The voice coming from the investigator’s recorder belonged to my sister, Lauren.
For one disorienting second, the apartment seemed to tilt beneath me.
Lauren was the reason I had spent six weeks in Minnesota.
She had called me from a hospital bed after emergency abdominal surgery, crying that she had no one else to help her.
I had cooked for her, organized her medication, driven her to follow-up appointments, and slept on a narrow sofa beside her recovery chair.
While I was doing that, my husband and his mother had moved into my apartment, changed the locks, removed my belongings, and attempted to borrow $385,000 against property they did not own.
Now Lauren’s voice filled the dining room.
“Faye will stay here as long as I need her,” she said on the recording.
“She thinks the surgery was more serious than it was.
Just make sure the money clears before she flies home.”
Dylan closed his eyes.
Brenda gripped the back of a chair.
I remained standing beside the folder, one hand pressed flat against the table because I did not trust my knees.
The bank investigator, a composed woman named Simone Park, stopped the recording.
“Mrs.
Tucker, do you recognize that voice?”
“Yes,” I said.
“That’s my sister.”
Dylan stepped toward me.
An officer blocked him with one arm.
“Faye, listen to me,” Dylan said.
“Lauren didn’t understand the whole plan.
None of us thought you would actually lose the apartment.”
I looked down at the forged loan application.
“You borrowed against my home using my identity.
What did you think would happen if the loan defaulted?”
He opened his mouth, but Brenda answered for him.
“It wasn’t going to default.
Dylan has investments.”
Simone turned toward her.
“The account listed on the application held less than twelve hundred dollars this morning.”
Brenda’s expression hardened.
“That is none of your business.”
“It became the bank’s business when you impersonated the property owner.”
The lawyer Brenda had brought from the hallway touched her elbow and murmured something.
Brenda jerked away.
“Don’t hush me, Martin.
My son promised me a house.”
That sentence changed the room.
Dylan stared at her as if she had violated an agreement.
Simone noticed it too.
“What house?” she asked.
Brenda folded her arms.
“A place in Scottsdale.
Dylan found it months ago.
This loan was only temporary financing.
Once he sold some business interests, the money would be repaid.”
Simone opened the silver case and removed a property contract.
She laid it beside the forged application.
The address was in Paradise Valley, not Scottsdale.
The purchase price was $1.2 million.
Brenda’s name appeared as the buyer, and a $350,000 final payment was due in two days.
The remaining balance was financed through a private lender.
I read the seller’s name twice.
Abernathy Residential Holdings.
