Chapter 6 - The Lockout
By seven-thirty on Monday morning, the machine of legal retribution was running at full throttle.
I met Rachel Kim in the lobby of her firm’s downtown office. Rachel was a woman of forty-five, impeccably dressed in a sharp charcoal pantsuit, carrying a leather briefcase that looked heavy enough to sink a ship. When she saw the thick bandage over my eye and the deep black-and-purple bruising spreading across my cheek and nose, her jaw clenched.
"My God, Margaret," she said softly, reaching out to gently touch my shoulder. "I knew they were desperate, but I didn't think she was stupid enough to commit a felony in front of three witnesses."
"Desperation makes people sloppy, Rachel," I said, my voice steady. "What’s the status?"
Rachel opened her briefcase on a small marble table in the corner of the lobby. "At eight-fifteen, the municipal judge signed an Emergency Ex Parte Protection Order. Vanessa Mercer-Lawson is barred from coming within five hundred feet of you, your vehicle, or 4822 Sycamore Grove Lane. Daniel is named as an associated party under the trespass directive. If either of them approaches your home, it’s an automatic misdemeanor with mandatory jail time."
"And the locks?"
"Already scheduled. I hired Buckeye Mobile Locksmiths. They are meeting my junior associate, Peter, at your house at eleven o’clock. Every deadbolt is being replaced with high-security Medeco cylinders that cannot be bumped or picked. The garage door opener codes are being wiped and reprogrammed. Furthermore, I have a private security technician installing four motion-activated Ring floodlight cameras covering every blind spot on the perimeter."
"What about Frank’s tools?" I asked. "He had some toolboxes in the garage."
Rachel smiled—a cold, razor-thin smile. "I drafted a formal Notice of Abandonment and Property Retrieval. Frank Mercer may collect his personal belongings on Wednesday between two and three PM, accompanied by two armed Franklin County sheriff’s deputies. If he stays one minute past three o’clock, he goes to jail."
"And the deed?"
"The deed transfer to the Margaret Lawson Irrevocable Asset Protection Trust was completed and timestamped with the county recorder at eight o'clock this morning," Rachel said, sliding a certified document across the table. "You no longer legally own the house as an individual, Margaret. The trust owns it. You are the lifetime trustee. Daniel cannot contest the deed, he cannot file a lis pendens against it, and even if he tried to sue you for emotional distress or some fictional inheritance claim, the trust is impenetrable."
I looked at the gold seal stamped into the corner of the paper. For the first time in six years, the house felt truly safe.
"Let’s go home," I said.
We arrived at Sycamore Grove Lane just as the locksmith’s van pulled up to the curb. The rain had cleared, leaving the Columbus sky a pale, washed-out blue.
Inside the house, the scene of the crime remained exactly as it had been left. The dark wine stain had dried into a deep, rust-colored brown on the heirloom linen tablecloth. The shards of crystal that the police hadn't taken glittered menacingly in the morning sun.
I didn't feel sadness looking at it. I felt the clean, cold detachment of a surgeon looking at an excised tumor.
While the locksmith’s drill whined against the heavy oak front door, a rusted blue Ford pickup truck turned slowly into the cul-de-sac.
Frank and Linda.
They stopped at the edge of my driveway. Frank got out of the truck, his face pale and haggard, his clothes the same ones he had worn to dinner yesterday. He looked like an old, defeated stray dog.
He took three steps toward the walkway before Rachel Kim stepped out onto the porch.
"Mr. Mercer!" Rachel’s voice cut through the neighborhood like a whip.
Frank froze. "I... I just came to get my socket set from the garage. And Linda’s medicine. She left her blood pressure pills on the kitchen counter."
"Step back to your vehicle immediately, Mr. Mercer," Rachel said, pulling a laminated document from her folder and holding it up. "You are in violation of a criminal trespass warning. If your feet touch this driveway, I will have the dispatch officer who is currently two streets over arrest you on the spot."
"Please," Linda wept from the passenger seat of the truck, rolling down her window. "Margaret! Have some mercy! Vanessa’s in jail! They’re asking for twenty-five hundred dollars cash bond and we don't have it! Daniel can’t get the money out! We have nowhere to go! We’re sitting in an Arby’s parking lot!"
I stepped out from behind Rachel. I walked to the edge of the porch, standing in the bright sunlight, letting them see the white bandage, the bruised face, the posture of a woman who had finally run out of patience.
"You should have thought about where you were going to live before your daughter split my face open, Linda," I said.
"Margaret, she’s your family!" Frank yelled, his hands shaking. "Daniel is your son!"
"My son watched his wife assault me and told me I was overreacting," I answered. "Daniel ceased being my son the moment he decided my life’s work was his personal piggy bank. Get off my property. Now."
The locksmith finished driving the long anchor screws into the strike plate of the front door with a sharp, final *rat-tat-tat* of his impact driver.
May you like
Frank stared at me, his mouth opening and closing soundlessly. Seeing the utter lack of surrender in my eyes, he cursed under his breath, turned around, climbed back into his rattling truck, and sped away, his tires screeching against the wet asphalt.
***
