Chương 6
“You should eat.”
“I’m not hungry.”
“That wasn’t a question.”
“Ma’am, respectfully, you are not my mother.”
“Apparently that is working in your favor today.”
I stared at her.
She winced.
“That was poorly timed.”
Against my will, I laughed.
It lasted about two seconds.
Then I leaned against the wall.
Park’s voice softened.
“Go get breakfast.”
“I have work.”
“You have administrative tasks that can survive fifteen minutes.”
I looked down the corridor.
Two lieutenants approaching us changed direction almost imperceptibly when they saw me.
Maybe they had somewhere else to go.
Maybe the rumor had already started.
I could not tell.
That uncertainty was going to become its own kind of punishment.
The dining facility eggs tasted like damp insulation.
I ate them anyway.
At 9:06, Dad called.
I let it ring.
At 9:09, Mom called.
I ignored that too.
At 9:14, a text arrived from an unknown number.
You need to speak with your father before law enforcement creates a misunderstanding nobody can undo.
I forwarded nothing.
I screenshotted nothing.
Ruiz had told me to preserve the device.
So I placed the phone facedown and stared at it as if it might crawl away.
At 10:30, Major Park handed me a stack of vehicle-readiness reports to reconcile manually.
Normally I would have complained about wasting an officer on work a competent specialist could handle.
That morning, I loved every boring line.
Fuel totals did not lie because they were ashamed.
Brake-service dates did not cry in hallways.
A truck either had mileage or it did not.
At noon, Marcus texted a photograph.
Grandma was asleep in a recliner under a floral blanket while Denise sat at the dining table behind her doing a crossword.
No caption.
No dramatic reassurance.
I stared at the picture longer than I should have.
Then I noticed Grandma was still wearing the ugly sneakers.
At 1:17, Detective Ruiz called.
“Can you leave post?”
“I’ll need approval.”
“Get it.”
Her voice had changed.
“What happened?”
“We found the petition source.”
I stood so quickly my chair rolled backward into a filing cabinet.
The specialist at the next desk looked over.
I lowered my voice.
“How?”
“Not on the phone.”
Major Park approved my departure after speaking directly with Ruiz.
Before I left, she pointed at my uniform.
“Change if you can.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re going into a family investigation, not representing the Army.”
That had not occurred to me.
I changed in a gym restroom into jeans and a gray T-shirt I kept in my car.
Without the uniform, I felt exposed.
No rank.
No name tape.
No familiar structure telling strangers how to place me.
Ruiz met me at a coffee shop near downtown Savannah because she did not want my parents seeing me enter the precinct.
She was seated in the back with a folder and an untouched iced tea.
“You were right about the signature source,” she said.
I sat down.
“My allotment form?”
“Probably.”
She opened the folder.
“The fake guardianship petition was uploaded through an electronic filing account belonging to a legal document service called Coastal Family Solutions.”
I waited.
“The account belongs to a woman named Tara Bellamy.”
“Do I know her?”
“You tell me.”
Ruiz turned over a printed photograph.
Tara Bellamy was in her mid-forties with copper-colored hair and a narrow face.
I had never seen her.
“No.”
“She worked as a contract bookkeeper for a property management company until last year.”
Ruiz slid another page forward.
The company name was Atlantic Heritage Management LLC.
My pulse changed.
That was the company listed on the forged guardianship petition as controlling Grandma’s assets.
“Who owns it?”
I asked.
Ruiz watched me.
“Your father owns forty percent.”
I stopped breathing for a second.
“My father does what?”
“Forty percent through another LLC.”
“Which one?”
“Cole Strategic Holdings.”
The name was absurdly grand for my father.
He had always liked names that sounded more successful than the thing itself.
I looked at the ownership records.
The remaining shares belonged to two men I did not recognize.
“When did he buy in?”
“Three years ago.”
Three years.
That was not panic.
That was planning.
Ruiz tapped another document.
“Atlantic Heritage has been buying parcels southeast of Savannah for a proposed warehouse and distribution development.”
Despite everything, a professional part of my brain woke up.
“Near the port corridor?”
“Yes.”
“Land values have been climbing there.”
“I know.”
I looked at her.
She raised an eyebrow.
“I can use maps.”
I ignored that.
“Grandma’s property.”
“Thirty-two acres.”
The room seemed to narrow around the table.
Her house was old.
The land was not.
“What’s it worth?”
I asked.
“Depends on zoning, access, assemblage, and who wants it.”
“Roughly.”
Ruiz gave me a number.
It was more than a million dollars.
Possibly much more if combined with neighboring parcels.
I sat back.
My parents had told me Grandma’s house needed repairs they could barely afford.
Dad had repeatedly described the property as a burden.
He once joked that the back acreage was useful only for mosquitoes and snakes.
“Atlantic Heritage owns adjacent land?”
I asked.
“Two parcels.”
There it was.
Not everything.
But enough shape to see the outline.
“They needed hers.”
“They wanted hers.”
Ruiz corrected me carefully.
“We don’t yet know what they were willing to do to get it.”
I thought of Grandma on the park bench.
“We know some of it.”
“Yes.”
She let that sit between us.
Then she reached into the folder again.
“Tara Bellamy’s filing credentials were used to submit the forged petition at 11:18 yesterday morning.”
“Can she identify who used them?”
“She says she didn’t.”
“Do you believe her?”
“I believe she is scared.”
Ruiz showed me a message Bellamy had received two days earlier.
It said only, Finish what you agreed to finish.
The sender used a prepaid number.
“Could be Dad.”
“Could be anyone.”
I hated how often the correct answer was unsatisfying.
May you like
Ruiz continued.
“Bellamy claims she prepared property documents for Atlantic Heritage as an independent contractor.”
