Chapter 4 - The Paper TrailThat evening, my small living room looked like a war room.
Spread across the coffee table were tax returns, shipping invoices, bank statements, and old route maps from Robert Calloway’s business. Pete Marsh sat on the sofa with his laptop, cross-referencing bank routing numbers, while Jade sat on the floor, meticulously organizing receipts by date.
Lily was asleep on the guest room bed, exhausted from the tension of the last twenty-four hours.
“If we want to smash this forgery in court on Monday,” Pete said, rubbing his tired eyes, “we need more than just the retired notary record. We need to prove who forged the document and why.”
“I’ve been going through my father’s old email archives,” Jade said, turning her laptop toward us. “Look at this exchange from fourteen months ago. Marcus Drew tried to buy out Dad’s fifty-percent share in the joint venture for two hundred thousand dollars.”
I leaned over her shoulder, looking at the screen. The scent of faint lavender shampoo rose from her hair, a quiet contrast to the stress filling the room.
“Your dad turned him down?” I asked.
“Cold,” Jade replied. “Dad wrote back saying that the route contracts were meant for Lily and me. He explicitly stated that the joint venture held no outstanding debts or personal loans between them.”
“That’s the smoking gun,” Pete said, leaning in. “If Robert explicitly stated there were no debts fourteen months ago, and the forged loan is dated eight months ago, it proves Marcus manufactured the debt after Robert refused to sell!”
“It proves motive,” I said, looking at Jade. “Marcus wanted the route contracts. When your father wouldn’t sell them, Marcus waited for him to die, forged the loan to bankrupt the estate, and planned to seize the contracts through probate liquidation.”
Jade looked up at me, her dark eyes shining with a mixture of anger and hope. “We can win this, can’t we?”
May you like
“We’re going to do more than win, Jade,” I said quietly. “We’re going to make sure Marcus Drew never does this to another family again.”
Suddenly, the power in my house flickered once, twice, and then shut off completely, plunging the living room into pitch blackness.
Related Stories
