Chapter 4 - The Notary Who Couldn't Have Signed
Evie didn't raise her voice at the men. She simply kept the screen door between them and told them to take their inspection request to Laurel. When they hesitated, Nora Bell came across the gravel lot from the bakery, still wearing her flour-dusted apron.
“I've known that girl since she had pigtails,” Nora said. “If she tells you to go, gentlemen, you'd better take your measuring wheel and go.”
They left without another word, although one photographed the basement window before getting into the truck. Laurel added the image to the growing folder on her kitchen table.
The next morning, the folder acquired a much stranger document.
“Peter Keene is dead,” Laurel said over the phone.
Evie was standing behind the bakery counter with a tray of cinnamon rolls. She put it down. “What?”
“The notary named on your deed died six months ago. His commission information still appears on an old website. Someone used his name and stamp details after his death.”
“Then the deed's obviously fake.”
Laurel explained that she'd requested the archived commission information directly instead of trusting a search-result snippet. She was also asking how the recorder's system accepted the filing and who had provided the image of the seal. Evie wrote both questions on a notepad and underlined the second. She couldn't bear the thought of Daniel shrugging in a courtroom and saying a stranger had handled everything.
“It is powerful evidence that the acknowledgment was fraudulent,” Laurel answered carefully. “I'll send it to the recorder, the title insurer, and the investigator. We still need to find out who submitted it and what else they've done.”
Evie hung up and looked through the front window. A man in a gray work jacket was replacing a loose step by the entrance. Eli Bennett had fixed things around Sunday Table since the year Rose's second oven broke. He was forty-two, soft-spoken, and so meticulous that he lined up his screws by size on the porch rail.
“Eli,” she called. “Did Daniel ever hire you to renovate our basement?”
“He asked for an estimate,” Eli said, wiping his hands. “I gave him one. Then he told me he'd found somebody cheaper.”
“How much was your estimate?”
“Eight thousand for the water damage and stair repairs. Why?”
Eli pointed toward the basement window. “I gave Daniel a drawing because he asked whether the old chute could be opened. I told him that wasn't a repair job and I'd need the owner's written permission before touching it. He never asked again.”
Evie showed him a bank statement Laurel had just forwarded. It listed three payments totaling one hundred and eighty thousand dollars to Mercer Restoration Services, described as emergency structural work.
Eli read it twice. “Evie, there hasn't been a hundred and eighty thousand dollars' worth of work done in that basement. You'd know if there had.”
“I'd like you to put that in writing.”
He nodded. “I will. And I still have the dated pictures from when I came to measure.”
At eleven, Evie met Laurel at her office above the pharmacy. The lawyer spread out the statements and a printout of state company records. Mercer Restoration Services had been created four months earlier. Its registered contact was a mailbox thirty miles away. Daniel was listed as manager. A second name appeared in the annual filing.
Claire Whitaker.
Evie pressed her palms flat on the table. “She told me she was behind on rent. I've been paying her electric bill since March.”
“Her name on a filing doesn't establish what she knew,” Laurel said. “But it's a question we need answered.”
Evie's phone rang. The number was unfamiliar.
“Evelyn Whitaker?” a woman asked. “My name is Lydia Shaw. Please don't hang up. I heard what happened at your wedding.”
Evie looked at Laurel and put the call on speaker.
“I was engaged to Daniel Mercer four years ago,” Lydia said. “For six months I thought I'd met the kindest man in Pennsylvania. Then my mother got sick, and I discovered he'd been taking money from the account I'd opened to pay for her care.”
Evie's stomach tightened. “Did you report him?”
“I tried. There was a settlement. I signed an agreement because my mother needed the money back immediately and I couldn't afford years in court. I can tell you what happened to me, and I kept copies of the records.”
“Why are you calling now?”
“I saw a video someone posted of him outside the hotel,” Lydia said. “He sounded exactly as he did when he promised my mother everything would be all right. I spent an hour trying to convince myself it wasn't my business, and then I thought about somebody else's mother losing the roof over her head.”
“Because he used the same words on you. I heard someone quote him in the bakery this morning. He told you not to wreck your future, didn't he?”
Evie closed her eyes. Daniel had said almost exactly that in the suite.
Lydia continued, “He said it to me the day I caught him forging my signature.”
They agreed to meet at Nora's house that evening. Lydia didn't want to come to the bakery while people were gossiping, and Evie understood.
Before the call ended, Lydia said one more thing. “There's a photograph you need to see. I found it in a storage box he left behind. I didn't know who the woman was until your wedding pictures appeared online.”
“Who is she?”
“Your sister. She's holding a baby. Daniel has his arm around both of them.”
Evie's breath caught. June had been a baby nine years ago. Evie had met Daniel only two years ago, at a fundraiser for the elementary school.
“How old is that picture?” she asked.
May you like
Lydia took a moment to answer.
“The date on the back says June's first Christmas.”
