Latasha told me the property manager was there backing my ex-wife up, that Sherry had a lease with my name on it, signed, and I sat in a johnboat on Bull Shoals with the sun coming up and told her the truth, that I never signed any lease, which meant somebody had forged one.
The Tulsa police confirmed from the deed that I am the sole owner of the duplex, bought in my name alone, and that I live in the unit Sherry was hauling my recliner out of. Then they looked at her lease, and at the property manager vouching for it, and a forged lease with a fraudulent notarization is not a lease, it is evidence.
The property manager Sherry recommended, the one I trusted with a key to rent out the other unit, forged a lease in my name and backed Sherrys story, the two of them working together to move her and her boyfriend into my home and my furniture out of it, but a forged signature does not beat a real deed.
For twenty-two years, whenever Sherry did something, I called her and ended up giving her money. I did not call her. I called the police, and the police do not hand a man his own recliner back with an apology, they hand the forgers a problem.
They stopped the move. My furniture came back in. Sherry and her boyfriend left, and the property manager left faster, because a forged lease with his fingerprints all over it is the kind of thing that ends a mans license and starts a case. It is with the police now.
I drove back the next day, changed every lock, fired the property manager in writing, and found an honest one to manage the rental unit, one Sherry never met. I had a lawyer put the forged lease in front of the district attorney.
The property managers here too, and hes backing her up, Latasha said. He backed the wrong story. A deed in my name beats a lease that never happened, every time, and the man who forged it and the woman he forged it for are learning that on paper now.
I sat back down in that johnboat after I hung up and finished my coffee, because the sun was still coming up over Bull Shoals and my house was still mine and there was nothing left to do but let the law work and enjoy the water. Twenty-two years of giving Sherry money ended the morning she tried to give herself my house.