Nobody asked me whether I had enough money to pay them.
Nobody suggested that I should accept what had happened and move on.
They asked questions.
Dates.
Company names.
Document numbers.
Signatures.
I answered as best I could.
Reese began examining the records I had gathered.
Within ninety minutes, he found four other businesses that appeared to have followed a similar pattern.
Mesa Tool & Rental.
Canyon Storage Works.
Harper Agricultural Equipment.
Silver Road Repair.
Each owner had either died or become seriously ill.
Each business had entered probate or a temporary transfer period.
Each had received a debt claim from an obscure lender.
Each had lost control of its assets.
And each property had eventually been transferred through a chain of limited liability companies connected to Whitmore & Associates.
I leaned over Reese's shoulder.
"Whitmore?"
He glanced at me.
"Does that name mean anything to you?"
I shook my head.
"Not that I know of."
He enlarged a set of records.
Whitmore & Associates had acted as a registered agent or legal representative in several of the transactions. The same firm had received some of Gerald Fenn's files after his death.
My stomach tightened.
"Carla De Sousa works there."
Reese turned toward me.
"Your attorney?"
"She transferred there eighteen months ago."
He looked at Marcus.
Marcus did not react immediately. He was studying another screen, where Reese had opened the public accident report for Gerald Fenn.
"Pull the investigation details," Marcus said.
Hector moved closer.
"You thinking what I'm thinking?"
"I'm trying not to."
They examined the report.
Route 93.
Two in the morning.
A single-vehicle collision.
No witnesses.
The investigating deputy had been Roy Stoller.
Stoller had since retired from law enforcement and taken a job in private security.
His employer was Whitmore & Associates.
The room became very quiet.
I stared at the screen.
"That's not a coincidence."
Marcus looked at me carefully.
"We don't know that yet."
"My father's attorney challenges a debt claim. He dies. His files go to a firm connected to the people taking the shop. The deputy who closes the accident investigation ends up working for the same firm."
"I hear you."
"Then say it."
"Say what?"
"That I'm imagining things."
Marcus leaned back.
"I don't know enough to say that."
I felt anger rising so quickly that I had to stand.
"For five years, everyone has needed one more document, one more signature, one more expert, one more fee. Meanwhile, they keep everything."
The chair scraped backward across the floor.
"I am tired of people telling me they don't know enough."
Marcus stood too.
He did not raise his voice.
"Then we find enough."
The sentence stopped me.
Not because it was dramatic.
Because no one had ever said we before.
Reese cleared his throat.
"I found something."
We gathered around his laptop.
The document was a probate motion filed by Gerald Fenn six days before his death.
It challenged the Desert Ridge claim.
It argued that the debt was attached to a dissolved company and could not legally be used to seize the assets held by the Walker trust.
My knees weakened.
"What happened to the motion?"
Reese scrolled through the record.
"Nothing."
"Was it denied?"
"No."
"Withdrawn?"
"No."
"Then what happened?"
He turned the screen toward me.
"The motion is still pending."
I stared at the words.
For five years, I had believed that the legal process had rejected my father's claim.
I had believed that the door was closed.
But it had never been closed.
It had simply been left untouched.
My father’s attorney had filed the challenge. The court had never resolved it. The debt claim had continued to be treated as though it were valid while the motion that questioned its validity sat in the system, waiting for someone to notice.
I sat down slowly.
"Five years," I whispered.
Reese nodded.
"Five years."
Marcus picked up his phone.
"Patricia Solano."
Hector looked at him.
"You think she'll come?"
Marcus glanced toward me.
"For Ghost's daughter?"
He nodded once.
"She'll come."
Patricia Solano arrived the following morning wearing a cream suit, silver hair, and the expression of a woman who considered unnecessary confusion a personal insult.
She read the documents for forty minutes.
Nobody interrupted her.