My Brother on the Security Camera
Chapter 07 - My Brother on the Security Camera
Ryan denied it for exactly twelve minutes.
Then Miriam sent him a still image from the security footage.
He called me.
“Claire, I can explain.”
“No one who says that ever explains.”
“I didn’t steal anything.”
“You broke into a law firm’s storage facility.”
“I had a key.”
Miriam looked at me sharply.
“How?”
He hesitated.
“Dad gave it to me.”
There it was.
“Where are you?”
“At home.”
“Stay there.”
“I’m not a dog.”
“No. A dog would’ve made better choices.”
Ethan almost smiled.
I didn’t.
We drove to Ryan’s apartment.
He opened the door wearing sweatpants and a sweatshirt from the community college he never finished.
At twenty-seven, he still had the face of the little boy who used to sleep outside my bedroom when thunderstorms scared him.
That made it worse.
On his coffee table sat a cardboard file box.
Miriam pointed.
“Is that from my firm’s storage?”
“Yes.”
She took out her phone.
“I should call the police.”
Ryan panicked.
“I didn’t take it for myself.”
“Who did you take it for?”
He looked at me.
“Dad.”
I laughed bitterly.
“Of course.”
“He said you were trying to frame him.”
“With documents written before Mom died?”
“He said the lawyer fabricated them.”
“Miriam?”
“I didn’t know her name.”
Miriam folded her arms.
“Good to know my criminal reputation precedes me.”
Ryan looked miserable.
“Dad said there were forged records in storage and if you found them, you’d ruin the family.”
“Secrets destroyed us first,” I said.
“What?”
“Mom’s words.”
He looked away.
I opened the box.
The files appeared intact.
Miriam checked the inventory.
“One folder is missing.”
Ryan said nothing.
“Where is it?”
“I gave it to Dad.”
“What folder?”
He stared at the floor.
“Insurance.”
My hands curled.
“Ryan.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Where is Dad?”
“I don’t know.”
“You gave him evidence.”
“I thought it was fake.”
“You broke into a locked facility because you thought you were rescuing Dad from fake paperwork?”
“He said Mom’s lawyer hated him.”
“Dad says everyone who disagrees with him hates him.”
Ryan sat down.
His face crumpled.
“I owe him money.”
Of course.
“How much?”
“Twenty-eight thousand.”
“For what?”
“Truck. Credit cards. Rent.”
“Why did he lend you that much?”
“He didn’t.”
I stared.
“He paid it.”
“Why?”
“He said family helps family.”
The phrase almost made me sick.
“And now?”
“He said I could pay him back by helping him once.”
There it was.
Dad never gave.
He invested in obligation.
I sat across from Ryan.
“Do you remember when I was twenty-three and Dad paid my car insurance?”
“Yeah.”
“For six months after that, he used it every time I told him no.”
Ryan nodded slowly.
“I thought that was just him.”
“It is.”
Megan stood behind me.
“He gave me five thousand from Mom’s money and I spent eleven years defending him.”
Ryan looked up.
“What Mom money?”
The room went quiet.
He truly didn’t know.
We told him.
Not everything.
Enough.
The trust.
The forty-one thousand.
The life insurance.
The identity theft.
When I mentioned the mortgage opened in my name at seventeen, Ryan looked confused.
“Indiana?”
“Yes.”
He stood.
“Wait.”
He disappeared into his bedroom.
When he returned, he carried an old framed photograph.
Dad, younger.
Mom.
Three children.
Behind us was a duplex.
My heart stopped.
“Where was that taken?”
“Fort Wayne,” Ryan said.
I stared.
“I’ve never been there.”
“Yes, you have.”
“No.”
“You were little.”
“How little?”
“Maybe six?”
Megan frowned.
“I remember that trip.”
I didn’t.
Ryan turned the photo over.
Summer 2002.
I was six.
Seventeen years later, the duplex had been mortgaged in my name.
No.
Eleven years later.
I corrected myself.
The numbers mattered.
“Why would Dad buy a place we visited as kids using my identity?”
Miriam took the photo.
“Maybe he didn’t.”
“What?”
“Your credit report shows a mortgage application. We need the recorded deed.”
We pulled county records online.
The property had changed hands several times.
In 2013, it was purchased by a company.
Vale Residential Services.
My skin prickled.
“Vale?”
Miriam stared.
“Thomas Vale had no company by that name.”
“Could someone have used his name?”
“Yes.”
The mortgage application listed me.
But the deed did not.
The owner was Vale Residential Services LLC.
The company was registered by Daniel Bennett.
My father had created a company using the name of the lawyer who later accused him of stealing.
“Why?”
Miriam looked disturbed.
“To make transactions look connected to Vale.”
“To frame him?”
“Possibly.”
The company sold the duplex two years later for a profit.
Where did the money go?
We followed the sale.
$168,000.
After loan payoff and fees, about $61,000 remained.
Transferred to account ending 4419.
The same number appeared in Mom’s notebook.
Beside it she had written:
“College — Claire.”
I stared.
Dad had used my identity to finance a property.
Profited from it.
Then apparently deposited some of the profit into an account Mom believed was for my education.
I had received no college fund.
I dropped out for a semester because Dad said we couldn’t afford tuition after Mom’s medical bills.
I felt physically ill.
Ryan whispered, “I didn’t know.”
“None of us knew enough.”
Miriam began photographing every document in the box.
Then she froze.
“What?”
She pulled out a thin folder.
“This isn’t from my storage.”
On the tab was Dad’s handwriting.
SUSAN — HOSPITAL.
Ryan stared.
“That was already in the box when I took it.”
Inside were medical bills.
A hospice schedule.
Prescription records.
And one document that did not belong.
A notarized power of attorney.
My mother supposedly signed it nine days before she died.
It gave my father authority over all financial accounts, trusts, insurance, and property.
Miriam examined the notary stamp.
“Oh no.”
“What?”
“This notary.”
I recognized the name.
The same man who notarized the false claim against my house.
Dad’s oldest friend.
The date was even worse.
My mother supposedly signed at 3:40 p.m.
Megan grabbed the hospice schedule.
“She couldn’t have.”
“How do you know?”
“She was sedated that afternoon.”
Miriam looked up.
“Sedation doesn’t automatically invalidate a signature.”
“No.”
Megan pointed to another line.
“She wasn’t home.”
At 3:40 p.m., Mom had been transported by ambulance to the hospital.
The notarization stated she signed in our living room.
Someone had fabricated the power of attorney.
Maybe Dad.
Maybe his friend.
And if that document was false, every transaction authorized through it could unravel.
Ryan suddenly whispered, “There’s something I didn’t tell you.”
I looked at him.
His face was terrified.
“When I gave Dad the insurance folder this morning, he burned it.”
We all stared.
“You watched him?”
“Yes.”
“Where?”
“His backyard fire pit.”
“Everything?”
“I thought so.”
“Thought?”
Ryan reached inside his sweatshirt.
He pulled out a scorched envelope.
“I took this before he lit the rest.”
On the front, in my mother’s handwriting:
TO MY CHILDREN — ALL THREE TOGETHER.
May you like
The envelope was still sealed.
And for the first time since this began, none of us wanted to be the one who opened it.
