Chapter 6
The woman with the auburn ponytail crossed the bar in about eight strides, pulled out the chair across from Emma and set her leather notebook on the table.
“Emma Kendrick.”
“Yes.”
“Maeve Corwin. Nice to meet you.”
They shook hands. The handshake was firm and quick. Up close, her eyes were blue, a shade darker than Connie's. There was a small scattering of freckles across the bridge of her nose that softened what would otherwise have been a very serious face.
“Thank you for coming,” Emma said.
“We'll see.” Maeve pulled her chair in. “Before we start, I want to say the same thing I told my aunt because it matters.
I'm not licensed to practice law in Florida.
I can't file anything on your behalf. I can't appear for you in a Florida court. Whatever the two of us talk about at this table is a conversation between two friends and nothing else.”
“I understand.”
“Good.” Maeve opened the leather notebook, uncapped a fountain pen and looked up. “Walk me through it.”
She took the legal pad out of her bag and set it on the table between them.
“My grandmother died a little over a year ago. My uncle Arthur, her son and the executor under an earlier will, has spent the last decade renting out her Key West cottage without her knowledge.”
“You have proof of that?”
“Well, I can prove the last three years at least. There's a tenant living there now. Beyond that, I suspect that whenever my grandmother wasn't around or was in the hospital, he collected money somehow.”
“What makes you so sure?”
Emma didn't want to say any of this out loud.
But there was no way around it. “Let's just say my uncle took advantage of his mother and her money over the years she was alive.
My grandmother had a beautiful and forgiving heart.
Arthur was her son. And so she'd forgive him time and again. And now he plans to sell it. That house is where my father grew up and where I spent every summer as a child.”
“Emma, if your uncle inherited the cottage, he could rent it to whomever he chooses, and he can sell it if he wants.”
“I understand that. But I received a call two nights ago from the buyer’s title broker, Samantha Larson.
She found a copy of a later will. In the Monroe County property records that names me as the beneficiary of the cottage.
The closing is in ten days. Can he still do that if there's any suspicion that he's not the rightful owner? Here, look at my notes.”
Emma turned her legal pad around so Maeve could read her notes and walked her through all of it.
The address. The recorded owner. The buyer’s LLC.
The closing date. The name of Samantha Larson at Coastal Title.
The dated will attached to a homestead notice.
It was witnessed and notarized in Miami-Dade County.
Then there was Jake Kelleher’s information about the letter he received.
Maeve stopped writing on the last one.
“Tell me about this letter.”
“The tenant, Jake Kelleher, has been living in the cottage for three years.
He signed his lease with my Uncle Arthur.
He paid him rent monthly ever since. Two weeks ago, he received a letter that told him the property was under contract.
And that closing was scheduled. And that the new owners plan to keep him on as tenant.
He was told he didn't need to worry about moving.”
“Who signed the letter?”
“A name he didn't recognize. There was a phone number, but he never called it.”
“Did he show you the letter?”
“Not yet. I didn't ask to see it. He told me what was in the letter.”
“Did Samantha Larson's office send that letter?”
“No. She told me on the phone this morning that it didn't come from her and it didn't come from the buyer. The buyer is a short-term rental LLC that wouldn't keep a long-term tenant on.”
Maeve wrote for a while without saying anything.
“That letter matters. If Arthur signed it or had somebody sign it for him, it's a written communication in furtherance of a fraudulent sale. Depending on exactly what it says and whose name is on it, it’s documentary evidence. Probate contest and possibly a criminal referral.”
Emma was shocked.
“Did your grandmother ever tell you that she wanted you to have the cottage?”
Emma nodded.” She did, although I have no way of proving that.”
“I want to see that letter today. Can you get it from Jake?”
“I can ask.”
“Do it.”
“He doesn't know the full picture yet. Only that I'm the granddaughter and that something is off.”
Maeve set the pen down and looked at Emma across the table. “How did you leave it with him?”
“I told him I needed to think about a few things and asked if I could come back today. He agreed. As I was leaving, I told him to hold on to the letter. And not to call the number on it.”
Maeve took that in without saying anything. Then she nodded. In what might have been small approval.
“Lucky instinct.”
“I don't know why I said it.”
“You said it because you already knew what that letter was, even if you couldn't have named it.” She picked the pen back up.
“Instinct isn't evidence though. Get me the letter. Better still, ask if you can borrow it for an hour to copy it and give him the original back. You keep his trust that way and I get what I need.”
“I can do that.”
“All right. Let me tell you where we are.”
Maeve turned a fresh page and drew a small vertical line down the middle of it, a habit Emma recognized from every case mapping session she'd ever seen a consultant run. Two columns, one for what you knew, one for what you needed.
“What you have going for you,” Maeve said. “You have a real estate broker who is on your side. You have a copy of a later will and the Monroe County records, which is useful. Unusual but useful.”
Emma interrupted her. “I don't have a copy of the will.”
Maeve nodded. “You're going to need to get a copy of that will. Your lawyer, assuming we get you one asap, will be able to get that for you. We’ll get a copy that will hold up in court.”
“You think we’ll go to court on this?”
“You need to prepare for seeing this through to whatever end will accomplish justice. I can’t tell you exactly what’s going to happen, but I do believe you have a case against your uncle.
You have a tenant who has been paying rent in good faith and can testify to it.
You have a title company that is on notice, and by tomorrow at the latest, a written communication that appears to be fraudulent.
You have ten days, which is not much, but it’s enough. ”
“And what I don’t have?”
“You don't have the original signed will yet.
You'll need it, or a very reliable path to it.
You don't have a Florida attorney of record, which is the single most important thing you need to get as soon as possible.
You don't have any documentation from Arthur that we can use to prove intent, so the letter to Jake becomes very important.
And you don't yet know whether there are other tenants or vacation rentals in that ten year history that would show a larger pattern.”
Emma took notes while Maeve talked. She had filled a page like this for tons of clients. She had never once done it while somebody was checking her work.
“What do I do first?”
“Two things. One you get me the letter. Two, you let me make some calls this afternoon.”
“What calls?”
“I know two attorneys in Florida. Neither of them is in Key West. John Bishop in Miami, and Alan Prieto in Marathon.
They're both good. And they'll know exactly who in Key West does probate and real estate well.
If we're lucky, we get you a Florida attorney of record by end of day tomorrow.
If we're less lucky, day after. Either way, we file a motion of pending claim within seventy-two hours, which is what stops the closing.”
“Samantha offered to notify the buyer’s council that she'd had contact with the potential claimant. I asked her to hold off for a day.”
“Keep holding.” Maeve didn't look up. “A courtesy call from a broker slows a sale. A notice of pending claim stops one. I'd rather the first thing their counsel hears about you comes from a Florida attorney with a filing behind it.”
Maeve looked at her.
“Emma, I want to be honest with you about my role once you have that attorney.
I'm not going to disappear on you. I'll stay in the background as a sounding board and I'll read anything you want a second set of eyes on.
I'll tell you if I think your attorney is asking the right questions.
Consider me a friend of the family with a law degree. That's the shape of it.”
“That's more than I’d hoped for.”
“It's exactly what my aunt is going to ask of me anyway.” A small, dry smile. “I might as well volunteer it.”
Emma laughed. It surprised both of them, and the table was easier afterward.
“Thank you so much.”
“One more thing.” Maeve closed the notebook and put her hand flat on the cover.
“When you go see Jake for the letter. Don't tell him everything yet.
Tell him you're working with somebody who needs to see it.
Ask him to trust you for a day. If he does, that tells us something about him.
If he doesn't, that tells us something else.”
“I'll ask him for a day.”
Connie appeared beside the table with two plates and set them down without asking. “Grouper sandwiches, slaw, chips. Don't argue with me. The two of you need to have something to eat.”
Emma opened her mouth to speak, but Connie held up a finger. “Both of you have been sitting at my table for forty-five minutes without eating. I don't run a bar where people don't eat. Sandwiches are on me.”
“Aunt Connie,” Maeve said.
“Don’t Aunt Connie me. I fed your mother a grilled cheese at nine this morning that she barely touched, and I’m not going two for two.”
Connie was gone before either of them could answer.
Maeve smiled at Emma, “She’s not ever going to change.”
“I don’t want her to.”
They enjoyed their sandwiches and neither of them said a word about wills or Emma’s potential case.
“What is it you do in Chicago?” Maeve asked.
“Strategy. Ashcroft and Payne.”
“That’s not an answer, that’s a letterhead.”
“Companies pay us a lot of money to tell them something they already know in a way that lets them act on it.”
“That’s law,” Maeve said.
“It isn’t law.”
“It’s exactly law. You’ve just got better carpet.”
Emma laughed. “Where in Boston are you?”
“Back Bay. Litigation.” Maeve ate some of the slaw. “I keep thinking I’ll go back to Boston and visit Key West here and there, but it never happens.”
“What brought you down?”
Maeve took her time with that one.
“Family,” she said. “My mother’s here, and she needs me now.”
“Is she all right?”
“She has good days, and not so good days.”
It was said in the tone that closes the door and stays polite about it. Emma had used that tone about one-hundred times herself. So she left it where it was and ate a chip.
Maeve's phone buzzed. Face down beside her plate. She turned it over, read it, and put it back without answering.
“That's Patrick,” she said.
“You don't have to tell me who Patrick is.”
“He runs charter fishing out of the Marina. Third generation on this island, which down here is more or less royalty. He's asked me twice this week what I'm doing in September. And I've changed the subject twice, so now he stopped asking. That's worse.”
“What's in September?”
“Boston,” Maeve said, and took a bite of her sandwich.
Emma didn't push it. After a moment, Maeve told her the slaw was the only thing in the building Connie hadn't improved in thirty years. Emma got the message with the change of subject.
With most of the food gone, Maeve glanced at her watch.” It's two-fifteen. County offices close at four o’clock. I want to make my calls today, not tomorrow.”
“Then let's go.”
Out of the leather notebook came a small ivory business card, which Maeve set in front of Emma. There was a Massachusetts number with a personal cell handwritten in blue ink on the back.
“Cell is only for the next three months. Text or call any hour. I mean that.”
Emma slipped it into the front pocket of her legal pad. Then found one of her own and slid it back.
“Ashcroft & Payne,” Maeve read. “Chicago.”
“Same rules, any hour.”
“Noted.”
They got up together and Maeve put a twenty on the table for a tip. She knew her aunt would argue about it but she didn’t seem to care.
They walked out of the bar into the bright afternoon light and stopped on the sidewalk.
“Where are you going now?” Maeve asked.
“To talk to Jake Kelleher.”
“Good, let me know how that goes. I’m going home to make my calls. I’ll text you as soon as I have a name.”
“Thank you, Maeve.”
“Not yet. Thank me when you have an attorney.”
Maeve had her phone out and was already scrolling for a number as she turned down the sidewalk toward home. Emma watched her go, then turned in the other direction toward her car.