Chapter 2 - The Law and the Locksmith
The office of Arthur Vance, Attorney-at-Law, smelled exactly the way it had when Daniel and I drafted our reciprocal wills in nineteen ninety-eight: cedar shavings, yellowing tax reporters, pipe tobacco, and the dry, paper dust of thirty years of domestic warfare.
Arthur was seventy-two, with wild white hair that looked like a bird’s nest and knuckles swollen from four decades of arguing property disputes in the county chancery court. He had gone to high school with my husband; he had stood beside me at Daniel’s graveside service while the rain pelted our umbrellas; and he did not believe in softening the truth with pleasantries.
He read through Cynthia’s certified printouts without speaking, his heavy horn-rimmed glasses perched on the middle of his nose, an unlit cigar clamped between his molars. When he reached the lease agreement for the Porsche Macan, he let out a low, whistling breath that sounded like steam escaping an old radiator.
"One hundred and seventy-two thousand dollars, Martha," Arthur said, tossing the papers onto his green blotter. "In eight months. That isn't unemployment relief. That's grand larceny dressed up in an authorized user card."
"Can I press charges?" I asked, sitting upright in the high-backed wooden client chair, my hands folded over my purse.
"Against Harrison? Technically, yes. But because you signed the authorized signatory waiver at the branch, the State's Attorney will call it a domestic civil dispute nine times out of ten unless you can prove criminal identity theft on the individual ACH transfers," Arthur replied, leaning back until his leather chair groaned. "The daughter-in-law is a different story. If she set up that Delaware LLC specifically to funnel assets out of an account where she is not a named principal, we can hit her with fraudulent conveyance, civil conspiracy, and conversion before Friday afternoon."
"I don't want her in county jail on Friday, Arthur," I said, my voice steady as an iron plumb line. "I want her off my property."
Arthur pulled his cigar from his mouth and pointed the wet tip at me. "Under Illinois tenant law, Martha, they’ve lived there for eleven months. They receive mail. They have clothes in the closets. The law considers them month-to-month tenants at will, even if they haven't paid you a nickel in rent."
"This is my home. Daniel and I paid off the mortgage in two thousand twelve."
"Doesn't matter who holds the deed when it comes to eviction," Arthur said bluntly. "You can't throw their bags on the curb, you can't shut off the water, and you can't change the locks on their bedroom without a court order. If you do, that girl will have the sheriff out there within forty-five minutes citing you for an illegal self-help lockout, and some twenty-eight-year-old magistrate will slap you with a five-thousand-dollar fine."
"Then what can I do?"
Arthur picked up a legal pad, uncapped a fountain pen, and scribbled three lines in heavy black ink.
"We serve them with a formal, statutory Thirty-Day Notice to Quit for non-payment of fair-market occupancy value and waste of premises," Arthur said, his eyes gleaming beneath his bushy brows. "We file an emergency lis pendens on the Delaware LLC to freeze the assets she moved through that account, and we file a civil replevin suit for the return of the stolen liquid principal."
He ripped the sheet from the pad and slid it toward me.
"And in the meantime, Martha?" Arthur added, a slow, predatory grin curling the corners of his mouth. "The law says you cannot lock them out of the house. It does not say you have to provide them with high-speed internet, premium cable, air conditioning, soft water, or access to any room that isn't their designated bedroom and the immediate hallway leading to the nearest exit."
"Explain," I said.
"The utility accounts are in your name exclusively?"
"Every one of them."
"The master breaker panel is in the locked cellar?"
"Behind a steel fire door Daniel installed for his tool shop."
Arthur leaned forward, resting his forearms on the desk. "You go down to Miller’s Hardware on Fourth Street. You buy three heavy-duty Master Lock deadbolts with restricted keys. You secure your office, your master suite, your pantry, and the basement stairs. You disconnect the Wi-Fi router and place it in the trunk of your car. You terminate the streaming accounts. And then you hand your son the legal notice with his evening coffee."
I looked at the paper in my hand.
For thirty-five years, I had protected Harrison from every sharp edge in the world. When he failed algebra in tenth grade, I spent four nights a week sitting beside him at the kitchen table until his eyes watered, working through quadratic equations until he scraped a C-plus. When he crashed his first car into a guardrail on Route 14, Daniel wanted to make him take the bus for a year; I was the one who argued that he needed transportation for his community college classes, dipping into my own savings to buy him a used sedan.
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Every time Harrison had faltered, a woman had been there to absorb the impact. His mother, until he found a wife who taught him that taking from his mother was his birthright.
"Draft the notice, Arthur," I said, standing up. "I'll be at the hardware store."
