
Then her expression shifted — just slightly.
"Ma'am…
there's a transfer filed here eleven days ago."
Grandma didn't flinch.
"Whose name is on it?"
The clerk turned the screen toward her.
I leaned in and read it.
Arthur Sterling.
My father.
"He transferred it to himself?" I said.
"As power of attorney," the clerk said quietly.
"It was notarized."
Grandma stood completely still for a long moment.
Then she opened her purse and placed a second document on the counter — one I hadn't seen before.
"Then can you tell me," she said, "why I signed this the same morning?"
It was a revocation.
Signed, witnessed, and dated three days before the transfer went through.
The clerk's face went pale.
My phone buzzed again.
This time it was a number I didn't recognize.
I answered.
"Ivan." A woman's voice.
Careful.
Nervous.
"My name is Patricia.
May you like
I'm your grandmother's neighbor.
I think you need to know what I saw at that house this morning."
