Chapter 4 - The Investigation Unfolds
Detective Vance stepped into my entryway, his eyes scanning the neat, warm interior before fixing back on me. I invited him to the kitchen table, pouring him a cup of fresh coffee, which he accepted with a polite nod.
“I assume this is about my brother, Mike Hart, and the commercial loan?” I asked, cutting straight to the chase.
Vance raised an eyebrow, taking a sip from the mug. “You’re well-informed, Ms. Hart. To put it bluntly, as of 2:00 a.m. last night, the primary lender froze all business and personal lines tied to your brother’s enterprise. When your name was removed from the master guarantee, the risk algorithm triggered an immediate default review. They discovered a massive discrepancy in asset reporting.”
I felt a cold shiver, not of fear, but of realization. “Discrepancy?”
“Your brother used inflated valuations of properties—including your mother’s house and your business studio address, without your explicit recent consent—to secure higher limits,” Vance explained, pulling a tablet from his briefcase. “Furthermore, we received an urgent call this morning from the dealership where your nephew’s car was financed. The primary guarantor’s account bounced overnight. The repo team was dispatched at dawn, which explains why the vehicle vanished from their driveway.”
So that was why the car was gone. Tyler’s precious status symbol had been repossessed before he even woke up for school.
“I severed my ties legally last night,” I said, sliding my phone across the table with the confirmation screen open. “I have nothing to do with their financial operations. I was merely used as a ghost signature.”
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Vance reviewed the screen, his expression softening into one of professional respect. “Well, Ms. Hart, your timing saved you from being legally entangled in a very messy fraud investigation. But I’m afraid you’ll need to come down to the station to sign a formal affidavit stating you did not authorize the secondary asset pooling.”
“I’ll be there in twenty minutes,” I said firmly.
