Chapter 4: A Name From Six Years Ago
The number was disconnected.
Emily searched the contractor’s old business records online while Daniel sat at the kitchen table.
Within twenty minutes, they found a newer company registered under a different name.
The owner was Richard Bell.
Rick.
His company had changed names twice.
Daniel remembered him now.
A confident man in his fifties who had spoken as though every house belonged to him while he was working in it. He had known which pipes ran behind which walls and which rooms had electrical problems.
But that had been six years ago.
Daniel called the new business number.
A receptionist answered.
Daniel asked for Rick.
“He’s out today.”
Daniel paused.
“Did he send someone to my house this morning?”
The receptionist said nothing.
That silence was enough.
Daniel thanked her and ended the call.
Emily looked at him.
“You think that man worked for him?”
“I don’t know.”
“But he knew the room.”
“I know.”
Emily opened her laptop again.
Then she stopped.
“Dad, there’s something else.”
A real-estate listing database showed Daniel’s property had been entered into a private agent network three days earlier.
The information wasn’t publicly visible.
Someone had been preparing the property for sale.
Daniel stared at the screen.
“I didn’t authorize that.”
Emily shook her head.
“I know.”
The situation had become larger than a strange man at a garage sale.
Someone appeared to be treating Daniel’s house as though it were already under someone else’s control.
But why?
That afternoon, Daniel contacted the county property office.
A clerk searched the address.
After several minutes, she told him there was no ownership transfer.
The property was still legally registered to Daniel.
There was no sale.
No recorded lien that explained the stranger’s statement.
No transfer document.
No new owner.
Daniel thanked her.
For the first time that day, he felt a little relief.
Then the clerk added one sentence.
“There is a recent document request associated with the property.”
Daniel’s relief disappeared.
“Who requested it?”
The clerk couldn’t disclose everything over the phone.
But she gave him a reference number.
Daniel wrote it down.
That evening, he changed the garage lock.
He also moved Margaret’s sewing-room boxes away from the windows.
Before bed, he walked through the house one more time.
The home was quiet.
Yet Daniel couldn’t shake the feeling that someone had been studying it.
Not admiring it.
Studying it.
