CHAPTER NINE — THE FAMILY BUSINESS

Greenward Restoration Partners did not have a clubhouse renovation crew.
That fact became clear when Caleb Moss agreed to meet Liam and Elise at a diner beside the highway.
Caleb had worked as a subcontractor for Greenward for six months.
He had never met its owner in person.
“I get landscaping assignments,” he said.
“I don’t build buildings.”
Elise asked whether Greenward could have other departments.
“Maybe,” Caleb admitted.
“But our dispatch calls every job a property clearance.”
He showed her an example of a completed invoice with all homeowner information covered.
The price of removing a small garden was eight thousand dollars.
His crew had been paid nine hundred.
“The equipment and hauling don’t cost seven thousand one hundred dollars,” Liam said.
“Not for that job,

” Caleb replied.
Elise asked whether he would testify about his own work and the instructions his crew had received.
Caleb looked toward the diner window.
“I have two employees who depend on me.”
“I understand,” she said.
“I cannot promise there will be no consequences for telling the truth.”
He sat silently, then said he would cooperate if his workers’ names could be protected where legally possible.
Liam paid for their coffee but not for anything else.
He wanted Caleb’s choices to belong to Caleb.
After the meeting, Elise explained that Greenward’s business registration listed Owen’s sister as its manager.
The business address matched a suite rented by Hawthorne Trustee Services.
Owen’s sister had recently married Nolan Pike.
Liam stood still beside his car.
“So Brenda’s son-in-law works for the trustee,

and Owen’s brother-in-law does too?”
“Brenda’s son-in-law is Nolan Pike,” Elise said.
“The same man who signed the sale notices.”
Liam thought about the way Brenda had dropped that connection on his porch as a threat.
She had apparently believed family ties were a form of authority.
For the first time, he considered the possibility that those ties might be the thing that destroyed the scheme.
Elise cautioned him again.
“Connections aren’t automatically crimes.”
“But the contracts matter.”
“Exactly.”
That afternoon, Marianne received an email from the association’s bank.
The bank had suspended the proposed disbursement pending confirmation of board authority.
Owen called her within minutes and shouted loudly enough that her assistant heard every word.
He accused Marianne of sabotaging a financial rescue plan.
Then he threatened to seek her removal from the board.
Marianne called Liam while still shaking.
“I thought he was trying to improve the clubhouse,” she said.
“I let him handle the bids because he said he knew contractors.”
“You can still insist on an accounting.”
“I intend to.”
When the association’s accountant, Valerie Chen, returned from a vacation that evening, she discovered that she had been removed from the online accounting portal.
She called Marianne and asked why.
Marianne had not known about the change.
Valerie then called the bank directly.
She learned that somebody had submitted a request to replace her as an authorized financial contact.
The request carried a board resolution dated June 11.
Liam heard the detail when Marianne called him at nine fifteen.
He laughed once, without amusement.
The impossible date had now appeared in two different systems.
It was no longer an error confined to a homeowner’s lien.
It was the date on which somebody had begun trying to move control of the association’s money.