Page 102 of Gave Proof Through the Night

I read an excerpt to Dale.

“The Borrower does hereby grant, bargain, sell, and convey unto the Lender, their successors and assigns, all of their right, title, and interest in and to the described property.”

Dale hums, thinking. “I’m no lawyer, but it does seem like classic legalese. And your ancestor signed that?”

“He thought he was getting fire insurance,” I say. “That’s what my dad told me.”

“And the company designed it to be unreadable to the average person on purpose.”

“Exactly. And after they took everything, running my family name through the mud, the necklace disappeared. I don’t actually know what happened to it for twenty years,” I admit. “It surfaced again in the seventies when someone made an anonymous donation to the BMAH. But Mary Todd’s letters, Eleanor’s diary? Vanished.”

Dale lets out a long, slow whistle.

“They’re still out there somewhere,” I say. “And I’ve got my suspicions where.”

Dale is quiet for a second. Then he pulls a laptop out of the messenger bag and opens it without further discourse.

“Okay, there’s a paper trail.” He’s typing already. “Money doesn’t just disappear, even in fake books. The money always goes somewhere. What’s the company called?”

“Whitfield & Kane Trust Co.”

He pulls up their website first. I watch it load over his shoulder, all navy and cream and reassuring serif fonts. And then he’s off it almost immediately, clicking into something with a lot more columns and a lot less marketing copy.

“Public filings,” he mutters, mostly to himself. “Historical registrations, whatever they had to disclose even when they didn’t want to.” A pause. “These guys have been quietly reincorporating every fifteen, twenty years.”

“They seized dozens of estates in that era,” I offer. “Not just ours. I don’t have all the names, but there’s enough rumor to know we weren’t the only ones.”

“That actually helps.” He doesn’t look up. “If there’s a pattern, there’s a ledger somewhere that has to account for it, even if it’s dressed up to look legitimate. Companies don’t hide money by deleting it. They hide it by renaming it.”

He goes quiet again after that, clicking through screens while Tanya watches him with hearts in her eyes. This must be her catnip. The competence he displays. It’s kind of how I felt watching Jeremiah sweat all over the ice last night.

It’s a solid two or three minutes before he finally looks up. Not dramatic. Not urgent. Just mild, easy, like he’s about to ask what’s for dinner.

“So.” He pushes his glasses up his nose. “We gonna take these guys down or what?”

It catches everyone but Tanya off guard. She just beams harder.

“We don’t take down whole companies,” I say. “That’s not our code. Too many innocent people work there, people who need the paycheck and have nothing to do with what happened seventy years ago. We inconvenience the bad companies. We don’t demolish them.”

“Ummm, I wouldn’t rule out stock,” Dale says, already back to typing. “And bonuses. There are always bonuses that get unevenly distributed. You can do a lot of damage if you know where the money actually goes.”

Then he’s in a zone, hunched over the laptop, occasionally muttering things like “public filing, public filing, where’s the… there.” And then he starts singing under his breath, “Just follow the money trail…” to the tune of "Here Comes Peter Cottontail."

Zoe stares at him. Then at Tanya. Then back at him.

“I did not see this coming,” she says.

“Neither did I,” Ginger echoes.

I turn to Zoe, completely delighted. “Well, that could have blown up in our faces.”

“Ya think?” Zoe mutters.

I don’t have time to find out how it ends today. I’ve got a dress to find and about four hours before the good boutiques close for lunch.

So I grab my bag off the chair, dig out the Four Seasons key card one more time, and press it into Tanya’s palm.

“Here.”