An Escrow Clerk Put Two Birds On The Same Invoice

Yvette Lucero kept a ruler beside her keyboard. When I arrived, she used it to square a stack of envelopes, then pushed a chair toward me.

She was forty-six, Mexican American, with a tight black bun and a pearl pin on her closed collar. Nothing on her desk leaned.

"Coffee?"

"Please."

She brought it in a real cup. I had expected questions about whether I was angry. She asked whether my name had ever included a middle initial.

"No."

She turned an invoice around.

RAIN BEFORE WATER. DARIUS M. WHITCOMB. UNIQUE ORIGINAL. $24,000. PAID IN FULL.

The seller was Cinder Ladder Gallery. The buyer was Lena Orr, who had bought it for the entry of her small design office in Albuquerque.

"Paid means her funds cleared into escrow," Yvette said. "The seller hasn't received them. Delivery comes first."

"That bird was hanging over my couch last night."

"Ms. Orr asked me to verify the signature after the delivery date moved twice. She authorized me to share her file with you. Only her file."

I read the certificate behind the invoice. My name curled across the bottom. The tail on the W looked almost right.

"I didn't sign this."

"May I record that in the file?"

"Yes."

She opened a form and wrote my words exactly. Then she gave me time to read them before I signed.

The listing photograph showed my bird against a white wall. Its brass wings had a familiar notch near the left tip.

"That's my original," I said. "I made that notch when a file slipped."

"Could the photograph be old?"

"Yes. But the certificate says the object pictured is ready for delivery."

Yvette tapped the lower corner of the second page.

A packing photograph showed another bird on gray foam. Its left wing had no notch. Under its base, someone had scratched RW-00-B.

I forgot my coffee.

My own mark was RW-00. I had cut it into the casting before I fitted the bearing cup. The B had been added to something poured from the same shape.

"That's a second casting," I said.

I had spent years learning how to make one wing settle without dragging the other. Somebody had copied the shape and signed my name beneath it.

"Can you prove that?" she asked.

"The foundry can tell us what it poured."

I called Arroyo Bell Foundry from her desk. The shop sat outside town, beyond a road where irrigation ditches ran beside pecan trees. Ruben, the owner, answered over a grinder.

"I need the job sheets for my twelve birds."

"The old ones or the repeat run?"

Yvette put down her pen.

"What repeat run?" I asked.

The grinder stopped.

Ruben said Sloane had ordered eight castings six months earlier. She had brought a letter on gallery paper saying I approved production and would fit the moving parts myself.

"You always sent her for invoices," he said. "I thought it was normal."

"I never approved it. Please preserve the letter, job sheets, emails, and payment records. Don't pour anything else from those molds."

"Darius. I'm sorry."

"Keep the records. That's what I need."

After I hung up, I held the little steel bird on my fingertip. Yvette watched it dip.

"Does that help?"

"If I shake, it falls."

She waited until my hand steadied.

"I can place a transaction hold under our delivery terms," she said. "I can't decide the whole dispute. You'll need a lawyer."

She gave me three names from a public referral list. I chose Mara Bell because her office could see me that afternoon.

Before I left, Yvette copied the invoice with Lena's written consent attached. She stamped each page with the date it had entered the file.

"Don't call the buyers thieves," she said. "This woman paid for something she believed was real."

"I know what it feels like to believe Sloane."

Her mouth tightened, but she said nothing unkind.

In the parking lot, I called Sloane.

"Did you authorize more castings of my birds?"

"I developed a product nobody could sell. You're welcome."

"There were no added editions in our agreement."

"You made the shapes. I made them worth something."

I ended the call before I said anything I couldn't put in a statement.

At Mara's office, I laid out my contract and the two photographs. Her initial consultation cost $250. I paid with the card I used for welding supplies.

She read without speaking. Then she circled the words buyer-by-buyer settlement.

"Do you have the attached schedule?"

I slid it over.

Her assistant knocked and brought in a printed email from Sloane's lawyer.

Across the top, in bold type, was a demand that I surrender every mold by Friday.