“Also understood.”

She smiled briefly. “That usually makes people less comfortable.”

Then she began checking the records.

Within an hour, the first true problem surfaced. There was an application for a replacement title bearing the Mustang’s VIN. It had been submitted ten days earlier by a business called Lakeview Collector Holdings, accompanied by an affidavit claiming the original owner had abandoned the vehicle in a storage facility.

Elijah read the date twice.

His father had died six months earlier. The car had spent the intervening months in Elijah’s own garage.

“Who signed the affidavit?” he asked.

Price slid a page across the table.

The name at the bottom was *Elias Grant*.

For several seconds Elijah did not speak. He could still hear the doctor telling him his father’s heart had stopped. He could still remember the paper cup of water someone had placed in his hand at the hospital. He remembered standing in that room unable to decide whether to sit or fall.

Then he looked at the signature again.

“That’s his name,” he said. “It isn’t his handwriting. And he was dead before the date printed at the top.”

Price did not offer sympathy in place of evidence.

“Do you have the death certificate?”

“Yes.”

“Good. Give me a copy.”

Outside the garage, Vivien was trying to explain to Sandra why the police had not removed the car. Gregory had stopped speaking altogether.

A second document from the title inquiry surfaced before lunchtime. A collector-car auction forty miles away had listed another blue 1969 Mustang, accompanied by photographs and a title application bearing the exact same VIN.

Two cars.

One identity.

And someone was trying to make the one in Elijah’s driveway disappear.

CHAPTER 9: THE JOB HE REFUSED TO USE

The easy version of the morning would have been a satisfying neighborhood spectacle. A rude HOA president accused a man of theft, the responding officers discovered he was their new chief, and everyone went home embarrassed.

Instead, Detective Price arranged for the Mustang to remain secured in Elijah’s garage under a documented agreement while the state evaluated the competing title claim. Evidence technicians photographed its identifying numbers. Rivera and Lang wrote separate reports. Hayes preserved dispatch audio. Chen copied the security-camera timestamps and identified the recovery truck from neighborhood footage.