Nobody from the Seven Oaks Circle had seen her body.
They'd simply accepted the news.
And why wouldn't they?
Agnes was eighty-four.
People died.
Friends attended memorial services.
Life continued.
Yet something about her death now seemed strangely convenient.
That afternoon, Mom accompanied me to the police station.
Detective Ortiz showed her several financial documents.
One bore Agnes's signature.
Mom leaned forward.
“That's not how Agnes signed her name.”
The detective looked up.
“What do you mean?”
“Agnes had arthritis. For years, her signatures were shaky. She used a thick black pen because she couldn't grip thin ones.”
Mom pointed to the page.
“This signature looks like it was written twenty years ago.”
I remembered the forged property documents Helen Parker had discovered.
“Could someone have copied an old signature?” I asked.
“Possibly,” Ortiz replied. “That's something a document examiner can assess.”
She placed another photograph on the table.
It showed a dark sedan leaving the parking lot of a private care facility.
