Chapter 5 - BRENDA'S HOUSE
Brenda had lived in the same stucco house in La Mesa for almost twenty-three years.
I had spent Christmas mornings there.
I had helped paint the kitchen.
I had slept on the living room sofa for twelve nights after her knee surgery because she was afraid to use the stairs alone.
I knew which cabinet stuck in humid weather.
I knew where she hid spare batteries.
I knew the hall bathroom faucet needed to be turned hard to the left or it dripped all night.
What I did not know was why DWB Property Group had any connection to the house.
Paige pulled the property records the next morning.
"This is not ownership."
She pointed at the screen.
"It is a lien."
"A deed of trust was recorded against Brenda's property eight months ago."
"DWB borrowed against her equity?"
"It appears Brenda pledged the house as additional collateral for the commercial loan."
I stared at the amount.
"So she knew."
"She knew enough to sign this."
Her signature appeared on multiple pages.
Unlike mine, hers was notarized.
"Why would she risk her home for Dustin and Wyatt?"
Paige gave me a tired look.
"Families do irrational things with money every day."
"But I suspect she thought the deal was safer than it was."
"Or more profitable."
The lender documents described a renovation and resale plan.
DWB had bought the Imperial Beach duplex below market value.
The plan was to renovate both units, refinance after improvements, and use the released equity to acquire another property.
On paper, it looked almost respectable.
The problem was that much of the capital listed as owner contribution appeared to have come from my joint savings.
Another part came from Brenda's home equity.
The rest came from a commercial loan guaranteed with a signature I said was not mine.
"Where did Wyatt get the idea he could do this?"
I asked.
Paige scrolled through contractor invoices.
"Maybe the idea was not the problem."
"Maybe the execution was."
"Look at these payments."
Several invoices were from legitimate suppliers.
Others were from businesses Paige could not verify.
One company, Pacific Finish Works, had received $27,800 for interior renovations.
Its address was a post office box.
Its phone number was disconnected.
Another, Westline Project Management, received $14,500.
The listed manager was a man named Eric Sloan.
I knew that name.
"He went to high school with Dustin."
Paige looked at me.
"You are sure?"
"Yes."
"He was at our wedding."
"Dustin said Eric moved to Arizona years ago."
Paige searched the name.
Eric still lived in San Diego County.
More importantly, Westline Project Management had been formed nine months earlier.
Its mailing address was the same mailbox store used by Harbor Ridge.
"They were paying themselves through fake vendors."
I said it before Paige did.
"Possibly."
"You can stop saying possibly every time."
"No."
"That is what keeps us from sounding like Dustin."
She was right.
I hated that too.
At noon, Dustin's lawyer sent a letter demanding that I stop making defamatory allegations to third parties.
The letter accused me of interfering with a lawful family business.
It claimed the disputed transfers had been made with my knowledge.
It also claimed Mom's allegation of assault was exaggerated.
I read that sentence three times.
"Exaggerated."
Paige held out her hand.
"Give me the letter."
"He hit her twice."
"I know."
"There are medical records."
"I know."
"He admitted he could apologize."
"I know."
"How is that exaggerated?"
Paige took the letter from me.
"Because they are building a defense."
"Do not confuse a defense with truth."
The letter included something else.
Dustin wanted access to the apartment to retrieve personal and business records.
Paige immediately objected.
Because the police investigation was active and because disputed financial documents might still be inside, she requested that any access be supervised.
Dustin's lawyer responded with outrage.
Paige responded with a proposed time and the name of a neutral property officer.
The outrage disappeared.
Before the supervised retrieval, I made a list of objects I wanted from the apartment.
Clothes.
My passport.
Dad's old watch.
A box of photographs.
My grandmother's recipe cards.
The blue ceramic bowl Mom had given us when we married.
Paige looked at the list.
"No furniture?"
"Not yet."
"Television?"
"No."
"Kitchen equipment?"
"No."
She studied me.
"You know you are allowed to care about property."
"I know."
"You do not have to become saintly because he became greedy."
I laughed once.
"I just cannot think about a blender right now."
Mom wanted only one thing from the guest room.
A framed photograph of Dad sitting on the porch of their old house.
Dustin had objected when she first hung it because he said the frame did not match the room.
I remembered defending him.
He is just particular about decor.
How many small excuses had I built for him because none seemed important enough to fight about?
During the retrieval, the building representative found that the office door had a different lock cylinder than the one installed when we moved in.
At the time, nobody understood why that mattered.
Paige photographed it anyway.
She photographed the desk too.
Lower right drawer.
Charging cables.
Old receipts.
No cash.
Of course no cash.
But the shape of the drawer mattered to Mom.
She stood in the doorway and pointed.
"That is the one."
Her voice shook.
"I opened it maybe six inches."
"There was no stack of bills."
The detective measured the drawer and documented the scene.
I watched Mom reclaim the memory from Dustin one detail at a time.
The supervised retrieval happened two days later.
I chose not to attend.
Paige went with Detective Bell and a building representative.
Dustin was allowed to collect clothes, toiletries, personal electronics not subject to preservation, and clearly personal items.
He asked for three file boxes from the office.
Bell refused until the contents were reviewed.
One box contained tax records.
One contained truck documents.
The third contained folders marked with property addresses.
The Imperial Beach duplex was among them.
So was Brenda's house.
And so was an address in Oceanside.
Paige called me from the apartment.
"Do you know anything about a property on Mariner's Bluff in Oceanside?"
"No."
"Dustin says it was a potential deal that never happened."
"Do you believe him?"
"I believe documents more than people right now."
Bell photographed the folder before allowing Dustin's lawyer to review it.
Inside was an unsigned purchase proposal, contractor estimates, and a spreadsheet labeled CAPITAL SOURCES.
One line caught Paige's attention.
A.H. RETIREMENT - 64K.
My initials.
My retirement account.
I nearly dropped the phone.
"He was planning to take my retirement too."
"It looks like someone considered it a funding source."
"Could he access it?"
"Not easily without your involvement."
"But given the signature issue, we are checking everything."
I logged into my retirement portal immediately.
The balance was intact.
For about thirty seconds, relief flooded through me.
Then I saw a notification in the document center.
Loan Request - Incomplete.
The request had been started six weeks earlier.
I had not started it.
My hands began shaking so badly I could barely click.
The application requested a $50,000 participant loan.
It had my address, my phone number, and my Social Security information.
It also had an alternate email address I had never seen.
The application stopped at the identity verification stage.
Someone had tried.
Someone had known enough about me to get frighteningly far.
Paige had me call the retirement plan fraud department immediately.
They locked the account and preserved access logs.
The representative said the request had been initiated from a Windows computer using an IP address in San Diego.
That alone proved little.
But the timestamp did.
9:42 p.m. on a Tuesday six weeks earlier.
I remembered that night.
I had been at Brenda's house with Mom, helping pack boxes from the garage.
Dustin had stayed home because he said he had a headache.
When I returned, he was asleep on the couch with my laptop open on the coffee table.
He told me he had used it to stream a movie because his tablet battery was dead.
I believed him.
I gave Paige the information.
She went quiet.
"Audrey, we need to discuss your identity security as a whole."
"Credit reports."
"Tax transcripts."
"Any loans, cards, accounts, or companies that could have been opened using your information."
"Everything."
By sunset, we had found two credit inquiries I did not recognize.
One was from the commercial lender connected to DWB.
The other was from a regional bank I had never used.
Paige sent preservation requests to both.
Then Mom called.
Her voice was tight.
"Audrey, Brenda is here again."
I stood.
"Where?"
"Outside Teresa's house."
"Do not go outside."
"I did not."
"She left something on the porch."
"What?"
"A box."
Paige was already reaching for her keys.
"Do not touch it," she said loudly enough for Mom to hear.
We drove to Aunt Teresa's house with Detective Bell meeting us there.
The box was ordinary brown cardboard.
No label.
No note on top.
Bell opened it after photographing it.
Inside were two objects.
The first was the small black notebook Mom remembered seeing in Dustin's desk drawer.
The second was a thick white envelope.
Bell opened the envelope carefully.
Inside was cash.
A lot of cash.
He counted it once.
Then again.
$10,500 exactly.
Mom made a sound behind me.
My entire body went cold.
The money Dustin accused her of stealing had just appeared on my aunt's porch.
Paige looked toward the street.
Brenda was gone.
But inside the black notebook, tucked between two pages filled with dates and dollar amounts, was a folded sheet of paper.
At the top, in Dustin's handwriting, were three words.
May you like
AUDREY EXIT PLAN.
