The Buyer Asked Greer To Show The Missing Signature

The meeting room faced a brick wall and an alley drain. There was no river view for this part of the sale.

I sat beside Jo. Althea sat on my other side with a folder on her lap.

Across from us, Greer kept her phone face down. Ridge Ledger's deal manager, Owen Kells, had a yellow pad and no coffee.

"We need one clean answer," he said. "Who can approve the tunnel transfer?"

"The company," Greer said.

Jo placed my license on the table.

"Please point to that power."

Greer's lawyer, Daniel Voss, opened a slim folder. He set down the first four pages of my 2019 assignment.

"Mr. Endo assigned his work product."

Jo counted the pages without touching them.

"Where are pages five and six?"

"Those were the pages supplied to our office."

She passed him our full copy. Schedule C was page six.

Voss read it. His thumb stopped moving.

Greer leaned toward him.

"That's an old attachment."

"It's attached to the signed agreement," he said.

"We updated all those arrangements."

"When?" Owen asked.

She looked at me.

"Satoshi handled field records. Maybe he failed to file something."

I slid forward nine annual payment records. Each had the license number in its memo line. The latest payment was only six weeks old.

"Accounting kept paying the separate agreement," I said. "I kept paying the renewal fee to Bellmouth."

"You didn't mention this when the sale began."

"No one asked me about route rights. I was asked to test pole clearance."

Owen wrote that down.

I had watched Greer ignore a crew standing in rain while she posed beside a finished cabinet. Now she could not make the field record disappear by looking past its keeper.

"Let's discuss the approaches," Jo said.

Greer gave a short laugh.

"It's a tunnel. There are two ends."

Althea opened her folder.

"And the tunnel owner's boundary stops at two specific places. At the west end, it stops at survey pin B-seven. Not the county road."

"You haven't worked here in years."

"The pin hasn't moved because I retired."

She laid down the drawing.

Owen studied it.

"Who owns the hundred eighty-six feet?"

Nobody answered.

Voss asked for a short break. He and Greer went into the hall. Through the closed door, I heard her say, "We have always used it."

I took a clean black strip from my pocket. It was a piece of cable jacket I had saved after a damaged drop was replaced. I folded it lengthwise, then stopped.

My hands were shaking.

Althea put her palm flat beside mine.

"You only need to answer what's asked," she said.

"She keeps making me sound like I stole something."

"That's why we brought dates."

When Greer returned, Owen made three requests: a full title search, an independent route audit, and a list of every access promise Lowbank had made.

"We have a closing Friday," she said.

"We had a closing Friday," he said.

It was the first time her face changed.

The next day, an auditor named Mara Flint called me. Lowbank had agreed that she could ask about my old field records through Jo.

"Did you record the west pull box as company land?" Mara asked.

"No. I recorded the pole tag, box number, and condition."

"Your inspection form has an access field."

"That means whether the gate was open and the crew could reach the box. It isn't a title report."

"Thank you for saying that clearly."

I sent her the form's old instruction sheet. Access Condition: Open, Locked, Flooded, Or Blocked. Nothing about ownership.

I had used those boxes hundreds of times with muddy gloves on. Greer had turned a note about whether a truck could reach a cabinet into a promise about who owned the ground beneath it.

That afternoon, her title search found the strip on a separate parcel owned by Rivermark Land Trust. The trust held low ground for drainage and flood storage. Its deed had no Lowbank easement.

Mara did not call that proof that no agreement existed. She requested the trust's own records.

That care made me trust her more.

At five, Greer sent me an email copied to six people.

Your Interference Has Put Fifty-Two Jobs At Risk. We Will Seek All Resulting Losses From You.

I forwarded it to Jo. Then I ate a bowl of rice standing by the sink because I could not sit still.

At six, Owen asked Jo to confirm that I had made no demand for money. She sent him our notice again.

At seven, Rivermark's director, Ruth Tabor, called.

"Mr. Endo," she said, "someone just sent us a consent form bearing your name. Did you authorize that?"