Chapter 4 - The Woman on Paper
"I never signed that," Claire said.
The letters were almost right. Vanessa had copied Claire's looping C and the sharp angle at the end of Morgan. But the date was wrong. On that day, Claire had been in the maternity ward with contractions.
"We can verify that," Ortiz said. "This copy came from a lawyer who called our fraud unit after hearing about the attack."
The lawyer was Theo Park, who had handled Ruth's estate. He arrived at the hospital wearing a coat over wrinkled pajamas. In his hands was a thin red folder and a sealed envelope.
"Your mother gave me strict instructions," he said. "The house was to pass to you alone. No proxy sale. No power of attorney without independent review."
Claire stared at him. "Why would she be that specific?"
"She didn't trust the developer who kept offering to buy it. She also didn't trust Vanessa around a deadline."
Theo spread out two sheets. One was a genuine deed. The other was a forged purchase authorization promising the property to Harborstone Development. At the bottom was a condition: the owner had to ratify the sale by 11:59 p.m. or a large deposit would be lost.
"How large?" Claire asked.
"Two point four million dollars."
Claire looked from the number to Theo. "Vanessa doesn't have that kind of money."
"She received it as an advance," Theo said. "The buyer says she guaranteed she could deliver your signature."
"But why this house? The roof leaks. The basement floods."
Theo opened Ruth's envelope. Inside lay an old hand-drawn map of Hawthorne Creek, with Claire's property circled in red and a single word underlined three times: GATE.
A line connected that gate to a row of homes along the lower bank.
"Your mother told me never to let them seal this access," he said. "She believed it was the only way to keep those families safe."
May you like
Ortiz leaned over the map. "Safe from what?"
Theo swallowed. "From the floodwater Harborstone plans to send beneath their houses."
