My attorney, Rachel, told me not to call Melissa.
I had already reached for my phone.
I stopped.
"Tell me exactly what you need from me," I said.
"Everything you have concerning the property. Purchase documents. Management agreements. Your actual signature from the same period. Any emails or messages involving your mother, sister, or the vacation."
"I have all of it."
"Good. Don't alter anything. Don't delete messages. Don't warn anyone."
Her voice had changed.
This wasn't the reassuring tone she used when helping me review a contract. She was precise now, almost clipped, because every careless conversation could become another problem.
"I need to know something," I said.
"What?"
"Could someone actually use this agreement to claim they had a right to stay there?"
"That depends on what it is and how it was created."
"It has my name."
"That's not enough."
I sent her the photograph Denise had taken.
Rachel called again less than ten minutes later.
"The signature is suspicious."
My stomach tightened.
"Suspicious how?"
"It resembles yours, but the pressure and spacing don't match your other signatures."
"Can you prove that?"
"Not from a photograph."
She paused.
"But there's something else."
"What?"
"The document says the rental was paid in full."
I frowned.
"Yes."
"How?"
"I don't know."
"That's the problem. If you supposedly rented the property to your sister, there should be a payment trail."
"There isn't one."
"Exactly."
I looked at the spreadsheet on my laptop.
"There couldn't be. I own it."
"Then whoever created this document may have assumed no one would look closely at the transaction."
I stared at the forged agreement.
The person who created it hadn't simply copied my signature.
They had constructed an explanation.
A story in which I had rented my own property to my family, collected six thousand dollars, and then somehow decided to lock them out.
It was ridiculous.
But it was the kind of ridiculous thing that could become dangerous if repeated often enough.
"Rachel."
"Yes?"
"What should I do about Mom?"
"Nothing."
"What about Melissa?"
"Nothing."
"Her lawyer?"
"Don't speak to him directly."
I leaned back in the chair.
"What happens now?"
"Now we preserve evidence."
That afternoon, Rachel asked me to send every document related to the property.
The purchase agreement.
The deed.
The corporate ownership records.
The property-management contract.
The insurance policy.
The original electronic-lock records.
The renovation invoices.
The bank statements showing every payment connected to the house.
I had all of them.
That was one advantage of being meticulous.
I didn't trust memory.
I trusted records.
By evening, Rachel had identified something else.
"The agreement has a problem," she said.
"What?"
"The property description."
I opened the document.
"What about it?"
"The legal description is outdated."
I frowned.
"Outdated?"
"It uses the parcel information from before the county reassessment."
"Could that happen accidentally?"
"Yes."
"Could someone have copied it from an older document?"
"Also yes."
"But if someone created this recently, why use an old description?"
Rachel paused.
"Because they may not have had access to the current file."
The room seemed suddenly colder.
"Meaning?"
"Meaning whoever created this may have gotten their information from a document that was already in the family's possession."
I thought about my mother.
Then Melissa.
Then Kyle.
I had never given any of them my corporate files.
But there was one possibility.
The property purchase had been discussed at Thanksgiving.
Mom had asked me where I got the house.
I had shown her a photograph.
I had explained that the previous owner had lost it after a foreclosure.
Melissa had been sitting across the table.
She hadn't seemed interested.
At the time.
Now I remembered her asking one strange question.
"Is it under your name?"
I had laughed.
"Technically, no. One of my companies owns it."
She had changed the subject.
I hadn't thought about that conversation in months.
Now I couldn't stop thinking about it.
Rachel asked, "Does your sister know the company's name?"
"Probably."
"Did she ever see a document?"
"No."
"Did your mother?"
"I don't think so."
"Don't assume."
I closed my eyes.
"Okay."
"Emily?"
"Yes?"
"If you're remembering conversations now, write them down."
I opened a notebook.
For the next hour, I reconstructed everything I could remember.
Dates.
Questions.
Comments.
Requests.
Odd moments.
The more I wrote, the more uncomfortable I became.
There had been questions I had dismissed because they seemed harmless.
Melissa asking whether the beach property had a mortgage.
Kyle asking whether I personally owned the furnishings.
Mom asking how much the house could rent for during summer.
At the time, I had answered casually.
Now those questions looked different.
That night, Denise called again.
"Emily, there's another development."
I sat upright.
"What?"
"Melissa's lawyer sent a letter."
"What does it say?"
"He claims she paid you six thousand dollars for exclusive use of the property."
"She didn't."
"I know."
"He also says you breached the agreement by denying access."
I felt a slow pressure behind my eyes.
"Did he attach the same document?"
"Yes."
"Anything else?"
"He attached a screenshot of a bank transfer."
My heart stopped.
"To me?"
"That's what it appears to show."
I asked her to send it.
The screenshot arrived.
There it was.
A transfer for exactly six thousand dollars.
The recipient line showed the name of one of my companies.
I stared at it.
For several seconds, I couldn't breathe properly.
Then I noticed the date.
It was three months earlier.
I had never seen the transaction.
Rachel was still on the phone when I called her.
"I have another document."
"Send it."
I did.
She studied it.
Then she said, "Don't panic."
"I wasn't planning to."
"You were about to."
"I want to know what this is."
"I do too."
"Can someone fake a bank transfer?"
"Yes."
"Would it be easy?"
"Not necessarily."
I looked at the screenshot again.
"Then how?"
"I don't know yet."
She paused.
"Call your bank."
I did.
The bank confirmed what I already suspected.
There had been no six-thousand-dollar deposit.
The screenshot was false.
But the account information shown in it was real.
That meant whoever created it knew the account details of my company.
I sat silently while Rachel listened.
"Emily?"
"I'm here."
"This is no longer a simple forged rental agreement."
"I know."
"We need to find out how they got the information."
I looked at the document on my screen.
For the first time, the possibility frightened me.
Someone hadn't merely copied my signature.
Someone had been studying my business.
And I had a terrible suspicion about where they had learned enough to try.
Click here to continue reading: PART 6: The Bank Records Exposed a Second Lie, And My Sister Suddenly Had a Reason to Fear What I Might Find
The Message That Turned a Family Vacation Into Something None of Us Had Planned For
Part 5 of 12
