Chapter 3 - The Meeting He Requested
The car left before Ethan could see the driver. He wrote down its color anyway, then hated himself for acting like he was in a spy movie when all he had was a suspicious text and a parked sedan.
“Callum knows because somebody at the cemetery saw us,” Lena said. “That's enough. Don't make this bigger before we have facts.”
Ethan called Price with Lena beside him, recording nothing. Virginia had rules about consent to recordings, but he wasn't going to turn a grieving family dispute into another legal problem. He put the call on speaker and took notes.
“Ethan,” Price said warmly. “I heard about Martin. He was a remarkable man.”
“Why is his name on people's invoices?”
A pause. “We partner with community ambassadors. Your father was one.”
“Do you have his signed agreement?”
“I'm not comfortable sharing confidential business records over the phone.”
“Then email a copy to his widow or her attorney.”
“We can meet. I'm nearby tomorrow morning.”
Ethan agreed to meet in a public café, not the house. Lena looked relieved until he added, “I'll bring the note.”
“No,” she said the instant he hung up. “That belongs to you. Don't give him the only thing Martin wrote about this.”
“He has to know we aren't bluffing.”
“He already knows. He saw Martin fighting him. Don't let your need to win an argument make you careless.”
Ethan bristled because it sounded like something his father might have said.
That evening he drove through the neighborhood where he'd grown up. The basketball hoop still leaned over the driveway of his childhood house. After Ethan's mother died, Martin married Lena, and the house slowly became one Ethan visited less often. It had been easier to blame her than to admit grief had made father and son terrible at reaching each other.
At the café next morning, Price arrived alone with a black folio and a practiced expression of sympathy. He was forty-two, immaculate in a blue blazer. He bought his own coffee, then carefully slid the cup away from the paperwork.
“I knew your father twenty-five years,” Price said. “He wasn't always easy.”
“Did he sign an endorsement?”
“An oral arrangement at first, followed by a release.” Price produced a photocopied sheet bearing Martin's printed name and a looping signature. “He consented to use of his image and story for educational outreach.”
Ethan took a picture of the page with Price watching. “This doesn't authorize using his signature on invoices.”
“The invoices are generated from approved templates.”
“Then who approved the template?”
Price studied him. “You're a project manager, right? You understand complicated workflows. A template can carry a digital reproduction. It's not a fresh signature.”
“Was Dad paid?”
“Honorariums for speaking. Modest amounts.”
“Show me the payments.”
“I don't owe his estranged son an accounting.”
Price regretted the word immediately. Ethan could tell by the way he folded his hands.
“Then you owe his estate,” Ethan said. “And you owe these families an explanation.”
Price leaned forward. “I know you want to protect your father's memory. But he invited people to our events. If you make this a crusade, you may discover he wasn't as innocent as you need him to be.”
He slid another sheet across. It showed Martin at a Homefront Bridge luncheon beside Price, both holding a ceremonial check. In the background stood Hal Dwyer and Ruth, smiling.
Ethan had no answer. He tucked the photocopies into an envelope and went home.
Lena was on the phone with a woman Ethan didn't know. She gestured for silence. “Yes, Ms. Morales. I'll tell him. Thank you.”
When she hung up, she pointed to the paperwork. “Did he show you the release?”
Ethan nodded.
“Then you need to see the calendar Martin kept. Callum says he signed that agreement last November.”
“What's wrong with November?”
“Martin was in the hospital. He had surgery that week. He couldn't hold a pen steadily, and he wasn't at any luncheon.”
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Ethan looked at the looping signature again. It was beautiful, confident, even theatrical.
There was just one problem. His father had stopped signing his name that way six years earlier, after an injury to his right hand.
