Chapter 4 - The Coffee Shop in Middleton
The rain was falling in cold, relentless sheets by the time I pulled into the parking lot of the roasted-bean café on the outskirts of Middleton. Through the fogged-up glass of the storefront, I spotted Martin Keller sitting in a booth near the corner fireplace.
He looked older than he had in the photographs Mom kept on her mantelpiece. His silver hair was neatly combed, his tweed jacket worn but impeccably kept. When he saw me enter, he stood up immediately, offering a polite, slightly hesitant nod.
“Rebecca?” he asked, his voice low and cultured. “Thank you for calling. When you texted… I wasn’t sure if this was some kind of family prank.”
“It’s not a prank, Martin,” I said, taking off my wet trench coat and sliding into the booth across from him. “I’m here to apologize. And I’m here because my family has a very dangerous problem.”
Martin ordered a black coffee for himself and an Earl Grey for me. He waited until the server set the mugs down before leaning in, his hazel eyes clouded with concern.
“Your mother told me she didn't want to see me anymore,” he said quietly, gripping the warm ceramic of his mug. “Or rather, her phone told me that. When I called back to ask what I had done wrong, your sister Tess answered.”
My pulse spiked. “Tess answered Mom’s phone?”
“Yes. It was around noon on a Wednesday. She told me that Elaine was experiencing significant cognitive decline. She said your mother had sundowning episodes, became easily confused, and that my sudden presence in her life was exacerbating her agitation. Tess told me that out of respect for Elaine’s dignity, I should step aside.”
A wave of nausea washed over me. *Cognitive decline. Sundowning.*
Mom was sixty-eight years old. She drove herself to her book club every Tuesday, volunteered at the botanical gardens, did the New York Times crossword in ink, and remembered every family birthday without a calendar.
“My mother does not have cognitive decline, Martin,” I said, my voice shaking with fury. “She was heartbroken when you stopped calling. She thought you had abandoned her.”
Martin stared at me, his mouth parting in shock. The color drained from his face. “Good Lord. Why would Tess lie about something so hideous?”
“Because Tess needs Mom isolated,” I said, the pieces assembling themselves in my mind like pieces of an ugly, jagged puzzle. “Tess controls Mom’s schedule, her mail, and her access to people. But there’s something else. Tess claimed you were asking questions about Mom’s house. About home equity. Were you?”
Martin blinked, then let out a bitter, disbelieving laugh.
“I never asked Elaine a single question about her finances,” he said. He reached into his leather briefcase on the bench beside him, pulled out a slim manila folder, and slid it across the table toward me. “In fact, it was the other way around. Two weeks before she cut contact, Elaine asked *me* for a recommendation for an independent forensic accountant.”
I froze, my hand hovering over the folder. “What?”
“She didn't want Tess to know,” Martin explained, lowering his voice further. “Elaine told me that some old savings certificates from Daniel’s estate—bonds that were supposed to be held in trust for your daughter, Lucy—had vanished from her safety deposit box. Tess told her that Daniel had liquidated them before he died to cover hidden debts. But Elaine remembered signing the deposit slips with Daniel. She suspected Tess was lying.”
My hands were shaking as I opened the folder. Inside were several printed emails and a copy of a real estate transfer notice from the Dane County Register of Deeds.
“Where did you get this?” I whispered.
“I have a nephew who works in the county clerk’s office,” Martin said quietly. “After Tess warned me off, I smelled something rotten. I wanted to make sure Elaine wasn’t in immediate danger before I walked away entirely. Rebecca… look at the date on that transfer document.”
I looked down. The document was an application to deed my mother’s home—the home where I had grown up, the home my father had built—into an LLC called *North Shore Legacy Holdings*.
The application had been filed twelve days ago.
The sole managing member of North Shore Legacy Holdings was Tess Reynolds.
And the co-signer, listed as the authorized power of attorney for Elaine Reynolds, was Tess herself.
Attached to the back of the filing was a medical attestation form. It was signed by a physician I had never heard of, certifying that Elaine Reynolds was suffering from mild-to-moderate vascular dementia and was no longer competent to execute binding real estate transfers on her own behalf.
The breath left my lungs in a sharp, painful gasp.
Tess wasn’t just controlling Mom’s messages.
May you like
She had already declared our mother incompetent.
***
