Chapter 8 - The Woman Who Worked in the Kitchen

Her name was Carol Bennett, and she had cooked and cleaned for Patricia three afternoons a week until the previous spring.

We met at a bright coffee shop where Carol could choose her own table.

Nora had advised me to listen, document, and avoid asking leading questions.

Carol looked nervous from the moment she arrived.

"Patricia keeps recordings when they help her," she said.

"When they don't, she calls them private family business."

She explained that the kitchen camera had captured arguments before.

Once, Megan had shoved a serving tray from a counter and blamed Carol for the mess.

Patricia had shown only the part where Carol bent to pick it up.

"I left because I was tired of apologizing for things I didn't do," Carol said.

I understood her immediately.

Carol did not have a copy of the Thanksgiving recording.

She refused to claim she knew what happened that night.

But she gave Nora permission to contact her about what she personally witnessed while employed there.

As we stood to leave, Carol caught my sleeve.

"There is something else."

She had overheard repeated arguments between Daniel and his parents about money.

"Your father-in-law kept saying the house couldn't carry Megan forever."

"What house?" I asked.

"Yours," Carol said.

I drove home numb.

Our house had been my dream before it became ours.

I had paid the down payment with savings from my late grandmother and my own work.

Daniel and I were both on the title and the mortgage.

I knew that much.

What I didn't know was whether he had used our financial information for anything beyond the payments I'd already found.

Nora suggested we order copies of relevant public records and obtain a full account history through legitimate channels.

I thought the discovery would take weeks.

Instead, a routine document search brought up a recorded lien I had never seen.

It was connected to a loan application filed eight months earlier.

At the bottom of one supporting page was a signature bearing my name.

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