A Company With No Name I Knew

That night, in a motel room ten minutes from the safest place I'd ever slept, I called my assistant, Faye Nolan, and asked her to do the thing she does better than anyone I've ever hired: pull a thread until something falls apart.

"County property records," I said. "Larkspur Lane, Miller's Creek. I need the sale listing, the buyer, everything."

"On it. Bad time to plan a whole real estate investigation, boss, you know it's nearly ten p.m.?"

"I know."

She called back in forty minutes, which for Faye was practically instant.

"Okay. Property's listed under an LLC — Crestline Holdings Group. Filed with the state two months ago. Registered agent's a P.O. box." A pause, keys clicking. "Guess who's listed as the sole managing member."

"Just tell me."

"Garrett R. Voss."

I sat down on the edge of the motel bed slow enough that the springs didn't even creak.

"Say that again."

"Garrett Voss. Your aunt's great-nephew, right? He's not selling her house to some stranger, Terrence. He formed a shell company two months ago, and that shell company is the buyer. He's buying his own great-aunt's house from her. Below market, probably — you want me to pull the contract price?"

"Yes."

Another minute of silence on the line while I stared at a water stain on the ceiling shaped like nothing in particular.

"One-forty," Faye said. "County assessor's got the place valued at two-ten, conservatively, and that's before you account for the lot — it's a quarter acre in a neighborhood that's gentrifying fast. He's not just taking her house. He's taking a hundred thousand dollars out of an eighty-year-old woman's pocket and calling it help."

I thought about the bruise on Odessa's wrist. The unopened mail. The unplugged phone.

"There's more," Faye said, and something in her voice had gone careful, the tone she uses right before she hands me bad news wrapped in worse news. "I ran his name a little further. He was let go from a financial advisory job four years ago. Internal complaint. Never made it to charges — company just quietly cut him loose."

"For what?"

"Mismanaging an elderly client's account."

This wasn't Garrett's first house.