Chapter 6: The Witness Who Changed Everything
Brenda entered with an investigator and refused to look at Linda.
“You promised not to involve me,” Linda said.
Brenda gripped her handbag.
“You promised the documents were legitimate.”
“You stamped them.”
“Because you said she was too ill to attend.”
I stood.
“You notarized my signature without seeing me?”
Brenda’s eyes filled with tears.
“Linda brought a copy of your driver’s license and a video.”
“What video?”
“A woman held the license beside her face and said she authorized everything.
The image was blurry.”
Linda turned on her.
“You knew exactly what you were doing.”
Brenda shook her head.
“Not at first.
But when I questioned you later, you paid me two thousand dollars to stay quiet.”
Mr.
Collins closed his folder.
“My representation ends now,” he told Linda.
“You can’t abandon me.”
“I can when a client lies about material evidence.”
Linda blocked the door.
“Everyone makes mistakes.
We can settle this privately.”
“No,” I said.
She faced me.
“I’ll repay half.”
“You took sixty-four thousand dollars.”
“I used it to keep my house.”
Carol opened the metal box.
“Your house has been paid off for nine years.”
Linda’s eyes flashed.
“Stay out of this.”
“Then tell us where the money went,” David said.
Linda pointed at him.
“Be careful.
If I fall, I’ll tell your children their father helped me.”
David flinched, but he did not step back.
“Tell them,” he said.
“I’ll answer for my lie.
You will answer for yours.”
Linda turned to me.
“Do you hear him?
He admitted it.
You should be blaming your husband, not me.”
“I do blame him for hiding the first loan.”
David closed his eyes.
“But he didn’t forge my name,” I continued.
“You did.”
Linda reached for the flash drive.
Mia moved it out of reach.
“You people think you’ve won because of one recording?”
Mia held up her phone.
“There are three copies.”
The investigator stepped between them.
“Mrs.
Taylor, do not touch the evidence.”
Linda’s voice softened.
“May I speak to my daughter-in-law alone?”
“No,” I said.
“Then listen carefully.
Withdraw your complaint, and I’ll sign my house over to your children.”
“You said the house needed saving.”
Linda’s mouth tightened.
Carol took out her own phone.
“Tell her what you told me last night.”
“Turn that off.”
“Tell her why you needed the money.”
Linda knocked the phone from Carol’s hand.
It slid across the carpet, still recording.
“Because I deserved something of my own!” Linda shouted.
“I spent my life raising an ungrateful son, and then she came along and took him!”
No one spoke.
David bent down and picked up Carol’s phone.
“You didn’t take the money to save your house,” he said.
“You took it to punish my wife.”
Linda reached for the door.
The investigator stopped her.
“Before you leave, we need the location of the funds.”
“I spent them.”
“On what?”
Linda smiled at me.
“Something she can never recover.”
Ms.
Patel’s assistant hurried in with another folder.
“We traced the transfers,” she said.
“Forty-eight thousand went into an investment account.
The remaining application wasn’t in Mrs.
Taylor’s name.”
“Whose name was it?” I asked.
The assistant looked at David.
“Your seventeen-year-old daughter Sophie’s.”
