Chapter 18 — Eighteen Months

Beatrice’s troubles metastasized quickly.

Investigators found that her attempt on my building was not her first visit to my business records — several filed corporate documents bore signatures that looked disturbingly like my own handwriting on papers I had never seen in my life.

A certified forensic document examiner was brought in, and Jacqueline warned me that if those signatures proved forged, Beatrice would be facing felony charges that carried real prison time.

And then the investigation cracked wide open on a single detail.

One of the fraudulent property waivers had been notarized eighteen months earlier, and the name of the notary at the bottom of it was one I knew.