Chapter 13 - The Deposition at Market Street
The law offices of Vance, Sterling & Holtz were located in a restored three-story brick townhouse on North Market Street in Frederick. The floors were two-hundred-year-old wide-plank pine that groaned under every step, and the air smelled of floor wax, old leather law reports, and the faint, bitter trace of Donna’s Virginia Slims.
Donna was sitting at the far end of the mahogany conference table, wearing a lavender pantsuit that looked new, her sunglasses resting on top of her stiff, hairsprayed curls.
Beside her sat Arthur Vance Jr.—the brother of the headmaster who had expelled Connor four weeks ago. He was a slick, thirty-five-year-old litigator with a Rolex Submariner and the dead, polite eyes of a loan officer.
Trish sat three chairs down from Donna.
The distance between them was not accidental. Trish wore no makeup; her hair was pulled into a greasy ponytail, and the dark circles under her eyes looked like bruises. She hadn't looked at Donna once since we sat down. Between them lay a rift carved out by forty percent of four hundred and ten thousand dollars that Trish had only discovered Doug had hidden in Delaware two days prior.
My lawyer, Sarah Chen, sat to my left. She was thirty-eight, a former state prosecutor who specialized in agricultural land trusts, and she didn't have a single piece of jewelry on her hands except for an iron engineer’s ring on her little finger.
“We are on the record,” Sarah said, nodding to the court reporter whose machine clicked softly in the corner. “This is the deposition of Donna Whitfield regarding the purported transit easement conveyance to Blue Ridge Infrastructure Partners, Civil Action number twenty-four-eight-eight-two.”
Donna sneered, folding her thin arms over her lavender lapels. “This is an absolute farce. Blake, you are embarrassing this family. Bringing your own mother into a lawyer’s office over a ditch behind your garage.”
Sarah didn't blink. “Mrs. Whitfield, I’m showing you Exhibit C. Can you identify this document?”
She slid a high-resolution photocopy of the 1978 deed across the mahogany.
Donna didn't look down. “I don't have my glasses.”
“Your glasses are hanging from the cord around your neck, Mrs. Whitfield,” Sarah said evenly. “Please look at Exhibit C.”
Vance leaned over, tapped the paper. “Witness will review the document.”
Donna snatched her glasses, shoved them onto her nose, and cast a venomous glare at Sarah. “It’s Raymond’s old deed. So what? He signed everything in nineteen-seventy-eight. He didn't know what he was doing half the time. He had dirt under his fingernails and beer on his breath.”
“Is that your signature at the bottom of page three, Mrs. Whitfield?”
Donna’s mouth tightened. “It looks like it.”
“On August fourteenth of this year, you signed a warranty deed conveying subterranean and surface traverse rights across Parcel 14B to Blue Ridge Infrastructure Partners for the sum of four hundred and ten thousand dollars. Did you receive those funds?”
Donna’s gaze flickered—just for a fraction of a second—toward Trish.
Trish let out a sharp, mocking snort from down the table. “Go ahead, Mother. Tell her. Tell her where the money went.”
“Shut your mouth, Patricia!” Donna snapped, her voice cracking like dry kindling. “You don't speak in this room!”
“I don't speak?” Trish lunged forward, her elbows slamming into the table. “You used my husband to steal the listing from Blake! You promised Doug two hundred grand so we could pay off the second mortgage on the Urbana house, and then you had him wire the whole damn sum to a blind trust in your maiden name! You left me with a criminal record, a kid who can't read, and a sheriff standing on my porch with an eviction summons!”
“You broke into Blake’s garage like a common gutter rat!” Donna shrieked, half-rising from her chair. “You got yourself arrested on a Ring camera because you’re stupid! Raymond always said you had no head for business! You take after your uncle Ray—all noise and no brains!”
“Both of you, stop,” Vance warned, his smooth demeanor slipping into visible irritation. “Counsel, control your—”
“I’m not the one shouting, Mr. Vance,” Sarah Chen said with icy precision. She turned another page in her folder. “Mrs. Whitfield, did you inform Blue Ridge Infrastructure Partners that the 1994 boundary survey—the one you certified as ‘true and correct’—had been altered with white-out over the boundary marker at Broad Run Creek?”
The room went dead silent.
The only sound was the faint hum of the air conditioner and the steady, dry *clack-clack-clack* of the court reporter’s keys.
Donna’s hands began to tremble. She dropped the glasses onto the mahogany. “I don't know anything about white-out. Raymond handled the surveys.”
“Raymond was in the cardiac intensive care unit at Frederick Memorial Hospital on October twelfth, nineteen-ninety-four,” Sarah said, her voice dropping into that quiet, deadly register of a prosecutor closing a trap. “He had suffered a massive stroke forty-eight hours earlier. He was intubated. But according to the notary stamp on Exhibit D, this survey was altered and re-filed at the county desk at three-fifteen that same afternoon. The notary was your sister, Evelyn. And the signature on the alteration is not Raymond’s.”
Sarah looked straight into Donna’s pale, rheumy eyes.
“It’s yours, Donna. You traced his name with a ballpoint pen. And Doug Miller used that exact fraudulent page to convince the engineers at Blue Ridge that the easement cut through Blake’s living room instead of the quarry wash.”
Trish stared at her mother. The rage on her face slowly turned into something else—a hollow, sick realization that made her sink back into her chair.
“You forged it,” Trish whispered. “Thirty years ago. You were planning this thirty years ago.”
“I didn't forge anything!” Donna spat, her voice rising to a shrill, hysterical pitch that echoed off the high ceiling. “Everything Raymond had belonged to me! I gave him thirty-five years of my life! I washed his greasy work shirts! I listened to him talk about tractors and drainage ditches while other women were going to the country club! That land was mine! It was supposed to be my retirement! Not for Blake to build a workshop for that snobby little girl to take to Virginia Tech! She thinks she’s better than us? She’s a Whitfield! Her grandfather dug ditches, and that’s all she’ll ever be!”
I sat perfectly still.
I didn't look at Donna. I looked down at the iron ring on Sarah Chen’s finger—the symbol of an engineer’s obligation to the truth of the structure, to the physics that don't care about family pride, spite, or forty-year-old grievances.
“We have no further questions for this witness,” Sarah said, closing her leather folio with a quiet, final thud. “Mr. Vance, I suggest you advise your clients to retain separate criminal defense counsel before the condemnation docket calls on Friday morning. Because when Judge Callahan sees the forensic ink analysis from the state crime lab, this won't be a land hearing anymore.”
Sarah stood up. I stood with her.
As we walked toward the heavy oak doors of the conference room, Trish didn't move. She remained seated, staring at the lavender suit her mother was wearing, her hands clenched into fists so tight that blood was beginning to show where her fingernails cut into her palms.
May you like
Behind us, Donna began to cry—not with grief, but with the shrill, ugly fury of a child whose stolen toy has just been pulled from her grip.
***
