Chapter 12: Forged

At nine on Monday morning, I stood at the county clerk's counter with Jack on one side of me and Dunhill's lawyer on the other.

The lawyer had a briefcase and a face that said he had not enjoyed the weekend.

The clerk was a tired woman with a pencil behind her ear, and she looked at the license I slid across to her, and then she looked at her screen.

"It's in the system," she said. "Filed Friday at four fifty-two."

"I didn't sign it."

"It's notarized."

"I never stood in front of a notary."

She tapped the keyboard and turned the monitor toward me.

On the screen was a scan of the license, and beside it a scan of an affidavit.

The affidavit said that Iris Dunhill Bannon had signed in the presence of a notary at the offices of Brantley Holdings on Friday at three o'clock.

There was a notary stamp.

There was a number.

"Whose stamp is that?" I asked.

"It's registered to an attorney named on the filing," she said. "He's with a firm on Park Avenue."

"Their family lawyer," Jack said. "The one on the courthouse steps."

I nodded.

"Is there a camera?" the lawyer said.

"At the filing window."

"Then I'd like to see it."

The clerk looked at her supervisor, who was standing behind her with his arms folded.

He nodded.

She clicked, and a gray video opened on the monitor.

A woman in a gray blazer and large dark sunglasses stood at the counter, sliding a folder toward a clerk.

Her hair was pinned up, and her hand was steady.

The timestamp read Friday, four fifty-one.

Jack leaned in.

"That's your blazer," he said.

I looked at it.

It was gray wool with a small tear at the cuff where I had caught it on a locker door at school.

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