Chapter 8 - My Mother's Signature
Nora drove to her mother's house before Grace could tell her to wait. She carried a printed copy of the corporate amendment and placed it beside the salt shaker.
"Why does your name appear on this?"
Denise read the page. Her face drained of color.
"I signed paperwork for a trust years ago," she said. "Silas's attorney told me it would protect money owed to Paul's employees. He said naming me as a temporary manager would keep Dorian away from it."
"Did you actually agree to manage a debt-collection company?"
"No. I thought I was authorizing an account."
Nora felt the familiar urge to accuse. Then she remembered her own reckless social-media post and asked a different question.
"Do you have copies of what you signed?"
Denise brought out a folder from her desk. The documents were a limited authorization relating to a compensation fund. Her signature was genuine, but the corporate amendment included terms she had never seen. Its notarization showed an address where she had not lived for a decade. That did not prove forgery by itself, but it raised questions that an investigator could verify.
Grace reviewed the copies that evening. She explained that corporate filings can contain misleading or invalid information and that signatures, notarial records, and the timing of each document had to be examined before anyone could say how it happened.
Nora went to bed fearing her mother had been used again, and fearing that some part of her was still desperate to find a villain simple enough to hate without complication.
The next day Silas agreed, through counsel, to provide the originals in his custody. His own review suggested someone had filed a corporate amendment without his authorization while he was hospitalized. Dorian Pike's longtime assistant had submitted it electronically under credentials that should have been deactivated.
That finding linked the contemporary scheme to Dorian, not to the old fire. It was a new wrongdoing on its own terms. Grace emphasized the difference.
"We can build a case that Harbor Street attempted to collect money it wasn't entitled to," she said. "We can challenge the filing that wrongly used Denise's name. And we can pursue other evidence about Paul. Those threads connect, but they aren't all the same crime."
Silas met Nora and Denise in a conference room with his attorney present. He looked at Denise before he looked at Nora.
"I should have come to your door twelve years ago," he said.
Denise kept her hands folded. "You sent two men instead."
"Dorian sent one of them without my knowledge. I sent the other to ask for the notebook. I gave him orders to be discreet. I never asked whether he frightened you. That doesn't excuse me."
"Did you know I'd told Nora the notebook was gone?"
"I suspected. I let it make my life easier."
Denise nodded slowly. "Paul trusted you. He thought you were trying to save the business from Dorian."
"I was trying to save my own business. I confused it with saving everyone around me."
Nora asked the question she'd been carrying since that first night in the diner.
"If you hadn't gotten sick, would you ever have told me?"
Silas looked away. "I don't know."
It was the least flattering answer he could have given, and therefore the first one she believed without reservation.
He agreed that any restitution payments would be independently administered, carry no requirement of silence or release, and be reviewed by affected businesses and their own counsel. Whether the plan would be implemented still depended on available assets and legal proceedings. The promises alone were not a resolution.
As they left, Miriam caught Grace at the door. She had received a message from Silas's accountant: Dorian was offering to provide evidence against Silas in exchange for leniency on the recent extortion allegations.
"Evidence of what?" Nora asked.
"He says Silas knew there was a fire risk at Mercer," Miriam replied.
Nora held the sworn statement Silas had already signed.
"He admitted that," she said.
May you like
Miriam's expression tightened.
"Dorian says there's something the statement leaves out."
