In the middle of December, Callum's office confirmed the first witness. Her name was Elaine Mercer, a former bookkeeper who had attended the signing of the earlier partnership agreement in West Haven and later moved to Timmins. Elaine remembered sitting at a table with Grant, Harlon, and an accountant while the parties discussed what would happen to ownership if one partner died or became unable to work. She had kept some of the meeting notes because she was responsible for preparing a follow-up summary, and she had never been asked about them after Harlon filed the later amendment.
Callum spoke with Elaine by video before requesting a formal sworn statement. He asked her to identify what she had witnessed and to distinguish it from the assumptions she made at the time. She remembered Grant insisting that Willa be protected and Harlon agreeing that the business would not simply disappear into one man's ownership if Grant died. She also remembered a specific phrase in the draft document about retaining a family interest. She could not say whether Grant later changed his mind, but she could say the original discussion did not match the outcome Harlon claimed had always been intended.
The second witness was Robert Sloane, a parts supplier in West Haven who had known Grant for twenty years. Robert had attended a meeting after the original agreement was drafted because he was considering extending the shop's credit terms. He had seen the version Grant believed he was signing and remembered the percentages well enough to recognize that the later document was different. He had not kept a full copy, but he had emails discussing the draft's effect on supplier guarantees. When Callum's office called, Robert went quiet for a moment and then said, "I've been waiting for somebody to ask me about that. I didn't know who I was supposed to call."
Willa heard those words in Callum's office during a conference call in January. She had spent months believing nobody outside her father's house had noticed anything wrong. Now a man who knew Grant's business had been waiting with a memory he had not known how to use. It made her grateful, but it also made her angry in a way that surprised her.
She wished Robert had called sooner. She wished Elaine had asked questions when the shop changed hands. Mostly she wished her father had lived long enough to see that there had been people who could confirm what he remembered.
Callum did not treat witnesses as a cure for every weakness in the case. Memory could change, especially across difficult months, and written records had to support what people said where possible. He gathered the earlier emails, compared document versions, and consulted a qualified forensic document examiner about the signatures and