Chapter 4: The Storage Unit
I did not stay home this time.
Terrence tried to tell me I should.
I was already in my coat.
We drove across town in twenty-two minutes.
The building manager, a heavyset man named Curtis who had known Terrence since the apartment days, met us at the side entrance.
He looked uncomfortable in the way people look when they have done something they are not sure was right.
"I probably should have called sooner," he said.
"She's been paying month to month.
Cash.
I didn't think much of it until tonight when she showed up with a van and started moving things out fast."
"Are they still here?" Terrence asked.
"The van left about fifteen minutes before you got here.
But she left something behind." He held up a key.
"Unit 14.
She dropped this at the front desk and said she was done with it.
Didn't ask for a refund on this month's payment."
Terrence took the key.
Unit 14 was at the end of a ground-floor corridor, the kind of storage unit with a rolling metal door and a single overhead light.
Terrence unlocked it and pulled the door up.
It was not empty.
Against the back wall, a filing cabinet sat with its top drawer open.
Beside it, two cardboard boxes.
One had been gone through quickly — papers spilling over the edge, a folder lying open on the floor.
The other was sealed with tape and had not been touched.
"She left in a hurry," I said.
Terrence crouched beside the open box and picked up the folder from the floor.
He read the first page.
Then the second.
Then he sat down on the concrete floor of that storage unit like his legs had simply decided they were finished.
"Terrence."
He held the folder out to me without looking up.
It was a loan agreement.
Private.
Not from a bank.
The lender's name at the top was a man I did not recognize — Raymond Okafor.
The borrower was listed as Lennox Whitfield-Cole.
Her maiden name.
Not her married name.
The loan amount was $40,000.
The date was eleven months ago.
The collateral listed was the equity in a jointly owned residential property.
Their house.
"She borrowed against the house," I said.
"Without telling you."
"Without my signature." He finally looked up.
"That's my signature on the collateral line.
Mom, that is not my signature."
I looked at it again.
It was close.
Someone had practiced it.
But the loop on the T in Terrence was slightly wrong, and the last name trailed in a way my son's handwriting never did.
I had been reading his handwriting since he was six years old.
"She forged it," I said.
"Raymond Okafor." He said the name slowly.
"I've heard that name.
Lennox mentioned him once.
Said he was a friend of Maribel's.
An investor."
"An investor who loaned your wife $40,000 against your house using your forged signature."
"And the house is sold now." He stood up.
"So where did that $40,000 go?
It's not in the bank records we looked at."
I thought about the private account.
The consulting payments from Maribel House LLC.
"It might have gone in before the account was opened," I said.
"Or it went somewhere we haven't found yet."
He picked up the sealed box.
"I'm taking this."
Curtis, still standing in the corridor, said nothing.
He looked at the floor.
Terrence carried the box to the car.
I took the folder.
On the way out, I stopped.
"Curtis," I said.
"Did Lennox ever come here with anyone other than Maribel?"
He thought about it.
"Once.
About six months ago.
A man.
Drove a black SUV.
I didn't get a name."
"Would you recognize him if you saw a photograph?"
"Probably."
I thanked him and walked to the car.
Terrence had the sealed box in his lap.
He had not opened it yet.
He was staring through the windshield at the parking lot lights.
"I need to call a lawyer," he said.
"Yes."
"Tonight."
"I know someone," I said.
"Her name is Patricia Osei.
She handled your father's estate.
She's not a divorce attorney but she will know who to call and she will not waste our time."
He nodded.
I pulled out my phone.
It was nearly nine o'clock.
Patricia had given me her personal number eight years ago and told me to use it if I ever needed to.
I had never used it.
I used it now.
She answered on the third ring.
I told her we had a forged signature on a loan document, a private account receiving payments from an LLC, $300,000 transferred to a business with no ownership record, and a storage unit that had been partially cleared within the last hour.
There was a pause on the line.
May you like
"Don't open that sealed box without me present," Patricia said.
"I'll be at your house in forty-five minutes."
