PART 6 — The Missing Certificate and a Debt Older Than Dad’s Illness
Judith asked me to sit down. I remained by the door. She said Derek had owed money the previous autumn, but it was nothing like the current balance. He had borrowed from her to close a smaller investment, and she believed he would repay it within a month. The sixty thousand he sent back had come from another source.
“What source?” I asked. She pressed her lips together. “Ask him.” I said I was asking her because the money had entered her account. She opened her folder, perhaps hoping to prove her loan, and pulled out a bank statement. I recognized a partial account number from Derek’s email. His payment to her had arrived from Mercer Development.
The statement did not explain where his company had obtained the funds. Judith returned it to the folder. A cream-colored page slipped loose and landed near my shoe. It was my original membership certificate. Judith bent to retrieve it, but I got there first. My signature and the company seal stood on the bottom.
“You said these were your personal papers,” I told her. She said Derek had asked her to take the certificate to an attorney for review. She named a law office across town. I photographed the page, then held it against my suitcase. Judith reached for it once and stopped when I stepped back.
I called Maya while Judith watched. Maya said the certificate belonged with my company records and instructed me to bring it to her office. She also asked Judith, over speakerphone, whether anyone had made or ordered another transfer document. Judith said she had no idea. Maya wrote down the answer; I could hear her pen moving.
Derek arrived before I left. He saw the suitcase and the certificate in my hand. “You don’t need to go,” he said. Judith told him she had explained the earlier debt. He turned toward her with an expression I had never seen him use in front of me. It was tired and resentful, as though she had failed to follow an agreement.
I asked him where the first borrowed money had gone. He said a business partner had misused it. I asked the partner’s name. “Peter Walsh,” he said, a name I recognized from dinner years ago. Peter had worked with Derek at the equipment supplier. They had not seemed close since Peter moved to Indianapolis.
“Did Peter manage the fund?” I asked. Derek said yes. In his earlier call, he had described the manager as a former colleague without naming him. I asked for Peter’s current number. Derek said Peter would not answer me and that bringing outsiders into the matter would make repayment harder.
I carried the certificate past him. He followed me to the car and put a hand on the door before I could close it. “I know I lied about the amount,” he said. “I was trying to repair it before you knew.” He looked at my packed suitcase. “I never wanted your company taken away.”
“Then why did you prepare a pledge agreement?” He stepped back. He said it was a draft his lender had requested and that he had never meant to submit it. I thought of the papers with my copied signature. He did not deny preparing those. He only said Dad had taken them out of context.
I drove to Maya’s office and left the certificate in her care. She called the law office Judith had named. A receptionist confirmed that Judith had booked an appointment for the following morning concerning a business ownership transfer. The receptionist would give no further details. Judith’s claim that she knew nothing about another document seemed less credible.
That evening, I stayed with my friend Celia, a carpenter who had worked beside me when Bell Weather was new. She did not ask me to explain the marriage all at once. We ate leftovers at her kitchen table while her dog slept across my feet. I showed her the lender balance and Dad’s notes.
Celia remembered Derek coming into the warehouse one afternoon the previous November. He had asked her whether we owned the building outright. She told him we still had a small mortgage, then mentioned the monthly payment to me because the question seemed strange. I had assumed he was thinking about our household finances.
She also remembered Judith arriving in January to photograph an antique stair railing we were restoring. Judith told Celia she wanted ideas for her own house. Now Celia wondered whether the photographs had included our machinery in the background. We checked the images Judith had posted online that day. One showed the warehouse address on a delivery label.
I did not want every ordinary event turned into proof of a scheme. Celia agreed. She asked what would help me distinguish a misunderstanding from a deliberate attempt to use my business. “Bank records,” I said. “And a conversation with Peter Walsh.” She opened her laptop and found Peter’s business website.
Peter answered his office line the next morning. I introduced myself and said I had a question about Derek’s investment. His tone changed immediately. He said he had not managed money for Derek and had not spoken to him in eighteen months. When I mentioned the fund name, he asked me to spell it.
He had never heard of it. He did recall Derek asking for a reference when applying for a loan. Peter declined because the project Derek described did not exist. He offered to send me their email exchange. I asked him to send it to Maya instead. He agreed and sounded relieved that an attorney was involved.
Maya forwarded the exchange an hour later. In it, Derek told Peter that he planned to acquire a restoration company and needed financing until a family property sale closed. My company was the only restoration company tied to him. The email was dated ten months before Dad’s death. He had been imagining an ownership claim for almost a year.
I sat in Celia’s guest room and looked through the window at her vegetable beds. Derek had not simply panicked when his latest debt came due. He had spoken about acquiring Bell Weather while we were still having Sunday dinners with Dad. The thought made me remember all the times Dad went quiet when Derek discussed plans.
At noon, Maya called with another detail from Peter’s email. Derek had attached a description of Bell Weather’s assets. Several figures matched a confidential report prepared for our bank. I had printed it at home and left it in the office drawer. Maya asked who else had access to that drawer.
“Derek had a key,” I said. So had Judith, for emergencies. Across the hall, Celia’s dog barked at a delivery driver, and the familiar sound pulled me back into the room. Maya told me she would request complete records through Derek’s attorney if he hired one. Until then, the question of where his money had gone remained open.
END PART 6
