Chapter 13
Kevin's first instruction to me was simple: get the appraisal done right, and get it done by someone no defense lawyer could dismiss. He gave me a name I had not heard before, and when I looked the man up, I understood why. Henry Alcott had spent twenty-eight years valuing classic cars. His assessments were accepted by insurers, by auction houses, and by courts. He had testified in cases where millions of dollars turned on his opinion, and his opinion had held up every time.
I met him at his office on a Saturday morning, a plain room lined with reference books and framed photographs of cars he had valued over the years. He was a quiet man in his late sixties, with grease under one thumbnail that no amount of washing would ever fully remove, and he listened to my story without interrupting. Then he asked me for everything I had: the restoration receipts, the photographs, the insurance file, the maintenance log my father had kept in a spiral notebook for nine years.
My father had documented everything. Every part, every hour, every shop bill. The engine rebuild. The bodywork. The interior, restored stitch by stitch to the way it had left the factory. The original components we had tracked down across three states. When Henry added it up, the parts and labor alone came to two hundred and ninety thousand dollars, and he barely glanced at that number before moving on to what actually mattered: what the car was worth on the open market.
He walked me through the comparables the way a teacher walks a student through a lesson. Three sales in the past eighteen months of cars like mine, same model, same era, same level of restoration. One had sold for one and a half million. One for one point nine. One for two point one. He explained the differences between them: the condition, the documentation, the provenance, the originality of the parts. My father's car, he said, sat at the top end of that range on documentation alone, because no other car in the set came with a nine-year paper trail kept by the man who had bought it new.
Then he gave me his number. One point seven million dollars, certified, in writing, with his signature and his methodology laid out page by page. He said it twice, slowly, the way a man says something he expects to be challenged on, and he told me he would defend it in court if he had to. He walked me through the photographs of the three comparable cars, pointing out the details that separated a good restoration from a great one, and where my father's car stood in that company. The insurance coverage, for comparison, was one point five million. The appraisal was higher than the coverage, and Henry said that was normal for a car like this. Insurance lags the market. The market had already moved past it.
I sat in his office for a minute after he finished, holding the appraisal in both hands, and I thought about my father. He had bought that car new the year I was born, not as an investment, not as a showpiece, but because he loved it. We had spent nine years bringing it back together, weekends in the garage, his hands teaching mine. He had never once talked about what it was worth. To him, it was worth the time we spent on it. The number on Henry's letter was for the court, not for me. But it mattered, because it was the difference between a misdemeanor and a felony, between a fine and a prison sentence, between Susan Caldwell calling it junk and the law calling it what it was.
On the way home, I called Kevin and read him the number. He was quiet for a moment, and then he said what I already knew: the case was now as strong as it was ever going to get. The value was certified. The paper trail was complete. The recording was in hand. All that remained was the official work, the warrants, and the meeting.
I put Henry's appraisal in the lockbox at the bank with the other originals, next to the county records and the minutes and Paul Simmons's statement. Then I drove home to Copperwood Estates, past Susan Caldwell's house, and I did not slow down. I did not need to look at her house anymore. I had something better than anger now. I had a number, a signature, and twenty-eight years of expertise standing behind it.