Lucille held up her phone and pressed play, and the voice of the woman who called the title company pretending to be my daughter, trying to redirect all six hundred fifteen thousand dollars, filled my backyard. It was not Holly. It was a woman from Trents office, the one he had been running the whole thing with.
My son-in-law did not act alone, he had a partner, a woman who impersonated my daughter on the phone, which meant Holly had been lied to by her own husband as thoroughly as I had.
Lucille had already exposed the first theft. On May 2nd our office got an email from Guss address changing the escrow instructions, she said, twenty-five thousand dollars went out by wire that afternoon to an account belonging to Trents insurance agency. Rodney said Gus doesnt even do email. No, Lucille said, Trent set one up for him, from Trents own computer, weve traced it, the wires been reported to the bank and the police. Holly turned to her husband, you said Dad was confused. It was a loan, Trent said, I was going to pay it back.
Then Lucille said someone had called pretending to be my daughter to move the rest of the money, and she played the recording.
I am Gus, seventy. I climbed power poles in Bend for thirty-six years. My wife and I built our house on the west side in 1991, and after she passed in 2022 the house got too quiet, so Hollys husband Trent, who sells insurance, offered to help me downsize. He brought the agent and did all the talking, Gus gets confused, run everything through me, hes senile, he cant count his own change, and I was standing right there. The house went under contract for six hundred forty thousand, the buyers put down twenty-five thousand earnest money, and Trent said hed handle the paperwork side.
When I called the title company about that deposit, the lady got quiet and said shed call me back, and that night Trent came to my door, why are you calling the title company, old man, youll blow the deal. I did not argue. The next morning I drove downtown and asked one question and they printed me one page, the email and the wire receipt, and I folded it into my pocket.
A wire moved by a forged email is theft, and the twenty-five thousand was traced straight to Trents own agency account. That alone was the end of him.
And the voice on the recording was not my daughters. It belonged to a woman Trent worked with, who called the title company pretending to be Holly to redirect the whole six hundred fifteen thousand. Holly went white, I never called anybody, and Lucille said, I know, we record every call. My daughter had been used by her husband, who had a partner in the scheme she knew nothing about, and whatever else that meant for their marriage, Holly learned it standing in my backyard.
Trent faced the law, not my anger, for the wire fraud and the forged email and the impersonation his partner carried out. A man who tells a whole party the old lineman will put the milk in the oven had better be sure the old lineman does not drive downtown and ask one question.
Hes senile, he cant count his own change, Trent told the agent. I counted every mile up a power pole for thirty-six years, and I counted exactly what was missing from my own sale. The house was mine, the money stayed mine, and the only one who turned out not to understand what was happening was the daughter who kept telling me to just sign what he said.
I signed nothing more. I moved into my little apartment near the river with all six hundred forty thousand where it belonged, and Holly moved in with me for a while, the two of us finally on the same side of the truth.