Chapter 4 — THE GARAGE CABINET

I built out the garage myself the summer we moved in.

That is why the cabinet felt personal.

Shelving, a bench, a pegboard, two strip lights, a socket run along the back wall.

Six weekends of my own hands.

I knew every corner of that room.

Or I thought I did.

We went out through the utility door with Raines and Ortiz behind us.

Nora pointed at the far wall.

A stack of plastic storage crates stood where I keep the garden tools.

I moved them.

Behind them was a narrow steel cabinet.

About waist height.

Grey.

Heavy.

New.

I looked at my wife.

"When did this appear?"

"About three weeks ago."

"And you thought it was mine?"

"She told me it was."

My jaw tightened.

"Of course she did."

Raines crouched and looked at the lock.

"Do you have a key?"

"No."

Nora shook her head as well.

Ortiz photographed it from four angles.

"We'll want consent before it's opened."

"You have consent."

"Mr Calloway, because ownership is in dispute—"

"It is bolted to the wall of my garage."

"That helps."

Raines stayed careful.

"But if it turns out to be your mother's, we still need the chain intact."

The last thing I wanted was to hand my mother's lawyer a procedural gift.

So we waited.

A technician came out an hour later.

The cabinet was photographed again, then opened.

Inside were six folders.

A laptop.

A flatbed scanner.

Two prepaid phones still in blister packs.

An envelope of blank cheques.

And a stack of post addressed to me.

I recognised several of the envelopes on sight.

Mortgage statements.

A letter from my insurer.

A pension notice.

"What the hell," Nora said.

Raines took out the first folder.

Photocopies of both our passports.

Tax returns.

Silas's birth certificate.

Nora's medical insurance details.

Our marriage certificate.

It looked like somebody had built a spare copy of our lives and kept it in a box.

The second folder was labelled HOUSE.

Property records.

Comparable sales on our street.

Equity estimates.

A printed valuation putting the house at six hundred and eighty-four thousand.

Outstanding mortgage: two hundred and sixty-one.

Estimated accessible equity: three hundred and ten.

And one number circled twice in red pen.

Two hundred and twenty thousand.

I stared at it.

"What's that?"

Ortiz answered quietly.

"That looks like a target loan figure."

My knees did something unhelpful.

Two hundred and twenty thousand dollars.

That is not an overbearing mother.

That is a plan with a number in it.

Raines opened the third folder.

INSURANCE.

My life policy.

Nora's smaller one.

Home cover.

Both cars.

Silas's health plan.

The fourth folder was labelled SIGNATURES.

I felt sick before it was open.

Page after page of my own signature.

Cheques.

Old contracts.

Birthday cards I had signed as a teenager.

Scans of work paperwork.

And behind those, lined paper.

Dozens of attempts at tracing it.

Some were terrible.

Six or seven were frighteningly close.

Nora took hold of the workbench.

"Oh my God."

I could not say anything at all.

Raines looked at me.

"This is significant."

"You think?"

It came out sharper than I meant.

She did not react.

"I mean legally significant."

Ortiz opened the next one.

It was labelled NORA.

My wife went completely rigid.

Photographs.

Nora pushing the pram along Broad Street.

Nora loading shopping into the back of her car.

Nora going into the paediatric clinic.

Nora at a coffee shop with somebody.

"Who took these?"

Several had been shot through a windscreen.

Dates were written on the back in pen.

Each date matched a note.

Met woman at coffee shop. 64 minutes.

Spent $91.20 supermarket.

Clinic visit.

Pharmacy after clinic.

I stared at the handwriting.

"This is surveillance."

Raines nodded slowly.

"It appears somebody was logging her movements."

Nora took a step back from the bench.

For months she had felt watched inside her own house.

We were now finding out that the watching had followed her out of the front door.

One photograph showed her talking to a man at the playground railings.

I recognised him.

Our neighbour Walt.

The note under it read: Possible inappropriate association.

I nearly laughed out of sheer disbelief.

Walt is seventy-six.

He had been asking whether we wanted a hand re-hanging the side gate.

Another showed Nora hugging her brother Miles outside a restaurant.

The note said: Male contact. Possible leverage.

Something in me came apart at that one.

"They were writing a story about her."

Raines chose her words.

"That's possible."

"No."

I pointed at the pile.

"They were building a woman who was careless with money."

"Unfaithful."

"Unstable."

"So that when it mattered, I'd believe it."

Nora said, very quietly, "Your mother kept telling me people were talking about me."

I turned round.

"What?"

"She said the neighbours had noticed how often I went out."

"I thought she was trying to keep me in the house."

"She was."

The fifth folder was labelled ETHAN.

I did not especially want it opened.

Raines opened it.

My work rota.

My employer's address.

My manager's name.

Site locations I had been assigned to.

The time I usually left the house.

Estimated drive times.

Notes about which evenings I worked late.

My mother had built a timetable around her son.

Then Ortiz found a single sheet at the back, typed, with a heading in capitals.

STAGES.

And the room changed temperature.

Stage one.

Establish household financial management.

Stage two.

Document Nora's instability and irresponsible spending.

Stage three.

Secure original records.

Stage four.

Transfer protective interest in property.

Stage five.

Access equity.

Stage six.

Separate Ethan from Nora if required.

My wife sat down on the step into the utility room.

I read the last line again.

Separate Ethan from Nora if required.

This was never only about money.

Somebody had planned to take my marriage apart because it was in the way of a loan.

Raines photographed every page.

Ortiz lifted the laptop lid without powering it on.

"This gets imaged properly."

"And the phones?"

"Same."

I pointed at the STAGES page.

"Whose handwriting are the notes?"

"Some of it's typed."

"The annotations are hand-written."

Raines held it up to the light.

"Do you recognise it?"

I looked closely.

It was not my mother's writing.

Vivian writes in a loose, showy hand with big loops.

This was small.

Narrow.

Almost technical.

I had seen it before.

I could not place it.

Nora leaned over the page.

"I know that handwriting."

All three of us looked at her.

"Whose?"

She frowned.

"I'm not sure."

"Where have you seen it?"

"A Christmas card."

"Or a form."

She shook her head, frustrated.

"It's familiar and I can't get it."

Raines slid it into a sleeve.

"We'll take comparison samples."

My phone went.

My sister.

Delia lives in Savannah with her husband Marco and two girls.

We are close in the way of people who love each other and avoid the same subject.

She has always managed conflict with our mother by not having any.

I answered.

"Ethan, what is going on?"

"Where did you hear?"

"Corinne rang me."

Of course she had.

"What did she say?"

"That you had Mum arrested over an argument at a birthday party."

I closed my eyes.

"That is not what happened."

"She said Nora accused Mum of stealing."

"Nora hasn't accused anybody of anything."

"Ethan, Mum is sixty-two."

"And?"

"And why are police treating her like a criminal?"

I looked at six folders spread across my own workbench.

"Because she had a forged deed transferring my house into her name."

Silence on the line.

"What?"

"And Trent was walking out of my garden with the original."

"Ethan—"

"There is a steel cabinet bolted into my garage full of copies of my documents."

Delia did not say anything.

"There are photographs of my wife being followed around Charleston."

"There is a folder of my signature being practised on lined paper."

"And somebody booked an appointment in my name to borrow against my house."

A long silence.

Then, very small, "That isn't possible."

"I'm looking at it."

She started crying.

I hated hearing it.

Not because I doubted the evidence.

Because I knew exactly what it feels like when your understanding of your own mother stops loading.

"Delia."

"Yeah."

"I need to ask you something."

"What."

"Has Mum ever asked you for financial documents?"

Silence.

Then:

"Yes."

My stomach tightened.

"When?"

"Last year."

"Why?"

"She said she was tidying up Dad's estate records."

Our father has been dead for six years.

"What did she ask for?"

"My Social."

"Our marriage certificate."

"Information about the house."

I looked at Raines.

She was listening to every word.

"Did you give it to her?"

"Some of it."

Delia sounded frightened now.

"Ethan, what is this?"

"I don't know yet."

Then she said the thing that reorganised the whole afternoon.

"She had me sign a property document last year."

I stopped moving.

"What kind of document?"

"I don't know."

"She said it was to do with Dad's estate."

"Did you sign it?"

"Yes."

My chest went tight.

"Delia, who prepared the paperwork?"

She thought about it.

"A man Mum knows."

"Name?"

"I can't remember it."

"Delia."

"Hang on."

I heard her moving around.

"There's an email."

She searched.

Then she said, "Roland."

The initials on the tablet came straight back to me.

R.F.

"Surname?"

"Fisk."

Roland Fisk.

"Who is he?"

"Some sort of financial consultant."

"I thought he was a lawyer."

"Mum said he helped Dad years ago."

"Do you still have his contact details?"

"Yes."

"Send me everything."

Raines held out her hand and I put the call on speaker.

"Delia, there's a detective here."

My sister went silent.

Raines introduced herself.

"Mrs Reyes, do you still have the document you signed?"

"I might."

"Don't sort through anything or throw anything away."

"If you find it, photograph where it is before you move it, then call me."

Delia agreed.

Then she added something.

"We refinanced our house five months after I signed that."

Everything in me went cold.

"Did you want to refinance?"

"Marco handled it."

"I assumed he'd arranged it."

"Did you receive the money?"

"No."

Her voice changed.

"Oh God."

Raines asked, "Mrs Reyes, do you know Roland Fisk personally?"

"I've met him twice."

"Where?"

"At Mum's."

"When?"

"The last time was maybe nine months ago."

"What was discussed?"

"Family finances."

"Mum said he was helping everybody plan ahead."

Then my sister went quiet.

"What is it?"

"There was somebody else there."

"Who?"

"I don't know his name."

"Describe him."

"Older. Late fifties, maybe sixty."

"Very expensive suit."

"Silver hair."

Raines was writing.

"Anything else?"

Delia hesitated.

"He had a ring."

"What sort of ring?"

"Gold, with a black stone in it."

That meant nothing to me at the time.

It meant a great deal four weeks later.

We ended the call.

Raines looked at the open cabinet.

"Roland Fisk."

"You think he's R.F."

"I think we need to find him tonight."

Nora was still staring at the STAGES page.

"What happens if he finds out you've got this?"

Raines did not answer that one either.

My phone buzzed.

A message from Delia.

Found the email. Attachment's here.

I opened it.

The sender was Roland Fisk.

The subject line was FAMILY ASSET PROTECTION.

Attached was a scan of the form my sister had signed.

Raines read it over my shoulder.

Then she took a short breath in.

The document transferred a partial ownership interest in Delia's house.

Not to my mother.

Not to Fisk.

To a limited liability company.

Calloway Legacy Partners LLC.

I had never heard the name in my life.

Neither had my sister.

I scrolled to the foot of the page.

Registered organiser: Roland P. Fisk.

And underneath, one more line.

Authorised manager: Vivian Calloway.

Nora said my name.

I looked up.

She was pointing at another sheet from the HOUSE folder, still lying open on my workbench.

Handwritten across the top in that small narrow hand:

CALLOWAY LEGACY PARTNERS.

Underneath it, a list.

My sister's address in Savannah was first.

Our address was second.

And beside ours, somebody had written one word.

MONDAY.