The Registry
Thaddeus Lenz did not look like a man who enjoyed being wrong, and when we sat across from him with Renfrew's preliminary report and the notary's account of the break-in, I watched him age five years in real time.
"I read the document that was filed with my office," he said, more than once, like repetition could undo it. "It came to me through the standard channel. Certified, notarized, witnessed. I had no reason to doubt it."
"Someone had every reason to make sure you wouldn't," I said.
It was Georgia who thought to call J. Joffe again, to ask about the private registry he'd mentioned — the one independent notaries used as backup, exactly for situations like a break-in. He called back within the hour, and his voice had an edge to it I hadn't heard before.
"I found the filing," he said. "Logged three weeks before your aunt passed, timestamped, registry reference number and everything. I can send you a certified extract today."
"And the actual document?"
"That's what took me so long. The registry doesn't just log filings — for an extra fee, which your aunt paid, it holds a sealed physical duplicate off-site, specifically for situations where the original might be lost, destroyed, or tampered with." A pause. "She checked that box herself. Paid extra for it. I think she knew, somehow, that this exact thing might happen."
We drove to the registry's storage facility that same afternoon, Lenz following in his own car, unusually silent the whole way.
The sealed envelope they handed us across the counter had Aunt Solange's real signature on the security tape across the flap — the loop of the S loose and fast and certain, nothing like the careful, hesitant version Renfrew had flagged.
Inside was a will naming Della and Georgia Kilbride as primary heirs to the entirety of her estate — the house, the investment accounts, a controlling share in the family textile business none of us had known was worth what it apparently was — with a single explicit line near the end, in Aunt Solange's own handwriting, added as a note beside her signature:
I am aware certain family members may attempt to contest or replace this will after my death. Let the record show I was of entirely sound mind when I wrote it, and I trust whoever finds this to see it through, whatever that requires.
Lenz read it twice, then looked up at us, ashen. "This changes everything. We need to file a formal contest against the document I read at your reading, immediately, and we need to notify—"
His phone rang before he finished the sentence. He answered, listened for ten seconds, and his expression went from ashen to alarmed.
"That was my office," he said slowly, lowering the phone. "Priscilla Doyle was just there. She filed paperwork an hour ago to have the estate's remaining accounts released to her — as executor, under the will I read at that first meeting. If it goes through before we can contest it, she'll have legal access to every asset by tomorrow morning."