Harold Mercer’s office occupied the second floor of an old brick building downtown, above a pharmacy and across from the courthouse. The brass plaque beside the stairwell still carried his name, though the lettering had faded. By the time Toby, Paige, and I arrived, a light had begun to fall rain against the windows. Harold met us at the door himself. He looked older than I remembered, thinner through the shoulders, with silver hair combed neatly back. The moment he saw Toby, however, something in his face softened.
“My God,” he said. “You have Leon’s eyes.”
Toby did not seem to know what to do with that. “People used to say that.”
“They were right.”
Harold led us into a conference room lined with dark wooden shelves. No receptionist was there. No other employees appeared. On the table waited a legal pad, three glasses of water, and a thick envelope sealed with red wax that seemed almost theatrical until Harold placed the blue folder beside it.
“You brought it,” he said.
“Yes.”
He rested his hand on the folder but did not open it immediately. “Before we begin, I need all three of you to understand something. Leon did not ask me to keep secrets for dramatic effect. He was trying to protect his family while avoiding unnecessary suspicion.”
Paige sat rigidly beside Toby. “Suspicion of whom?”
Harold looked at me.
I answered for him. “People who might use Toby to reach the family assets.”
Toby rubbed both hands over his face. “I still don’t understand why Dad thought that could happen.”
“You were young,” Harold said. “And Leon believed being trusting was one of your better qualities.”
“That sounds like a polite way to call me gullible.”
“No. Gullibility means failing to recognize obvious danger. Your father worried that you gave people repeated chances after recognizing it.”
The accuracy of that statement made Toby look away.
Harold opened the blue folder. He sorted the contents into three stacks. “Leon created the Huitt Family Preservation Trust shortly before his death. He was already ill, though he had told very few people how serious it was.”
I stared at him. “I knew he was sick.”
“You did not know how certain he was about the timeline.”
My throat tightened. Even after twelve years, Leon could still leave me new grief.
Harold continued carefully. “The trust was designed to protect the home, the lake property, and certain investments. Mara retained full lifetime use and control. Toby became successor beneficiary, but only under conditions intended to prevent coercion, reckless transfer, or third-party manipulation.”
Toby frowned. “Why didn’t Mom know all of that?”
“She knew what she needed to know to live normally. Leon did not want her spending the rest of her life guarding against hypothetical enemies.”
I almost smiled. “That sounds like him.”
Harold picked up the sealed envelope.
“This, however, was meant for a very specific circumstance.”
“What circumstance?” Paige asked.
Harold turned the envelope over. Leon’s handwriting covered the back.
Open if Mara reports unauthorized financial activity involving family property, or if Toby’s decisions appear influenced by someone seeking access to trust assets.
Nobody spoke.
Harold looked at me.
“Yesterday’s party charges alone would not necessarily have triggered this.”
“The cabin transaction does,” I said.
“Yes.”
He broke the seal.
Inside were several typed pages and one handwritten letter.
Harold read silently for a moment, then passed the letter to me.
Mara—
If you are reading this, I was probably right about one thing I hoped to be wrong about.
I stopped.
My vision blurred immediately.
Toby touched my arm.
I kept reading.
Leon wrote that he had noticed repeated questions about our finances entering Toby’s life through adults around him. At first he dismissed them as curiosity. Then someone had attempted to obtain the estimated value of the lake property by falsely claiming to represent our family.
Harold had traced the inquiry.
The contact information led to a business associate of Sherry Lamb.
Paige inhaled sharply.
“No.”
Harold nodded. “Yes.”
She looked at him. “Why didn’t anyone tell my mother?”
“We didn’t have proof she directed it.”
“Then why put her name in these files?”
“Because she later called me personally.”
Paige’s lips parted.
Toby stared at Harold. “About what?”
“Whether assets transferred automatically to you if Leon died.”
The rain ticked harder against the window.
I watched Paige shrink inward, not physically but emotionally, as though each sentence removed one assumption she had lived with since adolescence.
Harold continued. “I told her I could not discuss a client’s affairs. She then claimed she was asking because you and Paige were serious and she wanted to understand your future.”
“I was sixteen,” Toby said again.
“Yes.”
“That’s insane.”
Harold did not disagree.
Paige whispered, “My mother plans everything.”
We turned to her.
“She planned my college before I was in high school. She picked neighborhoods she thought I should live in. She used to tell me which boys had ‘prospects.’”
Toby looked at her.
“You never told me that.”
“I thought it was normal.”
The same sentence could have described half of our mistakes.
Harold returned to Leon’s letter.
My husband had not believed Sherry was necessarily dangerous. He described her as ambitious, intrusive, and preoccupied with financial security. He also wrote something that unsettled me more than an accusation would have.
Pressure doesn’t always look like pressure, Mara. Sometimes it looks like help.
I read that line twice.
It explained too much.
The invitations Sherry “helped” manage.
The finances she “helped” Paige organize.
The business contacts she “helped” Toby meet.
The birthday she “helped” expand.
Harold slid a typed document toward Toby.
“This is the trust restriction relevant to you.”
Toby read.
His face tightened.
“So I can’t sell the cabin.”
“You cannot unilaterally sell trust property while Mara is living.”
“What if Mom agreed?”
“Then a proper review would occur.”
“And somebody tried anyway?”
“That is what we need to determine.”
Paige leaned forward. “Could the eighteen-five be a legitimate transaction someone started by mistake?”
Harold looked at her.
“It could.”
She exhaled.
“But the fact that the amount is written on papers found in your mother’s home makes coincidence difficult to assume.”
Paige’s relief disappeared.
Harold then opened a secure file on his computer.
“Last month, a man named Calvin Reed contacted my office.”
The name meant nothing to me.
It meant something to Paige.
She stiffened.
Toby noticed. “You know him?”
“My mother knows him.”
“How?”
“He buys distressed property. She mentioned him a few times.”
Harold nodded grimly. “Mr. Reed claimed Toby wished to explore a partial release of the lake property.”
Toby stood.
“I never contacted anyone.”
“I know.”
“How?”
“Because the trust requires identity verification. When his paperwork failed that stage, I rejected the request.”
Toby sat again.
“Why didn’t you call me?”
“I tried.”
He looked confused.
Harold turned his monitor.
Three emails had been sent to Toby over the previous month.
All went to an address Toby had stopped using years ago.
“That isn’t my current email.”
“I know that now.”
“Who gave Reed that address?”
“He supplied it as yours.”
Paige put both hands over her mouth.
“What?” Toby asked.
She stared at the screen.
“My mother still has that address.”
“How?”
“She used it when she helped organize our wedding accounts. You kept it for vendor mail.”
Toby looked from Paige to Harold.
Harold tapped another file.
“Mr. Reed also supplied a copy of identification.”
Toby’s face hardened.
“What identification?”
Harold rotated the monitor.
A scan of Toby’s driver’s license appeared.
Toby leaned closer.
“That’s my old license.”
Paige went pale.
The address on it was the apartment where she and Toby had lived during the first year of their marriage.
Harold said, “Would your mother have had access to a copy?”
Paige did not answer at first.
Then she whispered, “Yes.”
Toby stood and walked to the window.
I could see anger moving through him now, but beneath it was humiliation. He had spent the night discovering that decisions he thought were random, harmless, or familial might have been pieces of a much older pattern.
“Why only eighteen-five?” I asked.
Harold turned to me.
“If the property is worth significantly more, why attempt such a small amount?”
He picked up another document.
“Because it appears to have been a deposit.”
My stomach tightened.
“For what?”
“A purchase option.”
Toby turned from the window.
Harold slid the paper forward.
The proposed agreement valued the lake parcel at $210,000.
The number from the back of the guest list.
I stared at it.
“That land is worth more than that.”
“Much more,” Harold said.
“How much?”
“Recent comparable parcels suggest between six hundred fifty and seven hundred thousand.”
Paige whispered, “Oh my God.”
Toby returned to the table.
“So somebody was trying to get control of a seven-hundred-thousand-dollar property for two-ten?”
Harold nodded.
“And the deposit?”
“Eighteen thousand five hundred dollars to secure the option before full transfer.”
“Who receives that money?”
“According to the draft paperwork, the beneficiary representative.”
“What does that mean?”
Harold took a breath.
“It means somebody represented themselves as authorized to negotiate on behalf of your trust interest.”
Toby’s face went still.
“Who?”
Harold turned another page.
The signature line contained Toby Huitt.
The handwriting did not resemble Toby’s.
Below it was a witness signature.
Paige Lamb Huitt.
Paige recoiled.
“That is not my signature.”
Toby stared at her name.
“Are you sure?”
She looked at him with such naked hurt that he immediately regretted the question.
“Yes, Toby. I’m sure.”
Harold said quietly, “I believe you.”
Paige pointed at the signature. “Who forged that?”
Before Harold could answer, his telephone rang.
He looked at the display.
Then at me.
“It’s Calvin Reed.”
No one moved.
Harold answered on speaker.
“Mercer.”
A man’s voice came through.
“Harold, I need to know why the option deposit was blocked.”
Harold’s expression remained neutral.
“There are authorization problems.”
“The family signed.”
“Which family member?”
A pause.
“Toby Huitt.”
Toby leaned toward the phone, but Harold raised one hand.
“Who introduced you to Mr. Huitt?”
Another pause.
Then Calvin Reed said, “His mother-in-law.”
Paige closed her eyes.
Harold continued. “Sherry Lamb?”
“Yes.”
“And she told you Toby authorized the deal?”
“She told me the family was ready to move.”
“Did you speak directly with Toby?”
“No. She said he preferred to keep distance because of tensions with his mother.”
I felt cold.
“What tensions?” Harold asked.
Reed hesitated.
“She said Mara Huitt was becoming difficult about money and that the family needed the property arrangement completed before she interfered.”
Toby looked at me.
His face crumpled.
Harold asked one final question.
“When did Mrs. Lamb first contact you?”
Reed answered.
“About nine months ago.”
The birthday dinner had been planned only four months earlier.
Whatever Sherry was doing had begun long before my missing chair.
Click here to continue reading: PART 7: Paige Returned to Her Mother’s House for Answers and Found Evidence the Birthday Party Was Meant to Distract Us From a Deadline
I Planned My Son’s Fortieth Birthday With Twenty-Four Chairs, Until Someone Quietly Decided Mine Was the One They Could Remove
Part 6 of 47
