The Witness Opened Her Door With Her Old Client Ledger

"Mrs. Morris?" I said. "It's Huong Pham. Mai's niece."

"I know your voice. What's happened?"

I told her about the keys, the sale, and the empty sleeves.

She gave me her address in Hilltop.

"Bring the original in a folder," she said. "And eat something first. People agree to foolish things when their stomachs are empty."

Estelle Morris was seventy-eight, a Black woman with close white curls and reading glasses on a red cord. She opened her door wearing slippers and carrying a thick ledger.

"Darren thinks you're dead," I said.

"A woman with my name died in Spokane. He sent flowers to her family. I heard about it from a cousin."

"He never called you?"

"No. Apparently flowers were easier."

She cleared a place at her kitchen table. A bowl of oranges held down her grocery list.

"I retired as a notary years ago," she said. "But retirement didn't empty my head. Your aunt wanted two people to watch her sign. Noah Bell and I did that. We weren't just names stamped on a page."

Noah had driven my aunt to medical visits. He lived in Lakewood. Estelle called him while I spread out the codicil.

He remembered the date, the kitchen, and Mai complaining that he had put too much sugar in her tea.

I sat down hard.

Until that moment, I had felt like a woman holding one dry match in the rain.

Estelle read the document twice.

It left me the 412 numbered glass negatives, their sleeves, records, and all copyright and reproduction rights Mai owned in those photographs. It also left me her restoration tools. Other gifts in her 2022 will stayed in place.

"The building was Darren's gift," I said.

"Yes. Mai wanted him to have a start. She wanted you to have your work."

Estelle opened her ledger at a yellow tab.

There was an entry for the codicil and another from two years earlier. She had helped Mai keep copies of important papers after a burst pipe ruined a drawer of records.

"I don't prepare wills," she said. "Her lawyer prepared hers. But I kept the copy she asked me to keep."

She took a sealed folder from a metal file box.

Inside was a full copy of the 2022 will.

The archive already went to me in that will. The codicil had added the plate list and made the copyright language even clearer.

"Then what did he file?" I asked.

"Let's stop letting him answer that."

She called a lawyer named Rosa Ibarra, who had once helped her sister with an estate dispute. Rosa made room for us that afternoon.

Her office was small. A fern blocked half the window. She charged $350 for the first meeting and took a $4,000 deposit from my savings for the work ahead.

"I need to see the court file before I promise anything," she said.

She brought it up on her screen.

Darren had filed what appeared to be Mai's 2022 will. Its gift pages gave him the building and the entire studio collection.

The last page carried Mai's real signature and the real witnesses' names.

But the pages ahead of it didn't match Estelle's copy.

On one, the archive was called a collection of approximately 200 pieces.

"That phrase was in her old will," I said. "From before we finished the inventory."

Rosa wrote that down.

"Don't call this proven forgery yet. We have conflicting documents. We need the originals, witnesses, and records."

She scanned my codicil, made a receipt, and put the original in her safe for filing. I liked the receipt. It named the paper, the date, and the person who held it next.

"The building sale is separate," she said. "Owning a building doesn't settle who owns the objects inside. And owning a negative doesn't automatically give someone its copyright. We will put each issue before the proper court."

For the first time that day, I could breathe all the way in.

Rosa sent formal demands to Darren, Miles, and Elliot. Preserve the records. Identify every plate's location. Stop transfers while we sought an order.

Then she prepared an emergency filing in the Pierce County estate case.

"He'll say you're confused," I told her.

"Then he can say it under oath."

At home, I ate cold rice and an egg. I set my purple gloves beside my plate list.

Darren called eight times. I let the calls go to voicemail.

At nine, an email arrived from Crane Rooms. It had been meant for the exhibition mailing list.

An attached preview showed a print from my aunt's plate number 164 in a gold frame.

Below it was a small shipping label.

Private Collection. Portland. Friday Dispatch.