Chapter 2 - Eighty-Seven Witnesses
Detective Angela Reyes, Chatham County financial-crimes unit, crossed that ballroom without so much as a glance in my direction.
She showed Dylan a warrant for his phone. Then a second one, authorizing investigators to pull records from Sharon's house.
The bank had already turned over copies of the forged deed, the dead power of attorney, and security footage from the branch where the home-equity transfer went through.
Dylan stopped smiling.
Sharon didn't.
"This is absurd," she snapped. "My son poured years of his life into that house."
"New cabinets don't make you an owner," my attorney said from behind the officers.
That was Paige Sullivan. She'd come to the ball as my guest, because we already knew Dylan planned to serve me there. What we hadn't planned on was Sharon standing up and narrating the whole thing for a room full of soldiers.
Reyes laid it out plainly.
Of the $186,000 borrowed against my house, $94,000 had gone to Sharon. Another $42,000 covered debts from Dylan's sinking renovation company. Thirty-one thousand went to credit cards. The rest had been pulled out in cash.
Dylan stared at me. "You've been investigating me?"
"No," I said. "I reported what somebody did in my name."
His voice climbed. "I was your husband. I had power of attorney."
"You had one. I revoked it."
Around the room, people from my unit were quietly pushing back their chairs and standing. Nobody was laughing now. The phone Dylan had used to film my humiliation was already sealed inside an evidence bag.
Then Paige opened the divorce filing.
"Dylan made one bad mistake tonight," she said.
Clipped to the petition was a postnuptial agreement, supposedly signed a year and a half earlier. According to that piece of paper, I had willingly turned my inherited house into marital property and given up any claim against the debts Dylan racked up during the marriage.
I had never laid eyes on it.
But there was my signature, right next to a notary stamp.
The notary was listed as Bonnie Frazier — Sharon's sister.
Reyes set a photograph on the table.
It came from a security camera outside Bonnie's office, dated the same day the agreement was supposedly signed.
That day, I was in the field at Fort Johnson, Louisiana.
The photo showed Dylan walking into the office. Sharon was right beside him, holding a folder against her chest.
For the first time all night, my mother-in-law looked scared.
Then Reyes turned to me.
"One more thing," she said. "The metadata on that forged agreement says the file was created yesterday."
Paige's head came up.
Yesterday was the same day Dylan had emailed his own lawyer, swearing the agreement had been sitting in a safe for eighteen months.
Reyes looked back at him. "Somebody built that file the day after your attorney asked you to prove it existed."
May you like
Dylan sat down slowly.
And Sharon whispered, "You told me nobody could trace that."
