“Mrs. Miller, this isn’t even a good forgery,” the analyst told me over the phone. “The pressure on the pen is completely different. The signature on the will was traced from an old signature on a property deed from 2012.

It was done by someone with a trembling hand, trying to mimic his writing.”

My jaw locked. I could hear my own pulse drumming in my ears.

Next, I looked at the notary stamp on the document. It belonged to a woman named Brenda Higgins. I looked up her registration and found out she worked at a local shipping and printing shop on Secor Road.

On a rainy Thursday afternoon, I drove over there. The shop was quiet, smelling of cardboard and packing tape.

Brenda was standing behind the counter, taping up a box. She was a middle-aged woman with tired eyes and a nervous habit of biting her lip.

I walked up to the counter and placed the copy of the will in front of her.

“Can I help you?” she asked, her voice cheerful.

“Did you notarize this signature on October fourteenth?” I asked, pointing directly to her stamp.

Brenda looked down at the paper. The color drained from her face so fast she looked like she was going to faint. She stepped back from the counter, her hands fluttering to her collar.

“I… I’m not allowed to discuss customer transactions,” she stammered, looking around the empty store.

“My father had advanced dementia,” I said, keeping my voice low but incredibly firm. “He was in hospice on October fourteenth. He couldn’t have signed this. I have a federal handwriting report proving this signature is a forgery. The police are going to get involved, Brenda. If you stamped a forged document, you are looking at felony charges.”

Brenda’s eyes welled with tears. She started shaking, her shoulders slumping.

“I didn’t want to do it,” she whispered, her voice cracking. “She told me it was what he wanted. She said it was just a technicality because he was too sick to travel to an office.”

“How much did she pay you?” I asked.

“Two thousand dollars,” Brenda sobbed, wiping her face with a paper towel from under the counter. “In cash. I had medical bills, and she made it sound so simple. But I felt sick about it. I really did.”

Then, Brenda did something I never expected. She reached into her purse, which was sitting on a shelf behind her, and pulled out a small black flash drive.

“Your sister was careless,” Brenda said, her voice trembling. “She wanted to make sure I didn’t back out. She sent me emails, drafts of the document, and she even sent me a video to prove he was ‘coherent’ so I would do the stamp. I kept all of it on here. Just in case.”