Chapter 5 - THE MAN WHO ARRIVED BEFORE THE FLOWERS
Hotel security preserved the footage that evening.
I did not watch it at the reception.
I took Clara home instead.
She was devastated.
Not because she had been embarrassed.
The prank never reached her.
Because her brother had wanted it to.
“Why does he hate me?”
I sat beside her in my kitchen.
“He doesn’t.”
“That’s worse.”
I looked at her.
“He can love me and still do that?”
I had no answer that would make the truth easier.
The next morning, the venue manager called.
“Mr. Hale, we reviewed the footage you asked us to preserve.”
My stomach tightened.
“And?”
“There is something you may want your attorney to see.”
I drove to the hotel with my lawyer, Martin Avery.
The relevant footage began at 10:18 the morning of the wedding.
Lucas entered through the ballroom’s side corridor.
Sophia followed.
Then a third person arrived.
A man in his fifties carrying a leather document case.
They met near the small private lounge beside the ballroom.
No audio.
But clear video.
Lucas handed the man a folder.
The man reviewed several pages.
Sophia signed something.
Then Lucas signed.
The man stamped or notarized multiple pages.
Martin leaned toward the monitor.
“Do you recognize him?”
“No.”
The manager did.
“He told our staff he was meeting the groom regarding real-estate documents.”
My stomach dropped.
“What real estate?”
The manager shook his head.
The next angle was more revealing.
The man opened his case.
Lucas held up a page.
Sophia pointed at a signature line.
Then Lucas said something.
We could not hear it.
But a nearby service microphone had captured fragments.
Hotel security enhanced nothing.
They simply replayed the original audio from the corridor microphone.
Lucas’s voice was faint but understandable.
“Clara already approved it.”
I stopped breathing.
Martin paused the recording.
“Did she?”
“No.”
“Any possibility she signed something later?”
“No.”
“Then we need to identify that man.”
It took less than an hour.
His name was Kenneth Doyle.
Mobile notary.
May you like
Real-estate document courier.
And the transaction he had been told he was witnessing involved the River Oaks house.
