Chapter 22: The Signed Folder

I stood up from table 14, and three hundred heads followed me.

I didn't walk to the stage.

At table 31, Constance had already risen, with her cane planted and her pale eyes on Margo.

Beside her sat a woman in a rain-spotted coat, with a government badge clipped to her pocket.

"Mrs. Thornbury asked me to come as her guest," the woman said, loud enough for the back wall.

"I'm the county clerk."

A murmur ran across the ballroom.

"Ms. Winslow, you hold up a license," the clerk said. "I issued it, so I read the file this week."

Margo lowered the folder an inch.

"The application was filed by you as the planner, for photographs, on a form Mr. Thornbury signed at your request."

"He signed it at the altar!"

"He signed a form you told him was a prop, and the officiant took cash to say it wasn't."

The clerk looked at her tablet.

"I have a statement from the officiant, a binder, and your assistant's emails from Thursday."

At the control table, the small woman in the black blazer lifted her chin.

"The finding is one line," the clerk said.

"This license was obtained by fraud and is void from the day it was issued."

The ballroom went completely silent.

"I've referred the file to the state attorney general."

Margo's hand began to shake.

The folder slipped from her fingers, hit the stage and slid open.

Inside lay a single sheet with two signatures on it, Dawson's loose and laughing, Margo's small and neat.

Nobody picked it up.

Near the doors, a man in a black vest set down a tray of champagne flutes.

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