The Chelan County Courthouse smelled of wet slate, damp wool, and floor polish. A dozen orchardists from the lower valley—men whose families had shared ditch water and spray rigs with Julian for half a century—sat in the hard oak pews at the rear of Courtroom Two, their caps held in their hands, their faces solemn and unreadable.
At the petitioner’s table sat Sterling Finch, Marcus’s uncle and the managing director of Cascade Valley Holdings. He was fifty-eight, wearing a charcoal wool suit with a gold tie clip shaped like an irrigation pump, his hair slicked back with bay rum. Beside him sat Dale Hennessey, the lead transit counsel whose name was stenciled on half the corporate retainers in Yakima. Between them lay an open leather briefcase and a pristine stack of bond paper bound in blue legal ribbon.
Sterling Finch didn't look at me when Martha and I walked through the swinging cedar gate. He leaned back in his leather chair, whispering something to Hennessey, a slight, dismissive smile lingering around the corners of his mouth. He believed the game was already won. To his mind, the forty-two acres of prime river bench, with its grandfathered water rights and two-thousand-foot runway clear-zone, was about to drop into his corporate holding company for pennies on the dollar because an old farmer had been stranded across the mountains without his paperwork.
The bailiff rapped his gavel twice. "All rise for the Honorable Douglas Albright."
Judge Albright climbed the three steps to the bench with the slow, deliberate tread of an old wheat farmer who had spent twenty-five years reading valley boundary disputes. He adjusted his half-moon spectacles, looked out over the crowded gallery, and rested his forearms on the blotter.
"We are here on the matter of the Estate of Julian Vance, deceased," Albright said, his gravelly voice cutting through the dry radiator hum. "Civil docket forty-eight-twelve. The court has before it an emergency petition filed yesterday afternoon by Cascade Valley Holdings, requesting immediate injunctive possession of parcels seven through ten on the river bench, citing an unreleased commercial lien and failure of lawful heirs to produce original patent deeds."
Hennessey stood up immediately, smoothing his jacket. "Your Honor, the petitioner moves for immediate entry of default judgment. As the court is well aware, the decedent’s water rights and right-of-way easement were pledged as collateral under the 1994 cooperative irrigation restructuring. The carrier’s operational safety zone requires immediate certification before the FAA winter inspection on Monday. The respondent was served notice in Spokane, failed to present certified deeds at the mandatory pre-hearing conference, and has failed to produce the original release signed by the co-op’s former trustee, Clara Finch."
Hennessey turned halfway toward where I sat at the defense table, his voice carrying the smooth, condescending cadence of a corporate litigator. "While we sympathize with Mr. Arthur Vance’s personal loss, probate statute does not pause for domestic inconvenience. The estate has no certified documentation before this bench. The property must revert to the holding company to preserve the regional airport’s instrument approach."
"Is that your entire argument, Mr. Hennessey?" Albright asked, not looking up from his docket sheet.
"It is, Your Honor. The record is clear. No original documents have been filed."
"Mr. Vance," Judge Albright said, turning his cold blue eyes toward me. "Your brother was an honorable man, Arthur. He served this county well on the water board. But Mr. Hennessey is correct on the law: without the original patent deed and the certified release of that ninety-four lien, this court cannot block the statutory transfer. Do you have those instruments?"
I stood up. My knees were stiff from the night of sitting in Julian’s cold kitchen, but my spine was straight.
"The original instruments are sitting in an aluminum container five hundred yards from your north window, Your Honor," I said, pointing toward the airport tarmac visible across the orchard tops. "They are locked inside my brother’s military footlocker. That footlocker was checked into my custody in Spokane yesterday morning under serial tag zero-eight-two-six-four."
Sterling Finch let out a soft, audible chuckle, shaking his head.
"Why aren't they on my desk, Arthur?" Albright asked, his voice hardening slightly.
"Because at four-eighteen yesterday afternoon, Marcus Finch—the gate agent on duty at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport and the nephew of the man sitting at that table—used the terminal credentials of deceased attorney Howard Corliss to enter an unauthorized no-show deletion on my ticket," I answered. "He shredded my boarding pass at the gate. Then he entered a fraudulent commercial lien on my luggage routing tag, diverting Julian’s footlocker into a freight warehouse in an attempt to prevent me from appearing in this room today."
The courtroom behind me erupted into a sharp, collective rustle of wool coats and muttered oaths.