They Called Me a Fraud I’ll Prove It Was a Crime novel · Chapter 2 of 3

Chapter 2: Under the Passenger Seat

Sadie walks out into the corridor and opens the manila envelope in front of Owen and two board members. The license timestamps put the signing on October 17. Owen reads it twice and says a timestamp is not a signature.

I didn't slam the door.

I wanted to, and I didn't, and that's the whole of my self-control some mornings.

The corridor outside the boardroom is forty feet of gray carpet and one window that looks at a parking garage.

Two board members followed me out.

The one with the coffee, and the woman who had been silent for the entire meeting.

Owen came last.

He didn't hurry. He never hurries.

"Ms. Lowell."

"Give me a second."

"I'll give you one."

I walked to the window and put my forehead against the glass.

It was cold. October in Boston is already cold.

Behind me the door opened again and Spencer came out with his portfolio under his arm.

He stopped four feet away.

"Sadie."

"Don't."

"I'm not here to fight with you."

"Then go back in and withdraw the claim."

His face did the thing it does, the soft patient thing, the face of a man waiting out a storm on a porch.

"I can't do that."

"You filed it."

"Hale Ridge filed it. I'm the signatory."

"Same thing."

"It isn't."

Owen stepped between us.

Not aggressively. He just stepped, and suddenly there was a wall of rolled shirtsleeves in the middle of the corridor.

"Mr. Hale," he said. "You can wait in the conference room."

"I'd rather wait here."

"Then wait there."

Spencer looked at me over Owen's shoulder.

His voice stayed soft.

"You should go home, Sadie. You look tired."

He walked off down the corridor.

The elevator doors closed behind him.

The woman from the board, whose name I'd known since I was seven, said, "Sadie. Is there anything at all?"

"There's one thing."

"Then get it."

"It's in my car."

Owen looked at the window, then at me.

"Your car."

"It's in the garage on the third level."

"Then let's go."

The garage smelled like wet concrete and somebody's cold cigarette.

My car was four spaces from the ramp.

I unlocked it and reached under the passenger seat.

The envelope was still there. Manila, soft at the corners, the flap held with a rubber band I'd put on it myself.

I pulled it out and stood up with it in both hands.

"What is that," Owen said.

"The wedding paperwork."

"The what?"

"When you get married you sign at the county clerk's table. The clerk stamps the license. The officiant signs it. There's a copy for each party."

"And you kept a copy."

"I kept everything."

I opened the envelope on the hood of the car.

The two board members stood on either side of me. Owen stood in front of me with his arms crossed.

The first page was the license.

Santa Monica, County of Los Angeles.

At the bottom, a small square box with a machine print in it.

OCT 17 11:42 AM.

"That's the timestamp," I said. "The clerk stamps it when you sign. It's a county machine. You can't set it."

Owen took the page.

He read it. Then he read it again.

He turned it over and held it up against the garage light, and I watched him look for whatever it is he looks for.

"October seventeenth," he said.

"Eleven forty-two in the morning."

"Four pages."

"Four pages, all stamped at the table. The clerk did them one at a time."

He looked at the second page. The third. The fourth.

The fourth page was the officiant's signature and the county seal.

"That's the whole license packet," he said.

"That's the whole thing."

"And the pledge isn't in it."

"No."

"Because the pledge was dated September second."

"Because somebody put it in the packet later and pulled it back out."

Owen lowered the page.

The two board members were reading over his elbow, and one of them, the man with the coffee, said, "Well, that's something."

"It's something," Owen said.

He handed the pages back to me.

I put them in the envelope and put the rubber band back on.

The garage was quiet. Somewhere above us a car door shut.

"Ms. Lowell."

"Yes."

"This is a county stamp on a wedding license."

"I know what it is."

"It proves you were at a clerk's table in Santa Monica on October seventeenth at eleven forty-two in the morning."

"Yes."

"It doesn't prove what you signed."

I looked at him.

He looked back, and there was nothing unkind in his face and nothing kind either. Just a man doing arithmetic.

"That proves you were at a wedding," he said. "It doesn't prove what you signed."

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