Chapter 10 - The Meeting Nobody Attended
I stayed at Frank's house.
Rebecca contacted the appropriate authorities about the message, and we kept our distance.
That decision may have prevented an ugly confrontation.
The next morning, Harry told Tiffany he'd waited at the lot for nearly two hours.
Vanessa never arrived.
No one knew whether she'd meant to appear or whether the invitation had simply been a trap designed to unsettle us.
I didn't intend to find out by giving her another chance.
But her absence had consequences.
Harry returned home furious, accusing Tiffany of warning me.
He slept on the couch and stopped speaking to her except to demand access to her phone.
Tiffany went to stay with a coworker for the night.
She didn't tell Harry the address.
By afternoon, Rebecca called with news from the title specialist.
A document had been presented for recording, but it had not been accepted.
It appeared to be a deed purporting to transfer my property to a newly formed company.
The county's recording office had rejected it for a technical defect.
We obtained a copy through appropriate records channels.
The signature was mine in name only.
The purported grantee was Flathead Heritage Holdings LLC.
I had never heard of the company.
Rebecca traced the publicly available organizational records.
The listed organizer was Vanessa Pike.
Harry wasn't named anywhere.
For a moment that confused me.
Then I thought about the storage unit, the forged signature, and the borrowed identity.
Perhaps Harry believed he was stealing the house for himself.
Perhaps he was actually helping somebody else steal it from him.
When Tiffany arrived at Frank's house that evening, I didn't begin with an accusation.
I asked whether she'd eaten.
She shook her head.
Frank made soup.
We sat around the kitchen table like a family that had forgotten how to be one.
I told her what the county had rejected.
She turned pale.
“Vanessa said that company was ours.”
“Ours?”
“Harry and mine. She said she'd hold it temporarily while the refinancing went through.”
“Did Harry believe her?”
“He showed me a spreadsheet.”
“Who made it?”
“Vanessa.”
I asked her to describe the warehouse investment.
She told us about fabricated tenants, guaranteed returns, and a deposit that had supposedly doubled.
The numbers sounded polished.
The underlying facts sounded imaginary.
Rebecca had already told me not to speculate about criminal liability, but I could see the financial trap.
Vanessa had promised Harry an impossible profit if he produced something valuable.
Harry had chosen my house.
Then Tiffany opened her purse and produced a folded sheet of paper.
“I found this tucked inside his jacket,” she said.
It was a handwritten schedule of payments.
Several entries ended with the initials VP.
The largest amount was marked DUE ON TRANSFER.
At the bottom was a line that made my stomach turn.
IF OWNER RESISTS, USE FAMILY PRESSURE.
Tiffany stared at the sentence.
May you like
“Dad,” she whispered, “I think I was part of the plan.”
