Chapter 3 - The Cold Light of Sunday
By eight o’clock on Sunday morning, my apartment smelled of brewed coffee and menthol muscle rub.
My shoulder was throbbing with a persistent, rhythmic ache that radiated all the way into my collarbone. Dr. Morrison’s on-call physician had ordered me to immobilize it back into the heavy sling and report for an emergency MRI on Monday morning to see if the anchor sutures had snapped when I struck the water.
A soft knock sounded at my door.
I checked the peephole, expecting my mother coming to browbeat me into silence. Instead, I saw Ethan. He was wearing dark jeans, a navy henley, and dark circles beneath bloodshot eyes. In his right hand, he carried a cardboard tray with two large coffees and a bag from the bakery down the street.
I opened the door. “Ethan.”
“Hey,” he said gently, stepping inside. “I brought the dark roast with oat milk you like. And some blueberry scones. How is the shoulder?”
“It feels like someone drove a railroad spike into it,” I admitted, leading him into my small, sunlit kitchen. “You didn't have to come over.”
“I did,” he said, setting the food on the butcher-block counter. “I spent the night at a hotel in Uptown. I couldn’t stay in that house with her, Emily. Every cabinet I opened felt like it had a lie hidden behind it.”
He pulled a thick manila folder from his leather satchel and laid it out flat.
“I didn't sleep,” Ethan continued. “I called an old colleague from my firm who does title abstract work. He pulled the entire deed packet that was submitted to First National Title on Friday afternoon. Look at this.”
I flipped through the pages with my left hand. There was the purchase contract, the disclosures, and the forged signature page.
“The notary’s name is Brenda Higgins,” Ethan pointed out, his finger tapping the purple stamp. “She works out of a strip mall check-cashing joint off South Boulevard. My contact knows her reputation. She’s been reprimanded twice by the Secretary of State for notary violations—signing without the principal present, sloppy logbooks, taking under-the-table cash.”
“Kara’s mother used to own that salon right next to that check-cashing store,” I remembered suddenly, the pieces clicking together like tumblers in a lock. “Jenna didn’t even try to hide the breadcrumbs.”
“She didn’t think she’d ever have to,” Ethan said grimly. “She assumed that once the deed was recorded on Monday morning and the wire hit Marcus’s account, the deed would be done. Pun intended. To unwind a recorded deed in North Carolina requires months of litigation, tens of thousands of dollars in legal fees, and an uphill battle against an LLC that would immediately flip the property to a bona fide third-party purchaser. By the time you could prove fraud in court, the lake house would have been sold twice over, Marcus’s shell company would be dissolved, and the money would be sitting in an unrecoverable digital wallet in the Caribbean.”
A shiver of genuine revulsion washed over me. “She was going to rob me blind. And she shoved me into the pool because…”
“Because you saw the preliminary title email,” Ethan finished for me, his expression darkening. “She knew that if you called First National Title before the weekend, you’d blow the whistle before the closing documents were finalized. She wanted you rattled. She wanted you injured enough that you’d spend the weekend in bed, drugged up on pain meds, completely disconnected until after nine o'clock Monday morning.”
The cruelty of it knocked the breath out of me. It wasn’t just greed; it was deliberate, calculated malice toward her own flesh and blood.
“We need to see Brenda Higgins,” I said, looking up at him.
“She’s at her office right now,” Ethan nodded, his voice laced with resolve. “The check-cashing place opens at ten on Sundays. I already borrowed a dashcam from my truck, and my phone’s voice recorder is ready. North Carolina is a one-party consent state for audio recordings, Emily. If we get her to admit she didn't see you sign that document, we can blow the closing apart before the wire even clears.”
Forty-five minutes later, Ethan pulled his truck into the sun-bleached asphalt parking lot of Southside Financial Services. The neighborhood was tired and industrial—pawn shops, auto body repair bays, and chain-link fences topped with barbed wire.
Brenda Higgins was sitting behind a glass partition, sipping an iced tea and flipping through a tabloid magazine. She was fifty-something, with bleached-blonde hair teased high and oversized reading glasses hanging on a beaded chain.
Ethan held the door open for me. I walked in, my sling visibly securing my right arm, carrying the copy of the warranty deed in my left hand.
Brenda looked up with bored indifference. “Can I help you?”
I slid the paper through the teller slot. “My name is Emily Vance. You notarized this document on June fourteenth.”
Brenda glanced at the paper, then looked at my face. Her eyes flicked from my face to the signature, then down to my sling, and a sudden, sharp tremor touched the corner of her left eye.
“I notarize dozens of documents every week,” she said quickly, her voice dropping into a practiced defensive register. “If my seal is on it, proper identification was presented.”
“Really?” Ethan stepped up beside me, leaning against the counter. He took out his driver’s license and held it up. “Because on June fourteenth, Miss Vance was confined to a bed under the direct supervision of two home healthcare nurses following major orthopedic surgery. She has never met you. She has never been inside this building.”
“Look, I don't have to talk to you—” Brenda started, reaching for a desk phone.
“The Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department will be here in twenty minutes if you don't talk to us,” Ethan said evenly. “Notary fraud involving real estate transfers over one hundred thousand dollars is a Class G felony in this state. You’re looking at two to four years in state prison, Brenda. Not to mention losing your commission and total civil liability for the value of the property.”
Brenda’s hand froze over the receiver. The color drained completely from her rouged cheeks.
“Kara swore she was going to bring her sister in the next day,” Brenda whispered, her voice shaking violently as she peered nervously toward the back room. “She gave me five hundred dollars cash. She said it was just an intra-family estate transfer to beat a tax deadline, and that the sister had already signed it in the hospital! She promised me!”
“You stamped a blank signature line, didn’t you?” Ethan asked, his voice deadly quiet.
Brenda dropped her face into her hands. “Jenna brought the signed paper in two hours later. I didn't see who signed it. I just put the stamp on it. God help me, I have grandbabies to raise. Please don't call the police.”
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“You’re going to give us a sworn, written affidavit of what you just told us,” Ethan commanded softly. “Right now. Or the detective gets the file before noon.”
***
