Diary Entry #10: A Favor
Plum called again today.
This time, she did not ask about the Hollis estate. She did not ask about the mirror, or the repairs, or whether I had slept. She asked for a favor.
She said the word so pleasantly that I almost forgot she had never asked me for one before.
“Patricia,” she said, “I need you to pull some records for me.”
I was at my desk. The office was loud around me—phones ringing, Len talking too loudly near the printer, someone microwaving fish in the break room in a way that should have been illegal. I had the Aldrich file open on one screen and a lender email open on the other.
“What kind of records?” I asked.
“Property records. Family history. The usual.”
“The usual?”
“You’ll know what I mean.”
I should have asked which property.
I did.
She gave me an address.
412 Bellwether Lane.
I wrote it down on a sticky note. Yellow. The kind with the brokerage logo in the corner. The number looked ordinary. The street name sounded like something out of a brochure. Bellwether Lane. The kind of street where old money hides behind hedges and pretends it is modest.
“Is it listed?” I asked.
“No.”
“Are you thinking of buying it?”
“I’m thinking about it.”
“Then I can pull comps, tax history, ownership—”
“I need more than that.”
I waited.
“I need the chain of title,” Plum said. “Deeds, transfers, liens, probate filings if there are any. I need to know who owned it, who lived there, who died there, and what they left behind.”
I leaned back in my chair.
“That’s a little morbid.”
“It’s thorough.”
“It’s not standard.”
“No,” Plum said. “It isn’t.”
I looked at the sticky note.
412 Bellwether Lane.
The handwriting looked like mine. The ink looked ordinary. The request did not.
“Why do you need the family history?” I asked.
“Because houses don’t stand alone.”
“That’s poetic, but it doesn’t help me explain why I’m spending billable hours doing genealogy.”
“You’re not spending billable hours,” Plum said. “You’re spending a favor.”
There it was.
The word again.
Favor.
It sat between us on the line like a small animal with its eyes closed.
“I don’t even know if the property is on the market,” I said.
“That doesn’t matter.”
“It matters if I’m pulling records.”
“You pull records all the time.”
“For listings.”
“For answers.”
I closed my eyes.
This is the part I need to write plainly, because if I do not, I will spend the rest of my life pretending I was tricked.
I was not tricked.
I did not hesitate.
I did not ask why she wanted the family history.
I did not ask whether she knew the people who lived there.
I did not ask whether this was due diligence, curiosity, leverage, or something else I did not have a name for.
I said, “I’ll see what I can find.”
Plum’s voice softened.
“I knew you would.”
I hung up and started searching.
That is what frightens me most when I write this now: how easy it was.
I opened the county assessor’s site first. The address came up immediately. A single-family residence. Older construction. Large lot. No current listing. No active sale. The last recorded transfer was eleven years ago.
The buyer was an estate.
I wrote that down.
Then I went to the registry of deeds.
The chain of title was messy in the way old properties often are. Names misspelled. Legal descriptions copied from older documents with errors preserved like fossils. A quitclaim here. A warranty deed there. A correction affidavit filed years after the fact because someone had forgotten to include a parcel or misspelled a surname.
I followed it backward.
Owner to owner to owner.
Each deed a small story.
A marriage that added a name.
A divorce that removed one.
A death that transferred everything to someone who had probably not been expecting it.
A foreclosure that erased a family and replaced them with a bank.
A bank that sold to an LLC.
An LLC that sold to another LLC.
Houses move through paper long before they move through people.
By noon, I had the ownership history.
By one, I had the permits.
Roof replacement in 1987.
Foundation repair in 1994.
An unpermitted addition in 2003.
A water heater replacement in 2011.
A complaint filed with the township in 2015 regarding overgrown vegetation and unsafe structures.
The complaint was closed with no action.
I ate a salad at my desk and kept working.
The family history was harder, but not impossible.
Real estate gives you access to more than houses. It gives you access to the paperwork of lives. Probate records. Obituaries. Old mortgage applications. Newspaper archives. Social media. The public traces people leave behind when they think no one is looking.
The house had belonged to the Voss family for decades.
Harold Voss. Eleanor Voss. Their son, Martin. Martin’s wife, Clara. A daughter named June.
June Voss had died in 2014.
The obituary was short.
She was twenty-three.
She had been “beloved daughter” and “dear friend.” There were no services listed. The family requested donations to a charity I had never heard of.
I copied the link.
Martin Voss had died two years later.
Heart failure.
Clara Voss had moved out of state.
The property transferred into a trust.
Then into an estate.
Then into the LLC that still owned it now.
I sat back.
The office had emptied around me without my noticing. Len had gone. The lights were dimmed to evening mode. My screen glowed blue-white in the darkening room.
I had done it.
All of it.
Deeds. Liens. Permits. Deaths. Transfers. Family names. Dates. The dry bones of a house assembled into a shape.
I should have felt uneasy.
I did not.
That is the confession.
I did not feel uneasy. I felt competent. I felt useful. I felt the particular satisfaction of a woman who has been asked to do something difficult and has done it quickly, cleanly, without being told twice.
I compiled the documents into a PDF.
I added a page of notes.
I included the chain of title, the tax history, the permit history, the obituaries, the complaint file, and the current ownership structure. I even attached a map showing the lot lines.
Professional.
Complete.
Ready.
I sent it to Plum at 4:37 p.m.
The subject line was: 412 Bellwether Lane — Requested Records.
The email body said: Attached. Let me know if you need anything else.
I did not ask why she needed it.
I did not ask what she intended to do with it.
I did not ask whether June Voss had died in the house, or how, or whether the shortness of the obituary meant something. I did not ask why the property had passed through so many hands in such a short time. I did not ask why Plum wanted the family history instead of only the deed.
I sent it.
I closed my laptop.
I touched the red thread on my wrist.
It was warm.
My phone buzzed.
Plum.
One word.
Perfect.
I stared at the message until the screen went dark.
I should have given it a second thought.
I did not.
4:28 PM