Chapter 3 - The Retainer and the Reconnaissance
On Monday morning at eight sharp, I drove out to Ridge Road before taking the children to preschool.
The morning air smelled of wet earth and pine needles. The Hollis place sat on a knoll overlooking the winding blacktop, the white clapboard farmhouse peeling slightly around the porch posts, but the foundation straight and true. My mother had painted the porch floor green every other May. Standing on the bottom step, you could look south across the eight-acre pasture down to where the creek ran through a stand of sweetgum and white oak.
Beyond that tree line lay the raw red clay of Baker Landworks' newest venture: *The Ridges at Whispering Pines*.
I walked the perimeter fence line. Along the surveyor's stakes that marked my mother’s property boundary, bright orange ribbons fluttered in the breeze. Three hundred yards away, two yellow bulldozers sat idle, their steel blades resting on mounds of overturned earth.
Warren hadn't just filed a speculative suit. He had already laid out his road bed. The main cul-de-sac of Phase II terminated exactly thirty feet from my mother's south fence line. Without my twelve acres, his development had only one narrow egress back out to Old Highway 42—a route that would require him to build an expensive concrete bridge over the county drainage easement. With my twelve acres, he had direct, flat, four-lane access to Ridge Road, saving his company nearly eight hundred thousand dollars in civil engineering costs.
He hadn't offered $150,000 out of family charity. He had offered it because my mother's land was the linchpin that made his entire twenty-million-dollar development viable.
I took twenty-four photographs with my phone, cataloging the stakes, the proximity of the grading, and the surveyor's pins that had been driven dangerously close to my fence line. Then I got back in my sedan and drove into downtown Raleigh.
The law offices of Vance, Miller & Gidley occupied the fourth floor of a restored red-brick warehouse near the state capitol. Marcus Vance had been a regional JAG officer when I was a first lieutenant defending soldiers in administrative separation boards. He was sixty-two now, with steel-wool hair, suspenders that looked older than my children, and a reputation for dismantling corporate bullies with surgical calm.
When his assistant showed me into his office, he rose from behind a mahogany desk stacked with red rope folders, his smile wide and warm.
"Captain Hollis," Marcus said, using the maiden name he had known me by for a decade. "Or do they call you Baker now?"
"Rosalie is fine, Marcus," I said, shaking his hand with a grip that made his eyebrows lift slightly. "And I'm not here for social calls."
I laid the manila envelope on his desk. Next to it, I laid my military deployment orders, the original certified copy of my mother's probated will, and the Special Power of Attorney I had drafted on the legal assistance template at Fort Bragg four years ago.
Marcus didn't speak for twenty minutes. He put on a pair of tortoiseshell reading glasses, took out a yellow legal pad, and read through Warren's complaint, the option agreement, and my military instruments. Occasionally his pen made a dry scratching sound against the paper.
When he finished, he took off his glasses and dropped them onto the pad. "Your father-in-law's attorney is Arthur Vance—no relation, thank God. Arthur is an attack dog who doesn't check his citations. Did Warren really think you were a civilian clerk?"
"He thought I typed forms for the infantry," I said. "He never asked, and I never corrected him. It was easier on Daniel."
"Well," Marcus said, leaning back until his leather chair creaked. "Daniel's about to have a very complicated autumn. Have you looked at the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act implications?"
"Section 3931," I replied instantly. "I was on active Title 10 orders when the option was supposedly executed. Even if the power of attorney had been valid—which it wasn't by its explicit, four-corner terms—the option purports to convey future interest in real estate without the specific statutory waivers required under federal law for deployed service members. They didn't file an affidavit of military service with the complaint, either."
Marcus let out a low whistle, a grin spreading across his leathery face. "They filed a standard verified complaint and checked the box stating the defendant was not engaged in active military duty to evade the default judgment restrictions."
"Brenda Howell swore to that affidavit," I added. "At Warren's direction."
Marcus tapped his pen against the yellow pad. "Rosalie, you know what happens if we fire this back across their bow. This isn't just a motion to dismiss. This is an answer with counterclaims for common law fraud, slander of title, abuse of process, and a formal complaint to the Secretary of State’s Notary Enforcement Division. Warren’s bank will freeze his development line of credit the minute a lis pendens hits the docket on Whispering Pines."
"I know," I said.
"And your husband?" Marcus asked gently. "He's Warren's vice president of procurement on paper, isn't he?"
"He's Warren's son," I said, looking out the window at the granite dome of the capitol building. "And he made his choice when he let his father serve me with a lawsuit at our daughter’s birthday party."
May you like
Marcus nodded once, pulled a fresh retainer agreement from his credenza, and slid it across the desk. "Welcome back to the bar, Captain. Let's draft an answer."
***
