Chapter 6 - The authorization
Police obtained a warrant for Amanda’s residence and digital accounts after evidence from the phone was preserved and corroborated.
At her apartment they found a printed document.
Title:
Post-Wedding Interior Reset and Collection Transfer Authorization
It appeared to authorize:
Maison Reed Interiors.
Cross & Vale Private Sales.
Two named moving companies.
To remove designated furnishings and art from my residence for:
Cleaning.
Photography.
Appraisal.
Temporary storage.
Signature:
Daniel Mercer.
Not mine.
But it looked like mine.
Digital image.
Copied from what?
Investigators traced the signature image to a vendor authorization I had signed for wedding rentals six weeks earlier.
Same pixel pattern.
No handwriting mystery.
No fake deed.
No forged title.
A forged household access document.
That was enough to get movers through the door if staff trusted it.
Then property list attached.
Twenty-seven items.
Estimated private-sale value:
$2.8 million to $3.4 million.
Not everything in my home.
Selected items.
Portable.
Valuable.
Plausible to claim they were being moved for photography or post-wedding redesign.
Included:
A nineteenth-century landscape painting.
A pair of French bronze lamps.
My grandmother’s silver service.
Two antique side tables.
A contemporary sculpture.
Three boxed watches.
Those watches were crossed out by hand.
Beside them:
Phase 2 only.
May you like
Phase 2.
There was more than one removal planned.
