"Possibly."
"Deliberately."
"I said possibly."
"Daniel."
He sighed.
"Robert, I am your lawyer. My job is to be boring until the evidence stops leaving room for boring answers."
I hated that he was right.
He pulled out the transfer form again.
The signature belonged to a former Riverstone manager named Harold Fenwick.
Fenwick had died twelve years earlier.
"Could somebody have reused an old signature?"
"That is one possibility. Another is that they copied an old form and treated it as continuing authority. Either way, the current transfer was not authorized by him."
"Does Karen know he is dead?"
"We do not know."
"You keep saying that."
"And you keep trying to turn suspicion into a confession before we have one."
I drank my coffee.
"Fine. What do we know?"
Daniel held up one finger.
"We know Silver Ridge hired Mountain Aquatic Services."
A second.
"We know the contractor moved registered fish into your pond without your consent."
A third.
"We know the transfer paperwork cites authority from an entity that no longer exists and a manager who is dead."
A fourth.
"We know the fish are connected to a commercially valuable breeding line."
A fifth.
"And we know Silver Ridge has been studying development on the land where those fish were previously located."
He folded his hand.
"That is enough to stop anyone from touching the pond until the state sorts out what happened. It is not yet enough to accuse Karen of fraud."
I nodded.
That afternoon, I installed two trail cameras near the access road.
Not because Daniel told me to. Because someone had already entered once without permission, and I was not giving them a second opportunity without a record.
I also changed the lock on the service gate.
Ethan helped.
He held the new chain while I worked the bolt through the post.
"You think Karen is coming back?"
"Yes."
"You think she will bring trucks?"
"Maybe."
"Can she just take the fish?"
"Not if Daniel is right."
Ethan looked toward the pond.
"What if she is wrong about everything and just panicked?"
I stopped tightening the lock.
It was a good question.
"Then I would rather find that out before treating her like a criminal."
Ethan nodded.
"Mom says you never give people the benefit of the doubt."
"Your mother has been exaggerating since birth."
He laughed.
Then his face turned serious.
"If the fish are worth two hundred grand, do we get to keep them?"
"No idea."
"Would be cool."
"Would be complicated."
"Those are not opposites."
He had me there.
Two days later, Karen returned.