27. Manila Envelopes Ruined My Life
MANILA ENVELOPES RUINED MY LIFE
Dean
It was a record of a deal between my grandfather and Walter Foster.
There was a promissory note and deed with notary stamps and signatures.
I scanned the fine print, my pulse thumping louder with every line.
Lockhart Ranch, and what looked like a staggering amount of acreage, was listed under security interest.
My vision tunneled, the world reduced to that yellowing contract and the implications it carried.
No wonder the old man never spoke about it.
This wasn’t a matter of a few thousand dollars exchanged under the table, this was the whole damn ranch, leveraged and basically up for grabs if a certain set of circumstances aligned.
I immediately called Blackburn’s office on speaker.
“Blackburn Law, Gina speaking, how can I help you?”
“Hey Gina, Dean Lockhart, I need to see Ray as soon as possible.”
“You caught us on a good day,” she chirped, sounding exactly as cheerful and unruffled as she had all through elementary, middle, and high school, where she’d been a straight A, honor roll student and at spelling bee champion.
“Mr. Blackburn just finished mediation with Mr. Barbero and is free if you can make it down in the next thirty minutes.”
“Great, I’ll be there in ten.”
I didn’t waste time. I threw the envelope in the passenger seat of my truck, gunned it down the long drive, and headed for Main Street, where Blackburn and his paralegals ruled the only law office in a thirty-mile radius.
The air was thick with salt and pine and the faint, sweet burn of logging stacks up the coast. My thoughts cycled through every possibility, none of them good.
What the hell had my grandfather been thinking? Why hadn’t he told my dad what was going on? Why hadn’t Walter said something after my Grandad passed?
I made it to the law office in under ten minutes.
Inside, the office was a time capsule of Valentine Bay’s last thirty years, wood paneling, local art, a faded Seahawks pennant, and the lingering smell of Gina’s perfume.
She greeted me at the door, her lipstick a deep shade of red, her hair in the same neat bun I remembered from high school during her campaign for class president.
“Dean!” she beamed. “I see you survived the fundraiser. Your mom sure knows how to throw a party.”
It wasn’t my mom who’d hosted it, although she was the one who made the speech because Felicity did not like the spotlight. That fundraiser had been all Felicity’s doing.
“Yes, she does,” I agreed because it was easier than explaining who the credit belonged to, which I was sure would only lead to more questions.
She waved her hand towards the hallway. “He’s waiting.”
I stepped into Blackburn’s office, which looked as if a tornado had collided with a library—paper stacked in every imaginable orientation, and not a single flat surface left unconquered.
Blackburn himself was behind the desk, sleeves rolled to the elbows, tie askew, glasses perched on the tip of his nose like a cartoon owl.
He took one look at me and grunted. “Sit down, Lockhart. What can I do for you?”
I placed the envelope on his desk, then lowered into the seat across from him.
Blackburn opened it with a lawyer’s efficiency that bordered on savagery, eyes narrowing as he skimmed the first page.
His lips moved as he read, silently, with the same intensity a wolf brings to a wounded rabbit.
When he got to the second page, his brows went up.
By the third, he took his glasses off, pinched the bridge of his nose, and sighed.
He reached for his keyboard and typed something with two fingers, glanced at the screen, then at me, and back again, then back down to the paperwork. As I waited for his verdict, it felt as if time itself had stopped, like the entire world was suspended, frozen.
When he finally looked up, his eyes were sharper than I’d ever seen. “Where did you get this?”
“Storage. It was in the archive boxes.”
He nodded, lips pressed in a tight line, and leaned back in his chair hard enough to make it creak. “Do you know what this means?”
I had a pretty good idea, but hearing him say it would make it real. “Enlighten me.”
He gestured with the document. “This note, this isn’t just a personal IOU.
This is a promissory note, with your grandfather’s signature, notarized, witnessed, and recorded.
And the collateral listed is... well, it’s damn near the whole ranch, minus about three acres the vineyard is on that your folks bought fifteen years ago. ”
“Okay,” I managed. “But why is it in an archive box? Why isn’t there a record in the courthouse?”
Blackburn’s face twisted. “This was in the eighties between two men who were of the era of handshake deals and off-the-books arrangements, and your granddad was notorious for both. But this—” he tapped the contract— “is legally binding. Technically, if the note isn’t paid off, whoever holds it can claim the collateral, just like a bank can call a mortgage. ”
I let that sink in. I tried to swallow, but my throat was a desert. “So who owns the note now?”
I had a pretty good idea, but I just needed to hear him say it.
Blackburn flipped through to the last page, the assignment of rights. “After Walter passed, the rights transferred to his estate, specifically, to the sole beneficiary. Which is Felicity Foster.”
“Felicity,” I repeated.
Blackburn nodded grimly. “I don’t think that girl has any idea what she’s sittin’ on and what it is worth.”
I sat there, breathing shallow, as the implications lined up in my mind like dominoes. “So, where does this leave the ranch?”
Blackburn spread his hands on the table.
“Legally, your entire ranch is subject to foreclosure if she demands repayment and you can’t cough up the amount due.
Or she can choose to forgive the debt. Or she could negotiate a settlement.
But right now, if she wanted to, she could take you to court and walk away with the whole kit and caboodle. ”
I stared at him, and more to myself I mumbled, “She wouldn’t do that.”
He shrugged. “People surprise you. Especially when they’re desperate, or angry, or hurt.” His eyes softened a fraction. “Look, Dean, this is a mess, but it’s not unfixable. I’ll call her and—”
“I’ll tell her,” I interrupted.
“Well now, Walter was my client, and this is part of the estate that she has inherited. I need to inform her—”
“Just give me today. You can call her tomorrow.” I stood, not waiting for his response.
The idea of Felicity finding out from Blackburn made my stomach want to crawl into my shoes. Blackburn made a copy of the paperwork before handing it back to me. I thanked him, ignored Gina’s attempt at small talk on the way out, and drove straight to Felicity’s place.
The house was dark, her SUV was gone. I knocked anyway, hoping she was just hiding inside, but there was no one answered.
I left a note on the door with a piece of electrical tape I found in my glovebox, asking her to call me, then tried her phone, it went straight to voicemail.
I left her a message asking her to call, not that I would tell her on the phone. This was an in-person conversation.
I drove to Maverick’s daycare just in case.
It was closing time, and the playground was empty except for a lone tricycle, abandoned in the mud.
Desiree Lake, my old Sunday School teacher, a woman with a shock of pink hair and a voice like a foghorn, told me Felicity was supposed to pick her son up, but Nonna had come and retrieved him instead.
Unsure of where else she could be on her day off, I headed back to the ranch and saw her SUV parked at the admin building.
It didn’t surprise me that she was working on her day off, she was one of hardest-working people I’d ever met, and that was coming from someone who put in a minimum of sixty-plus hours a week.
Felicity’s office was where I was headed when I noticed my door was open. Everyone in my family and on staff knew better than to go into my office, which meant I had a good idea who was in there.
I found Felicity sitting in the straight-backed guest chair facing my desk, arms folded tight across her chest. Her hair was up in a messy bun, just like the first time I’d seen her.
She wore the same battered jeans and navy sweater that she’d had on that morning when I left her, but every line of her body was drawn taut, coiled for impact.
I stopped in the doorway. “Hey,” I said, voice soft as I could make it.
She didn’t stand. “Hi.”
It was the coldest I’d ever heard her greet me, or anyone for that matter, and when we first met, I don’t think she was a fan.
I eased into the room, shutting the door behind me.
The click echoed too loudly in the small space.
“I, um—” the words got stuck, because her gaze was fixed on the battered manila envelope in her lap.
Not the one I’d taken to Blackburn, I held that, but a different one, with edges curled like burned paper. I lowered myself down behind my desk.
“Do you know anything about this?” she asked, handing me her envelope.
I took it from her and thumbed open the flap. I pulled out a written letter and copies of some of the documents I’d found earlier, including the promissory note and deed.
I met Felicity’s eyes, searching for a clue, an entry point, anything. “Where did you find this?”
She blinked, as if that wasn’t the response she’d been expecting from me, and it hurt her. “Tanner.”
“Tanner? How the hell—”
“We lived together, up until about a year ago. He said that it got mixed in with his mail.”
I could see she didn’t buy his story.
“A year ago. You’ve had this for a—”
“He gave it to me today.”