by Mia Caldwell
“How was she rude?” Jada asked.
“The way she said things. ‘Get me this now, I’m in a hurry.’ ‘I haven’t got all day you know,’ and so on. She kept asking me to hurry up when I was printing out what she wanted and tapping her long nails on the counter clickety-clack, clickety-clack. Had my nerves jumping.”
Ophelia continued the tale. “So, the woman asked for a record about Ian Buckley. Grandma searched the computer and got two hits, one referencing a marriage license with Ian as the groom, and another referencing Ian as a witness to someone else’s wedding.”
Chapter Three
JADA’S BROWS SHOT UP. “TWO records?”
“That’s right,” Ophelia answered. “But Grandma got a little flustered by the woman’s complaints and—”
“I wasn’t flustered,” Mrs. Nell interrupted, shooting a severe look at her granddaughter. “It got stuck in the printer.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Ophelia said. “The woman only got the printout for the record that listed Ian as the groom, and never knew a second one existed.”
“I didn’t realize it myself,” Mrs. Nell said, “until after Miss Snooty Pants was gone and I found it in the printer tray. Serves her right, I say.”
“How did the woman react when she read the printout you gave her?” Jada asked.
“She got excited and even louder and bossier. She wanted me to get her a copy of the actual marriage license.”
“The records department is still behind, technology-wise,” Ophelia explained. “When someone files a document with the department, the first thing they do is enter the information into the main computer, which makes it part of the official, searchable database. The actual paperwork is then stored in a filing cabinet until enough documents build up to send them off for batch scanning and processing by a contractor. Before those files are sent off for scanning, the only way to search for and copy the actual document is to physically find it in the filing cabinets.”
“It’s a terrible chore, let me tell you,” Mrs. Nell added. “You have to bend over those drawers and it takes a long time to hunt through it all. Hurts my back something awful. Worse than washing dishes, or mopping.”
“Which is why you ...” Ophelia prompted.
For the first time, Mrs. Nell looked chagrined. “Well, I’m not proud to admit it, but that’s why I lied to the rude woman. I told her the license wasn’t in the office and that it would take a few days to get it from somewhere else. I shouldn’t have lied, Lord knows it, but I was tired and I didn’t want to get an aching back for someone who would be nasty when it took me a while to find what she wanted.”
“I don’t blame you,” Jada said. “I’d have done the exact same thing if I’d been you.”
“Me too,” Ian added.
Mrs. Nell reached across the table and tapped Jada’s and Ian’s hands in turn. “Thank you both. That makes me feel a little better.”
“Did the woman argue with you when you told her you couldn’t give her what she wanted?” Jada asked.
“No. She paid for her printout and ran off. She was in a hurry like all you young people.”
“I’m a little confused,” Jada admitted, thinking the interview had raised more questions than it had answered.
Ian looked thoughtful. “Ophelia, you said there’s a hard copy of the license and an electronic entry in the official database which states Jada and Sasha were married. There’s also an entry in the official database which says Jada and I were married, but there’s no physical document to support it. Is this correct?”
“It is,” Ophelia said.
“So the next question is, where’s the actual marriage license that claims Jada and I were married? Could someone have stolen it?” Ian asked.
“No,” Ophelia answered. “Grandma, will you tell them the rest, or shall I?”
Mrs. Nell made a scrunched-up face. “Oh, I suppose, if we have to. Go on and do it yourself. I’m worn out. I probably need a nap.” She let her crocheting drop onto her lap, clasped her gnarled hands over it, and closed her eyes.
Ophelia opened the manilla folder, pulled out a sheet of paper and slid it across the table. “Take a look at this. It’s the printout of the computer entry from the allegedly-missing license.”
Jada’s heart thumped when she got a glimpse of the document which had turned her life upside down. She and Ian scanned it together.
It was a simple printout, a compilation of the pertinent info on a typical marriage license: the date, names of the bride and groom, witnesses, who performed the ceremony, where the wedding took place and so on.
There it was in black and white. The groom was listed as Ian Buckley and it was followed by his address, which Ian pointed out was incorrect. The bride was listed as Jada Howarth, also followed by her address, which also was incorrect. The person listed as performing the marriage was Fred Smith of Everywhereville. Ridiculous, Jada thought. That couldn’t be anything but fake.
But what particularly drew her up was when she read the witnesses: Trey Russell, which she expected to see, and someone named ... Fanny Blue?
“Oh come on,” Jada said when she read the name. “That’s obviously as phony as the officiant.”
“Surprisingly, Fanny Blue is real,” Ophelia said, “It took a while to work it all out, but I’m confident I know what happened.”
Mrs. Nell shifted slightly, leaning back in her chair and sighing gently. It appeared she actually was going to take a nap.
Ophelia continued with hardly a sideways glance at her grandmother. “Like I mentioned before, after Sylvia left the office on Wednesday, Grandma wanted to help her out with her work, so Grandma took some of the new documents from Sylvia’s inbox which hadn’t been entered into the system and did it herself. Apparently, when she came to this marriage license, she didn’t understand. She got confused.” Ophelia reached into the folder and slid another sheet of paper across the table.
It was a copy of a marriage license, not just a computer entry. The license listed Jada Howarth as the bride, and Sasha Brimgore as the groom. The officiant was Fred Smith of Everywhereville again, and the witnesses were Trey Russell and ... Ian Buckley.
“What?” Jada said aloud. “This makes no sense.”
“It will,” Ophelia said almost apologetically. “When Grandma saw this license listed a woman as the groom, she thought it was a mistake.”
Mrs. Nell opened one eye a tiny slit and peeped around. “Two women can’t get married,” she said, then shut her eye again.
Ophelia shrugged. “What are you gonna do? She’s right, two women can’t get married, not in this state. But this license is from a different state where it’s legal.”
“Never heard of it before,” Mrs. Nell grumbled under her breath.
Jada grinned in spite of everything. Ian cleared his throat.
Ophelia continued. “So, Grandma thought she’d fix it up and correct the error.”
“Nothing wrong with fixing mistakes,” Mrs. Nell mumbled.
“I thought you were taking a nap, Grandma, and you were going to let me tell them what happened,” Ophelia said.
“Fine, but tell it right.” She peeked at her granddaughter, then snapped her eyes shut when she saw Ophelia’s scowl.
“Anyway,” Ophelia continued, “Grandma decided that probably what happened was that the groom’s name was accidentally switched with one of the witnesses’ names. For whatever reason, she picked Ian’s name as the groom and entered it into the computer, then some time between doing that and when she entered in the witnesses’ names, she forgot what she was doing. Instead of swapping in Sasha Brimgore’s name as the second witness, she entered Fanny Blue.”
“Out of curiosity,” Ian said, “who is Fanny Blue?”
“Grandma’s best friend in second grade,” Ophelia answered with an expression that silently, but clearly said, “She’s old and there’s no explaining it so we might as well not try.”
Jada might have laughed, but Mrs. Nell op
ened an eyelid a crack and spied on them. They pretended to look casual until the eyelid dropped closed again.
“If Mrs. Nell made the entry that created the confusion about Ian and I being married,” Jada said, “who made the entry that was accurate, according to the license anyway, which says Sasha and I were married?”
“That’s a good question,” Ophelia said, “but I can’t answer it, unfortunately. I’ve asked everyone who helped out on Thursday or Friday and no admits to doing any data entry. They put all incoming documents into Sylvia’s box so she could deal with them when she got back.”
“Could Mrs. Nell have made a double entry and not changed the groom the second time around?” Ian asked gently.
“No,” Mrs. Nell mumbled, her voice sleepy-sounding.
“I don’t think so,” Ophelia says. “Grandma says she didn’t do any more data entry after that little bit on Wednesday afternoon. Nothing’s impossible, but I bet that if she made changes the first time she saw that license, she’d have made them the second time, too.”
Jada and Ian nodded. Seemed pretty likely.
“The system doesn’t have a time stamp so we can’t know when the other, accurate entry was made,” Ophelia said, “but entries are keyed to particular workstations, and it shows that both were made from Grandma’s. Systems down here are very basic. Computers in the records office aren’t even connected to the internet, so it couldn’t have been done remotely, if you’re thinking in that direction.”
Jada had definitely been thinking in that direction. “What about from another computer in the courthouse?”
“No. The entry would have been keyed to that computer.”
They sat quietly, each lost their own thoughts.
“Seems like there’s one person who could answer this question,” Jada said.
Ian said aloud what Jada was thinking. “Looks like you and I need to talk to Sylvia Watson.”
“Don’t we all,” Ophelia said with a steely look.
Mrs. Nell began to snore lightly.
IAN PULLED INTO A PARKING space in front of the small park that Jada had guided him to. It was a quaint little place, complete with benches, wooden picnic tables and leafy, giant oak and maple trees. He turned off the engine and reached into the back seat for the bag of burgers and fries they’d picked up at a drive thru.
Jada looked up from the folder of documents Ophelia had given them. “I wish we could take our food to one of the picnic tables.”
“Best not risk it,” Ian said, handing her a paper-wrapped burger and a small container of french fries. “There’s quite a few people out there. Someone would recognize you.”
“Or you,” she said. “You’re way more famous than I am. Wait. I’m infamous. You’re famous. Never mind. Let’s just eat. Are the windows in this rental car dark enough for me to take off my glasses?”
“Go ahead,” Ian said, thinking that as long as they were in the car, they could always speed away if anyone recognized them.
They ate in silence for several minutes. Ian contemplated what they’d learned at the courthouse.
“You were right about Ophelia Wyatt,” he said. “She was a great help. I don’t know how we would have gotten the whole story from Mrs. Nell without her.”
“I’ve always like Ophelia. But that isn’t why I called her in on this. I figured she’d have a vested interest in finding out the truth: one, she’s the DA and there could be a fraud case here; and two, she’d want to make sure her grandmother was okay.”
“Do you think everything we heard in there was the truth?”
“I do,” Jada answered with confidence, squeezing some ketchup onto a thick fry. “You?”
“Yes.”
“Good. And do you think the blonde woman who was so mean to Mrs. Nell and got the printout on Friday afternoon was Piper Sandy from CGTV?”
“I do,” he said, following Jada’s cue and squeezing some ketchup on his own fries.
“I’m surprised high and mighty Piper would come all the way to little old Springers Glen to check out Marina’s tip. I would have thought the network would send someone lower in the pecking order, like you did.”
“I wish I would have sent someone more capable,” Ian said. “Maybe that’s why Piper came herself.”
“Do you think we should contact her and ask her about this?”
“No, not yet.” Ian watched a pair of children in the park fight over a rubber ball. “Let’s hold off on confronting anyone at CGTV until after we find Sylvia Watson and learn what she knows.”
“You’re right.”
Ian took a bite out of the hamburger, surprised at how good it was. Jada had recommended the burger shack and he’d been less than impressed with the shabby exterior. He had to admit though, the food was good. How long had it been since he’d eaten a burger from a drive-thru joint? He couldn’t recall.
“So here’s a rundown of what we think we know,” Jada said briskly, setting her hardly-nibbled food aside and leafing through the folder. “Some time before noon on Wednesday, a tall woman in a disguise came to the records department and bribed Sylvia to accept a fake, out-of-state marriage license and to call CGTV to tip them off to the document’s filing.”
She studied the copy of the license. “This thing is obviously fake. It looks like something you’d print out off the internet as a prank. There’s no official seal, no notary, nothing. And the signatures look like they were all done by the same person.”
Ian swigged down some soda then held out his hand. “I haven’t gotten a good look at it yet. Let me see.”
She gave him the license and he studied it. Everything she’d said was true. It couldn’t have looked less official if it had a red stamp across the top of the page declaring, “Not an actual license.”
“I don’t see how it could have fooled anyone with decent eyesight and half a brain,” he said, handing it back to Jada.
“Exactly,” she said, “which means Sylvia had to know it was fake. So when she told Marina that she only took the money to call in the tip, she was definitely lying. She accepted a bribe for the tip and to file a forged document.”
“That seems the likeliest conclusion,” Ian said.
Jada blew out a long breath. “Wow. Poor Sylvia.”
“How so?”
“She must have really been hard up for cash to break the law and risk her job. I don’t see how she’ll get out of this without being fired at the very least, and she might get charges filed against her, depending on what Ophelia decides to do.”
Ian marveled that Jada could sympathize with someone who had been partly responsible for everything that had happened in the past week. “We don’t know everything yet. Don’t get too worried over her until we know the whole story.”
“I won’t,” Jada said. “Anyway, going on with the timeline, Sylvia accepted the money and the license Wednesday morning, but before she could enter it into the system, she was called away by her son’s emergency at school. That afternoon, Mrs. Nell entered incorrect information into the database. The next morning, Sylvia called Marina and asked her to leak a story to CGTV about shocking information regarding you and Sasha. Marina tried to get the network interested, but she didn’t have any luck until Friday morning, when she talked to a different person.”
“I’m following so far,” Ian said.
“Good. On Friday afternoon, a woman, probably Piper Sandy, came to the records department, got a printout of Mrs. Nell’s incorrect entry, then left. She didn’t keep CGTV’s promise to Marina that they’d share whatever they found with her. That sounds exactly like something Piper would do.” Jada’s upper lip curled. “She’s shady.”
“I would have called her something worse than shady.” He eyed the rest of Jada’s lunch. “Can I have that?”
She laughed. “You sound like Sasha. You can have half of it.”
He tore the burger in half and dug in.
Jada forged onward. “Piper broke the story online and on TV some time over
night. We found out about it Saturday morning. Marina called Sylvia to bitch her out for what she did, and discovered Sylvia had left town and that she planned to hide out until everything blew over. When she was asked about how she could use Marina to harm me, Sylvia said she didn’t know I was involved, implying she hadn’t seen the license. That was a blatant lie, probably so she wouldn’t be connected to the fake license, only to the tip.”
“Exactly,” Ian said. “And she didn’t want to admit how badly she’d used both you and Marina.”
“When Marina tried to call her again, Sylvia ducked her calls and texts and everything else Marina tried. She went off-grid.”
Ian laughed briefly. “Off-grid. Doubt she’s that sophisticated.”
Her pretty eyes twinkled. “Don’t tease. You know what I mean. So, that’s where everything stood until this morning, when thanks to your pressure over the weekend, CGTV was at the courthouse bright and early to get the copy of the marriage license. Instead, they got a second bombshell and raced off to spread the news. Do you think it was Piper who showed up at the courthouse this morning?”
“No. I think Violet would have mentioned the woman was rude, or obnoxious. She said the woman was young and polite.”
“Not Piper then. Probably a random employee,” Jada said. “Next, Zeke showed up and found out there was no hard copy of your marriage license. Not long after that, CGTV broke the story that I married Sasha. And that brings us up to now.”
“It’s a lot of information to keep straight,” Ian admitted.
“How much longer do you think it will be before your people track down Sylvia?”
“Could be any time. It won’t be difficult for them.”
Jada’s nose wrinkled in dismay. “If only I had been on top of this during the weekend. We’d already know where Sylvia is, would have already talked to her and CGTV would never—”
“You don’t know that,” Ian interrupted. “Don’t play the ‘if only’ game. It never does any good.”