Chapter 4 - The Archive of the Three Girls
The basement office of the Cumberland County Registry of Deeds smelled of eighty years of ammonia blueprints, dry canvas binding string, and the grey dust that drops from the edges of old land maps when the humidity shifts below forty percent.
Michael Anders sat at a long zinc table beneath a single fluorescent tube that flickered once every twelve seconds with a low, high-pitched ping. Across from him stood Marcus Vance, a seventy-year-old title checker who had spent forty winters tracking the lineage allocations for the old shore estates, his fingers stained dark with the purple ink used for the municipal tax seals.
"The 2022 agreement is a forgery, Michael," the old man said, dropping a thick manila folder onto the table between them. The paper inside was yellowed at the margins, its text executed with the old mechanical typewriter that Margaret Carter kept in her private library at the Cape. "Andrew’s signature on the secondary loan notes was executed with a steel nib that didn't match his standard maritime registry hand. Look at the terminal loops on the C in Carter. The pressure is flat, like it was done by an accounting machine or a clerk using a light box."
"Where is the original equity allocation from the grandfather’s estate, Marcus?" Michael asked, his hand resting flat against his pocket ledger.
"It was never split, Michael," Vance said, his reading glasses slipping down his nose as his finger tracked a row of red ink entries on the 1984 plat map. "The old man left the Spruce Island wharf properties directly to the three girls—Grace, Faith, and Hope. The trust was structured so that the capital couldn't be touched by the shipping corporation until the youngest child reached twenty-one. Margaret suppressed the will by filing a secondary probate action in the Bangor court, listing the children as non-lineage dependents due to the mother’s lack of a corporate marriage certificate."
"Ellie Hayes was married in the harbor church at Owls Head," Michael said.
"The church logs were cleared by the fire in twenty-three, Michael," the title checker said, his voice dropping into a low, dry whisper that didn't carry past the zinc table frame. "The rector died three weeks later in the state home. There’s no physical record of the ceremony left on the coast except for the entry in the old family Bible that Andrew’s father kept in the Bangor house before he died."
"Where is the Bible, Marcus?"
"Margaret took it to the Cape house the night Andrew’s car went into the ditch," the old man said. "She keeps it in the lower iron safe behind the library paneling, along with the original land deeds for the Spruce Island wharves. If those documents ever clear the registrar's counter, the Carter Marine Group loses its claim to the entire container terminal within forty-eight hours."
Michael stood up, his canvas jacket making a sharp, rustling sound in the silent basement. He looked at the red sweep hand of his mechanical pocket watch; it was five-forty-five, fifteen minutes before the evening shift at the ridge hospital logged the child's pre-operative metrics.
"Keep the file clear of the municipal indexes for another twelve hours, Marcus," Michael said. "If the Carter attorneys see the search log on the terminal, they will file for an emergency stay before the harbor marshal can execute the cargo warrants."
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He left the building through the rear alley, the rain having started again, a cold, heavy downpour that ran off the slate roofs of the city with a sound like iron filings hitting a tin deck. As his fingers found the key to the Ford Taurus, his phone battery flickered once, showing a single, text-only message from the private number at the ridge hospital:
Patient Hope Hayes entered surgical arrest at seventeen-forty. Maternal custodian has cleared the wing. The room is empty.
