…”He looks exactly like Frank, Margaret. Just younger. And he’s wearing Frank’s old watch.”
I sat down on the bank steps. There was only one person in the world who looked like my husband and would have his watch. His younger brother, Ray.
Ray and Frank hadn’t spoken in fifteen years. After Frank’s funeral, Ray had asked for the watch “as a keepsake.” I’d given it to him. He also asked to borrow a copy of Frank’s will “for his records.” I’d given him that too.
I didn’t go home. I called the police and drove to my neighbor Sandra’s house. From her window, I watched Ray standing on my porch, laughing with a locksmith, while two men carried my dining chairs to a moving truck.
The police arrived twenty minutes later. Ray showed them a piece of paper with a court stamp. It was an order from a probate court in another county, awarding him my house based on a “newly discovered” will — a will in which Frank supposedly left the house to his brother, not to me.
The officers couldn’t tell if it was real. They told everyone to stop moving furniture until it was sorted out. Ray smirked at me across the lawn.
The next morning, the young teller, Priya, called me herself. A woman about my age had come in the day before with an ID in my name and a court order, asking to close my accounts and transfer the money to Ray. Priya noticed that the signature didn’t match the one on file. She also noticed that the “court order” had a spelling mistake in the judge’s name.
I hired a probate attorney that afternoon. She called the clerk of the county where the order had come from. There was no such case. The judge whose name was misspelled had retired three years earlier. Ray had created the whole thing on a computer using Frank’s real will as a template.
The woman with my ID was Ray’s girlfriend, Debbie. She had stolen my driver’s license from my purse at Frank’s memorial lunch, six years earlier. They had waited all this time because they thought I would be too old and confused to fight back by now.
Ray and Debbie were charged with forgery, identity theft and attempted theft of real property. The movers turned out to be friends of Ray’s who’d been promised a share of the sale.
I got my house back that same week, along with every dining chair.
I also got Frank’s watch back. The detective returned it to me in a plastic bag. I wear it on my wrist now, even though it’s too big for me.
I went back to the bank with flowers for Priya. She was embarrassed and said she had just done her job. I told her plenty of people do their jobs. She did the right thing. That’s not the same.
