My Missing Watch Report Met A Receipt With Mara's Signature

The watch Creed accused me of taking had a cream dial and two blue hands. His complaint valued it at $26,000.

I remembered it because someone had used the wrong screw to hold its movement ring. The screw had cut a small curl of gold from the case.

"Job 112," I told Leila. "Look at my return sheet."

We went back inside her office. I opened my notebook to the matching entry, then stopped.

"Should I touch this?"

"It's your notebook. I'll photograph the page before you turn it."

The return sheet was already among the records I had given her. Mara had signed for the watch at 6:14 the previous Thursday. Beneath her name, she had written: Transfer to Mercer Vault Storage.

"I didn't see it leave the building," I said.

"You saw her take it."

"Yes."

Leila called another investigator. I waited beneath a wall clock that ran four minutes fast.

"It bothers you," she said when she returned.

"That clock?"

"You look at it like it owes you money."

By noon the next day, the storage company had confirmed the watch was in its locked room. Police obtained permission from a judge to seize it with its intake records. Mara's signature was on those too.

Creed's theft claim stopped moving toward me. His false report started moving toward him.

"It isn't over just because we found the watch," Leila said. "But we have told the officers handling his complaint what we found."

I sat down very slowly.

Until then, I had been standing in my kitchen with my coat on.

The new watch's case number was 21206. My photograph showed the last digit tucked below the edge of the movement ring.

A fresh examination showed the same number and the curl left by that screw.

The investigator assigned to stolen property found a match in a complaint from an apartment on West End Avenue. Its owner had paid $18,400 for it. She had kept photographs of a service report with the case number.

Mara's catalog said it came from a church sale in Vermont for $900.

The church had closed fourteen months before the claimed sale.

"Could someone else have used the old name?" I asked.

"Yes," Leila said. "That's why we asked for the bank record."

No church had received $900. The payment listed on the invoice had gone to a company Mara owned.

She had made the catalog entry. She had received the money. She had signed the storage sheet. Those facts began to hold one another up.

On Friday, a messenger brought a letter from Creed's lawyer. It demanded all photographs made on his property, plus $26,000 for harm to his business.

I took it to a legal clinic. The lawyer there, June Park, read my repair agreement twice.

"Did you add this paragraph?"

"After a cracked crystal cost me $600."

She tapped the page.

"You retain your condition images. He signed that. And nobody gets to demand that evidence disappear."

She wrote a reply. She also sent a formal demand for my unpaid fees and the return of my listed tools.

The list totaled $9,400. Most of it was the microscope and camera. My father's staking set accounted for only $180 on paper.

I wanted that set most.

Creed called at 9:03 that night.

"Your lawyer has a rather firm tone."

"She read the agreement."

"The photographs belong to the room where they were made."

"Read paragraph six."

There was a soft rustle.

"A technical point."

"That's my work."

He offered $30,000 if I sold him my image archive and signed a statement saying I could not place any watch in his rooms.

I had photographed 137 jobs. I had numbered every image set. My copies were at home, with a separate backup. The card police held contained the same originals.

He had mistaken the man at the bench for a man without a record.

"I hold the pictures," I said. "I hold the index. I won't sign something false."

"Please consider how few rooms remain open to a difficult man of your age."

I ended the call and wrote down his words while they were fresh.

Leila collected my account the next evening. We sat over tea near a rattling radiator in her office.

"He offered you more than six times what he owes you," she said.

"He finally found my value."

Her smile was brief, but it stayed with me on the train home.

At my door lay another envelope. Inside was a printed notice from Creed Rooms.

My tools had been added to an auction inventory as company property.

The sale date was Monday.