Chapter 3 - THE WOMAN BEHIND THE SIGNATURES
I remembered that Sunday dinner perfectly.
Eleanor had served roast chicken.
Garrick had complained that I wasn’t smiling enough.
And while I carried dessert into the dining room, Eleanor had apparently been finalizing paperwork designed to steal my house.
Abigail placed the forged document on my hospital tray.
“This changes things.”
“How?”
“A bad signature can be explained away. A notarized fraudulent signature creates a much bigger problem.”
I looked down at Amelia sleeping against my chest.
“Did Garrick know?”
Abigail’s silence answered before she did.
“We need evidence.”
She had already contacted a forensic accountant named Marcus Hale.
By that afternoon, Marcus had reviewed three years of transfers between my trust, Garrick’s business, and accounts connected to Eleanor.
The picture was ugly.
Garrick’s luxury dealership had been losing money for nearly two years.
He had hidden it with cash infusions.
My cash.
Whenever a payment was due, money moved from an account funded by my inheritance.
Whenever Garrick boasted about another successful quarter, the numbers had been manipulated.
“He wasn’t building an empire,” Marcus said over video call.
“He was plugging holes.”
“With my money.”
“Yes.”
“How much?”
“We’re still tracing it.”
I hated those words.
Still tracing it meant there was more.
Abigail leaned toward the screen.
“What about Eleanor?”
Marcus pulled up another spreadsheet.
“Regular payments to an LLC called ELS Consulting.”
I stared at the initials.
Eleanor Louise Sterling.
“How much?”
“Four hundred eighty-seven thousand dollars over eighteen months.”
“For consulting?”
“There are no contracts. No invoices. No documented services.”
I felt sick.
Eleanor had spent years criticizing the way I bought groceries while quietly siphoning almost half a million dollars.
My phone buzzed.
A picture from Garrick.
He and Eleanor were posing beside turquoise water.
Wish you were less emotional. This trip is exactly what I needed.
I showed Abigail.
She saved that too.
Then Marcus cleared his throat.
“There’s one more transfer.”
My hand tightened around the phone.
“How much?”
“Two hundred fifty thousand dollars.”
“To Eleanor?”
“No.”
He turned his screen toward us.
The receiving account belonged to a company I had never heard of.
Caspian Automotive Holdings.
“Who owns it?” Abigail asked.
Marcus looked straight into the camera.
“Garrick.”
My chest tightened.
May you like
Then Marcus added:
“And it was incorporated six months before he married Clara.”
