“A green goddess avocado salad, please. Skip the beets.”
It was nearly two o’clock and I hadn’t put a thing in my stomach since last night. Even my morning Earl Grey hadn’t happened, and my battery was flagging. Normally I kept a packet of almonds in my purse for food emergencies such as this, but apparently, I had used up my stash. Rather than succumb to the temptation of a Stan’s Glazed Pretzel Twist donut, I’d popped in to sweetgreen after my visit to the auction house to regroup.
As I took my tray over to a seat at the window counter, I was regretting my restraint and trying to convince myself the best-donut-in-life wasn’t nearly as outstanding this late in the day, anyway. Spearing a piece of avocado, I debated my plan of attack for the balance of the afternoon.
A voicemail notice appeared on my screen. Damn, Vanessa from Impact Soundproofing. Her message simply said she’d call again later. After downing a few more bites, I then phoned Cai. I felt guilty for not giving her much of an explanation when I’d canceled out dinner plans. It had been several days since we’d spoken at any length, and it felt so foreign that it unsettled me. Another call straight to voicemail. At least I knew this call would be returned.
The Driscoll Community Bank administrative office was only a few blocks south of where I had camped out for lunch, so I finished up my greens and decided an impromptu visit was in order.
Standing in front of the address listed on the banker’s business card, I double-checked the name of the officer I was about to burst in on. The high-rise was just another glass-and-steel structure lacking architectural distinction. One of many that could make the Loop seem like a skyscraper cavern. As a local community bank, they weren’t a large enough organization to have possession of the entire building, so I stopped at the directory before hitting the elevators. With any luck, I would catch the guy in his office.
I stepped off the elevator to a sea of beige and brown. Obviously the offices had not been chosen for their luxurious appointments. Vinyl lettering on two glass doors to my right told me I’d arrived. I pulled open a door and approached the front desk, asking to see Phillip Byrne. After punching in a few keys, the young receptionist promptly told me that she didn’t see my name on his calendar before inquiring about my appointment.
“Tell him I’m from Link-Media, and it’s about the body I found at the property he sold my sister,” I said, sliding my business card across the counter and suppressing a smile. Over the past year and half, I’d been able to use a number of dramatic lines to get a source to speak to me, but none as dramatic as this.
She mumbled something unintelligible as her eyes got wide but promptly picked up the phone.
“He’ll be just a moment,” she said.
I had a feeling his schedule would suddenly clear. I sat in the nearest chair and waited for the next guy in a conservative suit to come through the glass doors. A few moments later a balding middle-aged male exited and looked at me. His pale skin was tinged with blotchy red marks covering his boney cheeks and trailing up to his unusually prominent ears. I hoped he wasn’t a poker player.
“Ms. Kellner?” he said. “I’m sorry to have kept you waiting. Sylvia just alerted me of your conversation. I understand you spoke with her earlier today.” I imagined she had phoned him moments after I left her office. His speech was rapid fire, showing his nerves. “Kathy,” he said, turning to the receptionist. “Can you log me in to conference room three?” She nodded.
“Ms. Kellner, follow me.”
We settled into chairs flanking a Formica-topped conference table big enough for ten or twelve. Bland, generic, mass-produced landscapes that looked like they’d come from a one-day sale at an airport conference center decorated the walls. I tried not to cringe.
“I’m quite beside myself after hearing about your discovery,” he said. “I can’t imagine how this could happen. Surely there is a reasonable explanation. People die of natural causes all the time. It must’ve been quite a shock for you.”
He ran through his speech so quickly I could practically see the thought bubbles above his head—bad press, lawsuit, what will it take for her to go away?
“It isn’t an experience I recommend,” I said, noting the beads of sweat forming on his forehead. “What can you tell me about the history of this property?”
“I’m sorry, you’ll have to tell me which property this was. We handle so many.”
At least he looked sheepish when he said it. I rattled off the street address, which he promptly scribbled down on a yellow legal pad. His ears were now the color of a pomegranate and pink was beginning to seep up his neck above the collar of his white poplin dress shirt. It wasn’t a good look for a grown man.
“I’ll need a minute to place it,” he said. “I’m sure you understand. I can’t keep them all top of mind. Properties come across my desk when the owner is unable to keep up with their mortgage commitments. Eventually, if they are unable to bring everything up to date, the property moves into foreclosure and the asset then becomes the property of the bank. That’s when I get involved.”
He was stalling, trying to make up for the fact that he hadn’t bothered to look up the details by distracting me with process steps.
“Yes, Mr. Byrne, I’m familiar with how this works,” I said, trying not to sound patronizing. “Sylvia was kind enough to bring me up to speed. What I’m looking for is specific information. Who owned the property? What was the date of the initial default? And what interactions did the bank have with the owner of this property through this process?”
“Well, um, I don’t really know. I can’t keep all of that in my head. I’d have to look that up,” he said, seemingly surprised that anyone would ask.
“Then why don’t you?” I said, smiling at him, my tone that of an elderly kindergarten teacher.
“Oh, yes, sure.” He moved to the computer station at the head of the table and punched in whatever codes he needed to get access while I pulled out a notebook.
“Okay, here we are. The property was owned by Quantum Holdings, LLC. They opened the mortgage with us in 2012 and officially went into default in October 2017.”
I got up and pulled a chair closer so I could see his screen. He shifted uncomfortably as if I had breached some type of rule about banker space.
“I’m sorry, but this is personal information.”
I ignored him and leaned closer to look at the screen, trying to make sense of the numbers and dates and codes I was seeing. I jotted down the name of the LLC, date of the mortgage initiation, and what looked like the date the company was officially notified. “And how does the bank define default?”
I scrolled the screen as I asked, looking for a contact name and address but Byrne shifted the screen to minimize my view before I had decoded what I was looking at.
“Um, it’s bank policy to initiate foreclosure after four months of missed payments. In this case, we initiated after three months because there was also a substantial outstanding property tax bill that had been due last August.”
“And what notifications or contact did you have with the homeowner prior to beginning foreclosure?”
“We contact them initially through US mail and email, if we have one on file, then phone calls prior to initiating bankruptcy. Once the mortgagee hits that default threshold, all communication is then sent via certified mail.” He seemed to be relaxing a little discussing process, which was more comfortable territory.
“And do you have any record in your system of whether you got any responses from the homeowner to those communications?”
“According to what I see here, the mortgagee was nonresponsive.”
“Did they sign for the certified mail?”
“No response. The notification was returned to us as undeliverable.”
Perhaps the owner been long gone by that point, having abandoned the property or was simply ignoring reality, playing the odds just to buy a little time. A new thought crossed my mind.
“In those communications, the mailed communications, were those sent to the property address?”
He punched a few keys. “We have two addresses in our system. The property address and then another at a secondary location. Communication was sent to both via certified mail.”
“And may I have that address?”
“Excuse me? This is quite extraordinary. There are rules about these things.” He reached up and turned the screen further out of my view, suddenly feeling vulnerable.
“Mr. Byrne, you’ve already provided me with the name of the LLC that owned the property. That mailing address is most likely on file with the Secretary of State’s office. I’m just tying to save us both some time. I wouldn’t want our readers to conclude that you didn’t make a concerted effort to track them down before you foreclosed,” I said, staring at him hard.
He clenched his jaw but read off an address on Broadway with a 60657 zip code. I wrote it down and ran through what I remembered of that intersection, thinking the address sounded like a strip mall.
“The name listed as the contact is a Stephan Reda. I do see a note that the phone number on file appears to have been disconnected.”
“Convenient,” I said, not hiding my annoyance. I also knew from my previous work that the guy could simply be a service provider, set up to receive legal notices with no other association with the company. Perfectly legal, it was a common practice when the entity was out of state or just wanted to keep a little cloud cover between owner and company. It could also be stage one of complicated ownership subterfuge.
“As you can imagine, we do try every possible avenue to recover funds,” Byrne added.
I bet they did. However, I let his comment slide. Based on some of the work I’d done in the past on predatory lending, that was a can of worms not worth opening now.
“So once you’ve served notice of the foreclosure, I assume you don’t immediately take ownership of the property. That there is a process, a certain amount of time, if you will, for that homeowner to come forward and rectify the situation, even if you believe they’ve likely abandoned the property.”
I was getting curious about the time frame and wondering if Janek’s niece had died before or after the property went into foreclosure. Perhaps she had even used the place prior to foreclosure. I wasn’t sure if it mattered or added anything that explained the tragedy, but if her family had not had contact with her for quite some time, there were bound to be others with questions about the last few months of her life. I was also struggling to understand how she could have gone undiscovered for so long.
“We continue to make contact attempts with the mortgagee using the information that we have available, but yes, at some point, if there is no response, we really have no choice but to take possession of the property.”
“And how long would that process take from notice of foreclosure to the bank repossessing the property?”
“In this case, as I said, the mortgagee was officially in default as of October 2017. We repossessed the property in November 2018.”
“And that’s when you turned the property over to the auction house. Correct?”
“The banking world, as you probably know, is rather slow. According to the notes, we added the property to our auction list in February of this year, and it got slotted into Sylvia’s schedule. I believe you know the rest of the timeline.”
“The only other thing I’m curious about, Mr. Byrne, is whether or not anyone from the bank ever physically visited the property. Do you have that information?”
“Let me check.” He shifted in his chair but scrolled down the page. I could see from the corner of my eye that the screen was filled with a number of boxes marked with codes that I couldn’t immediately decipher.
“It isn’t a standard part of our practice to visit the site, but I do see that we attempted service of the final notice directly before we took possession.”
“And when would that have occurred?”
“Also in November 2018.”
Six months ago. It hit me like a slap in the face. Had Janek’s niece been dying in the home while the bank rep was knocking on the door?