“…Courtney Lindqvist,” I read aloud, in my kitchen, with the airline confirmation flat under my hand. Two passengers, one way, Kansas City to Belize City, Friday morning at 6:15. Richard Coleman. Courtney Lindqvist. I knew the second name, because she answered the telephone at Rick pool supply business and sent me a Christmas card every year with a picture of her cat. A thin young woman with bright red lipstick, the bookkeeper, who had once told me with a smile that Rick was a very hard man to leave. I put down my reading glasses. I felt very calm, and very cold.
Don used to say that in forty years as an insurance adjuster he had learned only one thing for certain, and that was that fraud is never a surprise to the people who live beside it. I laid the papers out on the table in a row. The gray box. The cash, which I counted twice, in my best church secretary hand. Forty one thousand dollars. Don watch, with its cracked leather band. The forged mortgage papers. And the tickets. It was Tuesday. Rick would leave on Friday. I had three days to save my daughter house, and I did not have a plan.
I made a pot of strong tea and sat with my small black notebook, the same one I used for the church bulletin. On the first page I wrote, in capital letters, WHO CAN I TRUST? The list was short. A retired colleague of Don, a man named Mr. Alvarez, who had worked fraud investigations for the state. A young pastor at First Methodist. And, most of all, Amy, who knew nothing. I looked at the clock. It was half past nine at night. I picked up the telephone and called Mr. Alvarez, who answered on the first ring, as if he had been waiting.
A gray metal box under a rose bed, a forged mortgage, and a second name on a plane ticket.
He listened for twenty minutes without interrupting. Then he said, in his dry, comfortable voice, that I had done very well, and that he wanted me to do exactly four things. First, to photograph every page of the documents. Second, to put the originals in a safe place. Third, to call nobody else. Fourth, to meet him at a diner on Metcalf at seven in the morning with my daughter. He said, “Eleanor, she must hear this from you, and she must see the paper. It will be a hard morning. But it will be the right one.”
Amy came at seven, in her scrubs, anxious and a little cross, because I had asked her to leave the children with a neighbor. I will not describe the next half hour in detail. I laid the mortgage papers in front of her, with the signature on every page. She looked at them. She turned to the last. She put a hand over her mouth. She said, very quietly, “Mom, that is not my handwriting. That is not even close.” Mr. Alvarez nodded. He said, “No, it is not. It is a forgery, and a poor one.”
Then I showed her the airline confirmation. I watched her read her husband name, and the name beside it. She read both twice. She did not cry. She sat very still, with her hands flat on the table, and I saw, with a pang, how much she looked like her father. She said, finally, “Courtney. He told me she was helping with the books.” She looked at me. “Mom, I think I have known for a long time. I just did not want to.” I took her hand. I said, “I know, baby. I know.”
Mr. Alvarez had made calls. By noon, a detective from the Overland Park police and an agent from the state attorney general were seated at my kitchen table, with coffee and my good china. They took copies of everything. They explained that a forged mortgage was a serious felony, and that a man leaving the country with a stolen fortune was in a hurry that the law could use. They asked whether I would be willing to help. I said I had been a church secretary for thirty eight years, and that I could be very discreet.
On Friday morning at five, Amy and I sat in an unmarked car in the short term lot at Kansas City International, with a thermos of coffee and my knitting. At 5:20, Rick arrived in his white truck, with Courtney in the passenger seat, and a large black duffel in the bed. They walked toward the terminal, laughing, arm in arm. Two officers in plain clothes, and the detective, stepped out from behind a concrete pillar. I did not see the arrest itself, because the detective had asked me kindly to stay in the car, and for once in my life I obeyed. I only heard Rick shout, once, a terrible bewildered noise, like a boy.
He was released on bond, and pleaded guilty four months later to forgery and fraud. The mortgage was voided. Courtney testified for the state and received probation. Amy filed for divorce in the spring, with a lawyer from my old church, and she kept the house. I gave her back Don watch, and she gave it to her son. The rose bed, which had been dug up by the police, she replanted herself, on her knees, in the April rain, with her children handing her the bulbs.
On the Easter after that, I came for ham, and they set a place for me at the long table in the dining room. Amy had put out the good tablecloth and a bowl of yellow tulips. My granddaughter had made a place card in crayon. It said Grandma, in very large letters, with a drawing of a dog. I sat down. The dog put its head in my lap. And my daughter, at the head of the table, lifted her glass and said, with her eyes shining, “To Mom, who watches.”