Cedar and Iron
When her stepmother publicly throws a deceased grandfather's wooden keepsake into a fountain, architectural conservator Laurel Vance recovers the artifact and uncovers a multi-million-dollar land forgery scheme.
Fictional story. Contains themes of family estrangement, financial fraud, and verbal mistreatment.Chapter 1: The Glass Solarium
The air inside the glass solarium of Perpetua Cliff Manor smelled of forced white lilies, imported coastal champagne, and the damp salt fog rising from the Oregon rocks below. Forty guests in tailored suits and silk evening wear gathered beneath the iron chandeliers, their voices blending into the polished murmur of people accustomed to purchasing quiet decisions. Outside, rain beat steadily against the tall glass panes, but inside, warmth radiated from gas fires set into river-stone hearths.
Laurel Vance stood near the conservatory doors, her hands resting quietly in the pockets of her dark canvas work jacket. She had spent the morning restoring cedar roof beams on a historic lighthouse down the coast, and her leather work boots still bore trace dust of dried sawdust and sea salt. She had not come to the gala to seek approval. She had come because her grandfather, Arthur Vance, had died three weeks earlier in a hospice room overlooking the Coos Bay timberlands, and his last request had been for her to deliver his carved tool casing to the family estate.