Chapter 3
Damien ordered no confrontation.
He hated that decision.
Arthur insisted.
“If she thinks you know everything, she destroys whatever we haven’t found.”
Damien looked toward the ballroom doors.
“She assaulted my mother.”
“That is one issue.”
“And the other?”
“May be much larger.”
Greta helped reconstruct Celestine’s movements over the previous two months.
First, Agnes stopped appearing at family dinners.
Then Celestine began telling relatives Agnes preferred eating upstairs.
Next, contractors began visiting sections of the estate.
Then came bankers.
After that, a private senior-living consultant toured Agnes’s bedroom suite.
Damien went still.
“What senior-living consultant?”
Greta opened a folder.
She had found brochures in Celestine’s office.
A luxury residence outside Lake Forest.
Private nursing.
Driver service.
Garden apartment.
Twenty-four-hour assistance.
A proposed move date appeared on one planning sheet.
Five weeks away.
Damien looked at Agnes.
“You approved this?”
“No.”
“Discussed it?”
“Celestine showed me brochures.”
“What did you say?”
“That I’d move when someone carried me out.”
Greta almost smiled.
Damien didn’t.
Arthur examined the draft transition agreement.
It described Agnes moving permanently into assisted living while “family representatives” managed ongoing property matters.
Agnes’s signature line was blank.
Celestine’s was already signed.
“Why does she need Mom moved?”
Arthur said:
“She may not.”
Damien looked at him.
“She may need Agnes to appear unable or unwilling to manage the estate personally.”
The phrase bothered Damien.
Greta remembered another detail.
Celestine frequently carried a second folder into Agnes’s sitting room.
Not the senior-care paperwork.
Something else.
“Did you ever see it?”
“No.”
Agnes closed her eyes, thinking.
“I saw the title once.”
Everyone waited.
“Family Property Ratification.”
Arthur became very still.
Damien noticed.
“What?”
“A ratification can be used to confirm or validate an earlier transaction.”
“What transaction?”
“We don’t know.”
Agnes looked at Damien.
“She kept telling me it was only housekeeping paperwork.”
“Did you sign?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“She wouldn’t let me read it alone.”
Damien sat back.
May you like
Celestine did not merely want Agnes removed from the mansion.
She needed something from her first.
