The fewer people who saw her outside the property, the better. She stayed with Elsie, and he took the wagon in for supplies and to find William Sims, the attorney. Sims had his office above the hardware store, a single room with a stove and two chairs and a desk covered in papers that had the organized appearance of a system only their owner understood. He was a lean, direct man in his late 40s who had come to Montana from Ohio 15 years ago for reasons he'd never felt the need to explain and who had earned a reputation in the valley for being one of the few lawyers in the territory who would tell you something you didn't want to hear rather than something that ran up his hours. Gideon told him the situation.
He told him all of it. Viven's real name, the Alicott estate, the forged document, the trunk, the letters from the attorney in Philadelphia. Croft asking questions at the station. He left nothing out because Sims couldn't help with incomplete information, and incomplete information in a legal matter was usually more dangerous than no information at all. Sims listened without interrupting, which was one of the things Gideon respected about him.
When it was done, the attorney was quiet for a moment, turning a pen over in his fingers. Her father's attorney in Philadelphia. Does she trust him completely? She trusts him with her location, which is the most valuable thing she has. She'll need to contact him by wire, not letter.
Letters take too long, and they can be intercepted on a route Croft is watching. Sims set down the pen. If the original will and the supporting correspondents are as solid as she believes they are, the forged document is a problem Fletcher Aldicott can manage in Philadelphia, but can't necessarily export to a Montana court without it being examined more carefully than he'd like. Distance is a factor in his favor and in hers both. He paused.
The question is what Croft is here to do. If he's here to report her location back to Fletcher, that gives them time to prepare a legal response and get documentation to Judge Hartley before Fletcher can file anything fraudulent. If Croft is here to do something more direct, like what? Gideon said, though he had a fair idea. Theft, Sims said plainly.
The trunk. If Fletcher can get his hands on the documents in it before a Montana court has seen them, the original will disappears and all that's left is his forged version and his witnesses. That's a much cleaner outcome for him than a court fight. Gideon sat with that for a moment. He had been thinking about the trunk as an asset, which it was, but he hadn't been thinking carefully enough about it as a target.
What do I do about Croft directly? He said he's in Harlo Creek asking questions. That's not illegal. No, it's it's not. You can't run him off for asking questions.