Chapter 7 - The Woman at the Counter
Stonefield Title's lobby was closed for the holiday weekend, but Nina knew the security manager from an unrelated case. He would not release footage to us privately. He agreed to preserve it for investigators.
That was enough to protect it from being casually overwritten.
I spent the afternoon going through receipts and old photographs. Tessa sat beside me while I pulled up the October dinner where Natalie had borrowed my wallet.
"Look at this," I said.
A picture showed Natalie standing behind me, wearing my red wool scarf. At the time she'd said the restaurant was cold. Now I wondered whether she'd been trying on more than a scarf.
Nina called with news. The loan file contained a copied driver's license showing my name and address, but the photograph had been replaced. The lender's compliance officer, alarmed by the dispute, had agreed to preserve the original electronic submission.
"Who is in the replacement picture?" I asked.
"A woman with dark hair. I can't identify her from the copy."
I emailed Nina the family photograph.
Her return call came two minutes later.
"Emily, don't contact Natalie. Please hear me on that."
"So it's her?"
"The resemblance is significant. The investigator needs to make the identification properly."
For once, my anger felt almost useful. I had spent six years being told that I noticed too much, took things personally, imagined insults. Now every small detail mattered.
Robert brought me soup that evening. Not Teresa's soup. Plain chicken broth in a paper cup from the diner near Tessa's place.
I looked at it and started crying unexpectedly.
"You don't have to drink it," he said, setting it aside.
"It's not the soup. It's that you're asking."
He sat with his hands folded until I could speak again.
Then his phone rang. Natalie was calling.
May you like
He answered on speakerphone.
"Dad," she said, "tell Emily to stop digging. If this goes to the police, you'll find out what she did too."
