Chapter 6 - The Offer in the Parking Garage
Thomas listened to the recording of Dana's voicemail twice.
I hadn't recorded our conversation, but she'd left a message less than a minute later, repeating that we should meet and settle matters privately.
He told me not to interpret her warning as proof of anything.
“Threats can be theater,” he said.
“Records are better evidence.”
I wanted an explanation that would make the mess suddenly simple.
Perhaps Dana had notarized the wrong person through negligence.
Perhaps a clerical employee had mixed up two files.
But I knew my own signature, and I knew where I had been.
Thomas arranged for an independent handwriting examiner to compare the scan with verified samples.
He also requested the title company's transaction file and asked Dana's business to preserve correspondence.
The sale had not closed, and the title company temporarily suspended its clearance review.
That should have made me feel safe.
It didn't.
The following morning I found an envelope pushed beneath my front door.
There was no stamp and no return address.
Inside sat a single page printed in a businesslike font.
WITHDRAW THE OBJECTION AND ALL PARTIES CAN MOVE ON.
At the bottom someone had added a figure in blue ink.
$25,000.
Beth read it over my shoulder.
“They're offering to pay you to stay quiet?”
“Or someone wants it to look that way.”
We photographed the envelope without handling it further and called Thomas.
He asked us to preserve it and said the circumstances might justify a report to law enforcement.
While he arranged the next step, another message arrived from Rachel.
“I hope you're proud of yourself. The buyers are getting nervous.”
I typed a reply, then deleted it.
Rachel could turn an explanation into an argument faster than I could make coffee.
I left the message unanswered.
That afternoon I needed groceries, so Beth drove me to the supermarket.
We talked about ordinary things on purpose.
Her husband's new garden shed.
The casserole she was planning for New Year's Day.
How Max had recently developed a passion for old baseball cards.
As we crossed the underground parking area beneath the store, a man wearing a charcoal coat stepped out beside a black sedan.
“Mrs. Foster?”
Beth immediately moved closer to me.
The man kept his hands visible.
“My name is Nolan Price, and I represent an investor interested in the property.”
I stopped.
“If you're involved in the transaction, speak to my attorney.”
“I'd rather make sure you understand your position.”
“I understand it quite well.”
He offered a business card.
I didn't take it.
“Your son is in a very difficult financial situation,” Nolan said.
“He made certain decisions based on advice he trusted.”
“From you?” Beth asked.
He ignored her.
“If the house sells quickly, there's still a way to resolve this discreetly.”
“Then your lawyers can talk to mine,” I said.
He looked annoyed but recovered.
“Sometimes a mother can do more for her son than a lawyer.”
There it was again.
The oldest lever in my life.
Motherhood as a reason to surrender every boundary.
“Sometimes,” I answered, “a mother has to stop cleaning up what her son deliberately broke.”
He watched me for a moment.
Then he said, “Ask Eric about September seventeenth.”
“What happened September seventeenth?”
But Nolan was already opening his car door.
“Ask him about the account in his father's name.”
His car pulled away before I could respond.
Beth caught my elbow.
“Mom?”
I shook my head slowly.
Frank had been dead six years.
He had no active accounts I didn't know about.
Or so I'd believed.
On the drive home I checked the calendar on my phone.
September seventeenth fell fifteen months earlier, within days of Broadleaf's recorded loan.
At home, I took out Frank's estate folder.
The probate documents and death certificates were where they belonged.
His old accounts had been closed or transferred long ago.
But tucked inside a yellow envelope was a letter I hadn't noticed before.
It came from a regional credit union, sent to my husband years before his death.
On the final page, a handwritten note in Frank's unmistakable block letters read:
May you like
IF ERIC ASKS ABOUT THE TRUST, CALL THOMAS FIRST.
