Chapter 4 - The Woman on the Screen
The remote notarization video did not immediately prove Courtney impersonated me.
It proved someone had.
The woman wore large glasses.
A loose gray sweatshirt.
Hair tucked under a baseball cap.
She held a copy of my New York driver’s license toward the camera.
The license was real.
Or at least the image was.
The notary asked:
“Please state your full legal name.”
The woman said:
“Victoria Anne Gallagher.”
My name.
My birth date.
My address.
She knew answers.
The notary asked whether she was signing voluntarily.
“Yes.”
Whether anyone was forcing her.
“No.”
The entire session lasted under seven minutes.
The video quality was good enough that investigators suspected Courtney.
But suspicion is not identification.
Courtney’s attorney immediately denied it.
“She is not the person shown.”
The notary could not confidently identify Courtney from a photo array at first.
The woman had disguised herself enough.
Then digital records.
The remote session link had been opened on a tablet registered to CB Residential Holdings.
The payment card belonged to Courtney.
That was stronger.
Still, her attorney said she booked the appointment for Victoria at Charles’s request.
Maybe.
Then an IP address traced to Charles’s Fayetteville home.
Again:
Maybe Courtney scheduled it and someone else appeared.
Then police found the cap.
Gray sweatshirt.
Oversized nonprescription glasses.
Inside the hidden basement room.
No DNA miracle needed.
Courtney admitted the clothing was hers.
Why in hidden room?
She said she stored clothes there.
The room contained financial records, not wardrobes.
Her story weakened.
Then the driver’s license image.
Police found a printed color copy of my license inside a folder labeled VG.
How did Charles get it?
I remembered.
Six months earlier, Charles invited Lucas and me to a company retreat in Montreal.
He asked for passport and license scans for “travel booking.”
Lucas sent his passport himself.
I texted Charles my driver’s license because I was in a meeting and he said he needed identification immediately.
The retreat was canceled.
He kept the image.
Small conveniences become vulnerabilities when trust disappears.
Then the house quitclaim notarization submitted the morning of my assault.
Same remote service.
Different notary.
No video session completed.
Instead, the deed included a notarization certificate copied from another document.
That filing failed additional verification.
The forged stock assignment, however, had a full remote session.
That mattered more.
Then Samantha told me the shares were not something my father had ever “held for me.”
My grandfather, Harold Baldwin, had given them directly to me in an irrevocable gift when I was twenty-five.
I had signed acceptance documents.
I vaguely remembered.
At the time, Charles said:
“It’s just estate planning.”
The shares did not generate direct checks because distributions were often retained or passed through managed accounts.
I never attended shareholder meetings.
I gave Charles a limited annual proxy for routine votes.
That proxy had expired when Lucas died because the agreement contained an automatic termination upon certain family events.
I had never known.
Lucas did.
“Why didn’t he explain this to me?”
Samantha sighed.
“He tried.”
“When?”
She opened an old email.
From Lucas.
Subject:
Can we finally talk about Baldwin shares?
I remembered seeing it.
I replied:
Not this week. Baby shower planning is killing me.
He wrote:
Okay. After Sunday.
After Sunday never came.
Lucas died Monday.
I stared until tears blurred the screen.
The guilt came fast.
Samantha stopped it.
“Victoria.”
“I put him off.”
“You put off a business conversation.”
“He was trying to warn me.”
“You did not cause the accident by planning a baby shower.”
I knew.
Grief does not care.
Then she explained ownership.
Charles: thirty-two percent.
Me: twenty.
Lucas: thirty-two.
Employee ownership trust: sixteen.
After Lucas’s death, his shares passed into the Gallagher Family Trust.
The trust beneficiaries were me and Samuel.
Voting authority sat with an independent corporate trustee from Empire State Trust Company.
Not Samantha.
Not Charles.
Not me alone.
Lucas had deliberately separated financial benefit from immediate voting control during the first year after his death.
“Why?”
“He said grief should not force you into corporate decisions.”
I cried again.
He had protected me from having to become an executive while burying him.
Charles viewed the same arrangement as obstruction.
If he could steal my twenty percent, he would have fifty-two.
A majority.
He could then replace directors, influence lender relationships, and potentially pressure the independent trust through corporate restructuring.
Not automatically seize Lucas’s trust.
But gain control of the company around it.
“What was he trying to do with the two accounts that were placed on hold?”
Samantha said:
“One involved Northstar Cold Storage.”
There it was again.
The folder Charles threw onto my kitchen table.
“What is Northstar?”
“A warehouse venture Charles formed with outside investors two years ago.”
“Company project?”
“That is the dispute.”
Charles claimed Baldwin-Gallagher authorized guarantees supporting Northstar.
Lucas said the board never approved them.
“How much?”
Samantha looked at me.
“Potential exposure just over four million dollars.”
My stomach dropped.
“Lucas’s debts?”
“No.”
“Dad told me Lucas left them.”
“I believe Charles was trying to make you think Northstar belonged to Lucas.”
Then:
“Why?”
“Because if the guarantees are invalid, Charles has a very serious problem.”
The room made more sense.
The forged shares.
The house.
The rush.
Charles did not need my property because he was grieving poorly.
He needed control.
Then Detective Jennings called.
Police had opened the cabinet labeled LUCAS.
Inside were surveillance photographs.
Lucas leaving Samantha’s office.
Lucas entering Empire State Trust.
Lucas meeting with a forensic accountant.
Dates from the six weeks before his death.
I felt cold.
“Someone followed him.”
“Yes.”
“Who hired them?”
“We found invoices to a private investigator.”
“Paid by?”
Jennings paused.
“Haven’t finished tracing.”
Then:
“But Courtney’s signature is on one service agreement.”
I stopped breathing.
May you like
For the first time, Lucas’s highway accident no longer felt safely separate from the rest.
And I hated myself for the thought that came next.
