Chapter 9 - The Notary's Name
Mara put the deed on the kitchen table between our cold cups of coffee. She started with dates, not promises of revenge.
“Patricia Owens was a licensed Texas notary,” she explained. “Her commission was active in the records, but the death certificate is public. Either somebody used her seal after she died, or the date has been altered.”
“Does that stop the sale?” Nick asked.
“Not automatically. We can seek emergency relief, but we need a judge to see a real threat of transfer. The buyer will claim it acted in good faith.”
Elliot called from a motel near the airport. He'd been awake all night gathering bank statements from an old storage unit. Martha had once controlled his access to the family company while he recovered from a serious injury. That legal authority had ended thirteen years earlier. Documents signed in his name had continued appearing anyway.
“Why didn't you fight before?” Nick asked, his voice raw.
“I did,” Elliot said. “I lost my lawyer, my savings, and eventually you. I told myself staying away would keep you safe.”
Nick closed his eyes. “It didn't.”
Mara asked us to bring the Riverbend residents into the case, if they wanted to be involved. “They aren't props,” she warned. “They decide whether to tell their stories.”
I thought of my mother carrying canned soup up three flights of stairs. “I know.”
At eleven, a woman named Marisol Vega agreed to meet us outside Riverbend House. She managed the building and had known my mother. We parked across from the cracked brick entrance. Children played beside a small garden. A paper notice was taped to the lobby window.
NOTICE OF VACANCY. PROPERTY TRANSFER PENDING. RESIDENTS MUST DEPART WITHIN THIRTY DAYS.
Marisol met us in the doorway, clutching a binder. “I called the trust office every week,” she said. “They told me repairs couldn't be funded because the donations were gone.”
May you like
She opened the binder to a photograph of a bank check made out to Riverbend House. On the back was a deposit stamp for an account I'd never seen.
The account holder was Anna Reed Hale.
