Chapter 3 - The Notary Who Sold Her Soul for Five Grand
The basement door was hanging open, its brass latch chewed up by what looked like the blade of a heavy crowbar.
I didn’t need Officer Miller to tell me to stay back, but I followed the sweep of his flashlight beam down the narrow steps anyway. In the corner behind the water heater, the removable floorboard had been tossed aside like scrap lumber. Beneath it sat my fireproof SentrySafe.
The digital keypad was battered to pieces. The door had been pried loose with industrial leverage, leaving twisted gray steel yawning open like an empty mouth.
Inside, nothing remained.
No birth certificates. No deed to the 160-acre farmland outside Galena. And most critically, no blue-leather folder containing Evelyn Vance’s irrevocable living trust.
"They brought a flat bar and a three-pound sledge," Officer Miller said, crouching to inspect the concrete dust scattered across the floor. "They didn't guess the combination. They knew exactly where it was, what was inside, and came equipped to butcher it."
"Brittany stayed here two summers ago," I whispered. The chill of the basement seemed to seep right through the soles of my boots. "She helped me bring winter coats down. She watched me tuck the floorboard back into the groove. She laughed and called it my little pirate hoard."
My phone vibrated against my hip. It was Naomi Ward again.
"Avery, are you sitting down?" Naomi’s voice was crisp, entirely devoid of the sleepiness you’d expect from someone working past 9:00 PM.
"I’m standing in my looted basement. Give it to me straight."
"The commercial trust wire for the 2.2 million didn’t originate from O’Hare," Naomi said, the clicking of her mechanical keyboard audible in bursts. "Diane didn’t do it from her phone. A third party walked into a boutique private wealth branch in Oak Brook at 4:45 PM—fifteen minutes before closing—with your grandmother’s original land deeds, Evelyn's death certificate, and a freshly minted quitclaim transfer deed bearing your signature."
"Who walked in?"
"A woman presenting herself as your designated legal proxy. She had an Illinois notary seal belonging to Clara Simmons—the same notary who signed off on the bogus power-of-attorney Brittany bragged about at the gate. But this proxy wasn't Brittany or Diane. The branch surveillance captured a woman in her late forties, wearing a dark trench coat, blonde wig, and oversized tortoiseshell glasses."
My knuckles went white against the wooden railing. "Clara Simmons herself."
"Bingo," Naomi replied. "She didn't just rubber-stamp the document for five hundred bucks in a back alley. She took a cut of the action. She stepped in as the strawman to execute the transfer while your mother and sister created a circus at the airport to draw all our attention."
"Can you track her?"
"The Cook County State’s Attorney just issued an expedited warrant for Simmons's arrest on felony counts of official misconduct, identity theft, and grand larceny. The Oak Brook branch flagged the transaction because of the fraud hold we’d placed on your Social Security number three hours earlier. She fled the branch when the branch manager stepped into the back office to 'verify the signature card.'"
"Where is she now?"
"Oak Brook PD found her car parked outside a twenty-four-hour packaging center off Route 83. The engine was still warm. Officer Miller needs to get you over to the precinct, Avery. Detective Kowalski from Financial Crimes wants your sworn affidavit before Simmons realizes her co-conspirators are already in zip-ties at Terminal 2."
Ten minutes later, I was in the passenger seat of Officer Miller’s cruiser, the red-and-blue strobes painting the darkened suburban avenues in sharp, rhythmic flashes. My mind raced through every interaction I’d had with Diane over the last six months.
The dropped hints.
The sudden, false sweetness.
“Avery, honey, Grandma Evelyn was old-fashioned. She didn’t believe girls should handle commercial real estate. You should let an older woman with life experience oversee the Galena acreage.”
I had ignored her. I had buried the deeds deeper. But Diane had never stopped digging. She hadn’t just wanted a vacation or petty revenge for being cut off from my paycheck. She had orchestrated an entire corporate liquidation designed to strip me down to zero, bleed Evelyn’s estate dry, and vanish across state lines before the banks opened on Monday morning.
When we pulled into the parking lot of the Cook County Sheriff’s substation in Maywood, two unmarked sedans were idling near the sally port.
Detective Kowalski was waiting inside the glass vestibule. He was a stocky man with thinning gray hair, an unbuttoned trench coat, and the exhausted, cynical eyes of a cop who had seen every conceivable permutation of human greed.
"Ms. Collins," he said, shaking my hand with a grip like an iron vise. "Your mother is currently screaming in Interview Room B that she has diplomatic immunity because she bought a timeshare in Cabo. Your sister is in Interview Room D dry-heaving into a trash can. But the real prize just walked into our net twenty minutes ago."
He led me through a heavy set of security doors, down a corridor lined with cinderblock walls painted institutional beige. We stopped outside an observation room fitted with a one-way mirror.
Inside sat a woman with smeared mascara and a cheap, crooked blonde wig resting on the metal table in front of her. She was shivering inside an oversized beige cardigan, clutching a paper cup of water like it was a life preserver.
"Clara Simmons," Kowalski said quietly, tapping the glass. "Forty-seven years old. Runs a franchised mailbox shop. Her personal accounts show three separate maxed-out credit lines, an underwater mortgage, and twenty-eight thousand dollars in delinquent online casino debts. Your mother found her on Craigslist under an ad offering 'flexible mobile notary services.'"
"Did she talk?" I asked.
"She spilled everything the second our deputies blocked her bumper at the strip mall," Kowalski said, pulling a yellow legal pad from beneath his arm. "Diane promised her ten percent of the Galena land sale. They had an offshore buyer lined up through a shell LLC registered in Belize. They weren't just going to wire the 2.2 million from the cash trust, Avery. They were selling the entire 160-acre Vance family farm out from under you for pennies on the dollar."
A cold, hard knot formed in my chest. That farm was where my father had taught me to ride horses. It was where Evelyn had sat on the wraparound porch, shelling peas, telling me that independence wasn't something people gave you—it was something you defended with both hands.
"Can they touch the land?" I asked, my voice dropping an octave.
"Not anymore," Kowalski said with a thin, humorless smile. "We caught the deed transfer in mid-air. But Simmons gave us something even better. She handed over Diane’s burner phone. And on that phone is a string of text messages from two weeks ago."
Kowalski turned the legal pad toward me. Photocopied screenshots of text bubbles stared back under the harsh fluorescent lights.
Diane: Make sure the quitclaim lists both parcels. If the little bitch comes home early from Chicago, she won’t even have a bed to sleep on. She’ll have to sign whatever settlement we put in front of her just to avoid bankruptcy.
Simmons: What if she checks the land registry online?
Diane: She won’t. She trusts Brittany. Brittany told her she was house-sitting to water the plants. By the time Avery figures out the locks were picked, our plane touches down in Maui, the escrow clears in Belize, and we’re untouchable.
"Untouchable," I repeated, the word tasting like ash in my mouth.
"Diane thought that because Hawaii was an island, extradition would take weeks and give her time to move the funds through secondary shell accounts," Kowalski chuckled darkly. "She watches too many daytime crime dramas. An interstate wire fraud warrant issued by the feds doesn't care about ocean views."
The door behind us swung open. A younger deputy poked his head into the viewing room.
"Detective? The older suspect in Room B wants to make her one phone call. She’s demanding her daughter come in there right now, or she’s going to sue the department for elder abuse."
Kowalski looked at me, an eyebrow arched in silent question. "You don't have to face her, Ms. Collins. You can go home, get some sleep, let the prosecutors take over."
May you like
I looked through the glass at the trembling notary who had tried to erase my family’s heritage for a gambling fix. Then I thought of my empty rooms, my father’s stolen crystal, and the yellow note mocking me from the kitchen counter.
"No," I said, rolling up my sleeves. "Take me to Room B. I want to look my mother in the eye while she realizes she's spending the rest of her golden years in a federal penitentiary."
