Chapter 8: The Forged Page
Nora’s last words stayed between us while the café carried on around them—ice knocking in glasses, a blender whining behind the counter, a couple at the next table laughing over something on a phone.
I didn’t ask her to repeat them. I believed she had said what she remembered. I didn’t yet know what it proved.
“Did you see the paperwork yourself?” I asked.
Nora rubbed her bitten thumbnail. “Not the agreement Logan showed you. I saw him carrying a packet once. At Helena’s house.”
“When?”
“Months ago. I’d gone there to drop something off for Helena. Logan was at the dining table with papers spread out. When I came in, he gathered them up.”
“Did you recognize anything?”
“Just a note clipped to the front. Helena’s handwriting.” Nora hesitated. “I’d seen her write enough place cards and thank-you notes. The H’s were unmistakable.”
“What did it say?”
“I didn’t read it. I only caught the first line.” She shut her eyes, trying to retrieve it. “Something about the family share. Or family equity. I’m not sure.”
I let the uncertainty stand. A memory wasn’t a document. It wasn’t a signature comparison, either. But it was another reason to keep looking.
Nora sent me the screenshots of Helena’s messages before we left the café. I saved them to the folder on my phone, then thanked her for coming forward.
“I don’t know if I can do more,” she said.
“You don’t have to decide today.”
Her shoulders lowered a fraction. She didn’t look relieved, exactly. More like someone who’d been given permission to stop pretending she knew how this ended.
At Lumina, the afternoon rush had thinned. The air still held the buttery heat of the ovens, and Grant was at the end of the counter checking a delivery against an invoice. He looked up when I approached with my folder.
“Did Nora tell you anything useful?”
“She saw Logan with a packet at Helena’s house. There was a note clipped to it. She thinks it said something about family equity.”
Grant’s expression sharpened.
“I might have an email about that.”
He took me to the small office behind the kitchen, where the restaurant noise softened to a steady murmur. Grant searched his work inbox, scrolling through old messages with a frown.
“Logan used to email me about vendor stuff,” he said. “I didn’t think to search his name.”
A minute passed. Then he stopped.
“Here.”
He turned the monitor toward me. The email was from Logan, sent months before the luncheon. Its subject line read: Family equity meeting.
The message itself was brief.
I’m meeting with a few people after close to discuss refinancing and the family’s stake. Keep Camille out of the room for now. I don’t want this turning into a kitchen argument before we’ve settled the numbers.
I read it twice. “He told you to keep me out?”
“I didn’t arrange the meeting,” Grant said. “He asked me not to schedule staff in the private room while they talked. I thought it was about refinancing. I didn’t know he was calling it family equity.”
“Who were the people?”
“Not in the email.” Grant’s jaw tightened. “I should’ve shown you this when he first sent it.”
“You didn’t know what it meant.”
He didn’t answer. From the kitchen, a pan hit the pass with a sharp metallic clank.
Grant clicked the attachment icon. “There was a packet attached. I never opened it. I thought it was some finance document he wanted me to keep with the event notes.”
A scan appeared in the message preview: pages of dense print, slightly crooked, the gray shadows of a copied document along the edges. I recognized the cover sheet. Then the forms beneath it.
My hand tightened around the chef’s towel tucked into my apron.
It was the old vendor packet—the same kind I’d photographed at home. Logan’s ownership agreement had been copied onto paper that looked like it belonged with these forms. The font, the margins, even the faint line down the left side matched the packet in my camera roll.
I pulled up the image I’d taken of the original. Then I laid the two versions side by side on the screen.
The disputed page looked familiar in a way I couldn’t dismiss. But resemblance wasn’t proof of how it had been made, or who had made it. I kept my finger off the screen, resisting the urge to call a conclusion a fact just because I wanted one.
Grant leaned over my shoulder. “That’s the page Logan showed you?”
“It looks like the same page.”
“Does the scan show it?”
“Not yet. We’re looking at the cover.”
My phone felt heavier in my hand. I scrolled to Logan’s number.
Grant glanced at me. “You want me here?”
“Yes.”
The call rang twice.
“What?” Logan said.
“Grant found an email from you about a meeting on family equity.”
Silence.
“You asked him to keep me away from it,” I continued. “You called it refinancing.”
“That’s what it was.”
“Then why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because every conversation with you turns into an interrogation.”
“It was about my restaurant.”
“Our restaurant,” he snapped. Then, more carefully, “It was a refinancing discussion. Nothing more.”
“Who was at the meeting?”
“I don’t remember.”
“You don’t remember a meeting about our ownership?”
“Camille, I’m not doing this over the phone.”
“Then tell me when you will.”
“I have to go.”
The line went dead.
For a moment, I could hear nothing but the muted churn of the kitchen. I lowered the phone and looked at Grant.
“He hung up,” he said.
“He answered.”
Grant turned back to the monitor. “The attachment might tell us who was there.”
I enlarged the scan. Page one. Page two. The copy blurred wherever the old scanner had dragged a shadow across the paper. I moved through the pages, one at a time, matching the form headings against my photograph.
Then the sequence jumped.
Page five was followed by page seven.
May you like
I looked at the ownership page Logan had given me. Its footer carried a small printed number: 6.
The scan was of the same packet, but page six was missing from its original sequence.
