“No, it isn’t,” Angela said. “And I’m trying to make it that way again.”
“I don’t know that you can,” she said. “It’s not, … well, as long as these guys are around, it’s not the same.”
“Have they ever contacted you since?”
She shook her head. “No, not really.”
“Not really?” Bonaparte pressed.
She shrugged and glared at him. “You don’t have to be so accusingly about it.”
“I need to know exactly what happened,” he said, “and so does Angela.”
She groaned. “Fine. Every once in a while, they drive by really slow out front.”
“As in a threatening manner?” he asked.
“I don’t know that it’s a threatening manner, as much as I don’t know that it isn’t,” she said. “But it does what it’s intended to do. It made me scared, keeps me scared.”
“But did you do anything wrong?”
“They said we did,” she said in a low whisper. She looked around the block and then said, “You’d better come on inside.” She opened the door wider, and they walked inside.
And as soon as they got in, he leaned against the closed door and said, “What did you do wrong?”
She looked at Angela, and then, with shame in her eyes, she said, “We forged granddad’s signature on the sale form.”
Angela closed her eyes and sighed. “You didn’t have power of attorney, did you?”
“No, he never would give it to us,” she said. “But you know that’s what he wanted to happen. And what we had to have happen.”
“Jesus. And they found out?” Angela asked.
“Yeah, but I don’t know how,” Isabel said. “That’s the thing that I can’t figure out.”
“But, in the meantime, they’re using fear to keep you in line,” Bonaparte noted. “Or just on the hook.”
“I know. The thing is, I mean, we needed to sell. It wouldn’t do any harm to sell to him, so it’s not like we were doing anything wrong there. Granddad was there, but we just helped him to make that signature happen,” she said, with a shrug.
“So you held his hand and signed it for him?” Angela asked.
“Yes.” She shrugged. “Was it wrong? Maybe. We didn’t know what else to do. We actually had a buyer. Granddad had been trying to sell for years anyway, as you well know,” she said in exasperation.
Angela turned to look at her friend. “Sure, but there’s legal, and then there’s not legal.”
“Well, I don’t know what we’re supposed to do if that was not legal,” she said. “But obviously it wasn’t because they keep driving by. Yet they got the property, so why do they care?”
“How often?” Bonaparte had a good idea why, but he kept it to himself. Angela would get it; her friend, well, she hadn’t yet.
“I don’t think it’s that often anymore,” she said, “but every once in a while. It’s just enough. And because I’m always looking for them now, it’s kind of hard because you expect to see them out of the corner of your eye all the time, so it makes you jumpy.”
“What it does,” he said, “is make you look over your shoulder for the rest of your life.”
Her shoulders sagged. “I know,” she said, “but that’s what we did, and I don’t know what I am supposed to do about it.”
“And was it in your granddad’s name, free and clear?” Bonaparte asked.
“Yes,” she said, “and there’s only my mother. It’s in the will that she’s supposed to get it, and we needed the money for his care. He’d been trying to sell it for months and months beforehand.”
He thought about it and nodded. “So, in many ways, you just jumped the gun a little bit.”
“In many ways,” she said, “we were trying to play catch-up. Because he was trying to sell anyway. If this had happened just a little bit earlier, it wouldn’t have mattered, but granddad’s not quite himself anymore. But he does have lucid days.”
“And that would be your argument, right?” Angela asked. “If anybody questioned it, it was on one of his lucid days.”
She nodded slowly. “And remember at that time we didn’t know how bad his mental state was failing. He had many lucid days,” she said, “but he wasn’t really capable of signing very well, so we just helped him.”
“And did you talk to him about it?”
“Yes, and he was excited.”
“So why did you feel like it was illegal?”
“Because he was only lucid for a little bit,” she said, “and we didn’t get the signatures done in time, so we had to give him a little help. So, of course, we felt guilty,” she said, “because it wasn’t quite kosher. But really it was.”
And then Angela just nodded, as if she weren’t quite sure what to think about it. And Bonaparte understood. These things were delicate at the best of times. And was there ever a clear-cut case in an instance like this? “Anybody else see you or know about it?”
“We didn’t think so,” she said. “We were alone in Granddad’s room in the nursing home, so either the buyer guessed, or we let on, or we somehow … I don’t know,” she said in exasperation. “I really don’t know.”
“How long ago was the sale?”
“About four months,” she said.
“And what did you do with the money?”
“It’s in the bank, paying for my mom’s cancer treatments and Granddad’s care.”
“Right,” Bonaparte said. “So, even if he were cognizant and aware, he would have been okay with that, right?”
“Exactly,” she said with relief. “It’s exactly what he would have wanted. We were all very close, weren’t we?” She turned to face Angela, who nodded slowly.
“Yes,” Angela said. “If he were cognizant, he would have definitely signed to help get the money to help your mom. And, like you said, it was for sale for months.”
“Why do you think nobody would buy it?” Bonaparte immediately interrupted.
“I suspect,” Isabel said, “the price we were asking was just too high.”
“That’s possible. And this guy paid full price?”
She winced. “No. It started off that way, but then, before we got
