Sleep wouldn’t come and Georgia lay in bed listening to the swish of the wind. She finally dozed off before dawn, but the growl of a snowplow woke her. She went to the window, raised the shade, then lowered it again. The new blanket of snow was glazed with an unapologetic sun, as if it was mocking her for her lack of sleep.
She brewed a pot of coffee and took a mug to her computer. She clicked onto the Cook County Assessor’s website, clicked “Search by address,” typed in the address of the warehouse, and pushed enter. Seconds later she had the warehouse’s property index number, or PIN, a unique fourteen-digit number assigned to every piece of real estate in Cook County. Armed with that, she went to the Cook County Treasurer’s Office website, pulled down the “Property search” portal, and entered the PIN. Less than a minute later, the tax payments for the warehouse popped up. Along with the payments was the most recent owner of record, a corporation named Executives Unlimited. The contact for the corporation, which, according to the website, had purchased the property a year earlier, was attorney Chad G. Coe.
She smiled. A property search used to take an entire day. She would have to drive downtown to the Assessor’s Office, wait, fill out a form, then wait some more. Then she’d go to the Treasurer’s Office and do it all over again. Today that process could be accomplished in less than five minutes. She wished she could high-five her computer. Instead, she Googled Chad G. Coe.
There weren’t a lot of mentions. He had no website, but he was on LinkedIn. She clicked on the URL. His profile was thin. He was listed as an attorney in the Greater Chicago area. But it didn’t include any previous employment history, education, or specialty areas. She tapped a finger. Every attorney had a specialty, even if it was more fantasy than reality. She looked for the last update he’d made on LinkedIn. Nothing within the past three years.
She sipped her coffee. Chad Coe wasn’t advertising or promoting himself. No “All inquiries welcome.” No mention of clients. And no references. He looked to be flying under the radar. Why? She went to the Illinois Attorney Registration and Disciplinary Commission’s website and discovered why. After she entered his name, she saw he’d been suspended from the bar for stealing his clients’ money three years earlier. The legal wording was “Not authorized to practice law as an attorney.” But the suspension was only temporary. He had been reinstated a year ago.
There was an address for him somewhere in Riverwoods, a small but affluent suburb west of Deerfield. She wrote it down. Then she checked one of her private databases and found a phone number at the Riverwoods address. She called the number, making sure to first block her caller ID, but discovered it had been disconnected. Which made her wonder if the address would lead to a dead end, too.