The Cutting List Matched Trees Someone Had Already Removed

I sat at my kitchen table with the cutting list and Grandpa's old grove book.

Each aluminum tag had a matching line in that book. Number 023: sugar maple, forty feet above the creek bend. Number 041: split crown, good spring flow. Grandpa wrote about trees like other men wrote about old friends.

All eighty-one numbers on Wes's list were in the lower grove.

All eighty-one trees were still standing.

I called Mara.

"What does prior work credit mean?"

"We asked. No answer yet."

"I'm going to count."

"Photograph what you see. Stay out of any argument."

Felix came after work with a printed map and a clipboard. He was helping as my friend, on his own time. He wrote that on his first page, along with the date and the weather.

"You think anybody cares that it's thirty-four degrees?" I asked.

"Maybe nobody. But I won't have to remember."

We walked every marked row. I held a wide shot, then moved close enough to show the tag and bark. Felix called the numbers aloud.

At tree 052, he stopped.

"That tubing's new."

"Put it in last month. Grandpa watched from his chair by the tank."

The tree had a clean tap hole and a healthy crown.

Felix circled its number.

"Write that down, too."

He held the map while I opened the line below the tap. Clear sap gathered at the end and fell into the snow.

"There's your dead tree," I said.

"Don't write that," Felix said. "Write what we saw."

I capped the line and wrote: living crown, fresh tap, sap flow observed. He checked the number before we moved on.

Near dusk, Wes came up the lane in his truck. He parked against the chain and got out holding a folder.

"I need my equipment in here Sunday night."

"No."

"Your aunt signed for access."

"My lawyer sent you the deed."

He glanced at Felix.

"You bringing county people into this now?"

"I'm a friend holding a clipboard," Felix said.

Wes slapped his folder against his thigh.

"There's thirty-six thousand dollars on that agreement."

"And sixty-four thousand eight hundred in credit," I said. "For what?"

He looked at the trees behind us.

"Ask Denise."

"I'm asking you."

"You don't understand how this business works."

He left without explaining. Felix noted his arrival and departure times.

I wanted to follow the truck and make him answer. Instead, I went back to tree 053. We still had twenty-nine to count.

That evening, Mara called with something from Grandpa's former bookkeeper, June Phelps. June had been preparing his last farm records when Denise told her to stop.

June still had a scan of an invoice.

Bell Ridge Timber had billed Grandpa $64,800 for removing eighty-one storm-damaged trees the previous October. The page listed the same tag numbers.

"Removed and hauled," Mara read.

I looked at the pictures filling my phone.

"They're all here."

"That's why I want an independent forester out there tomorrow. Your pictures matter, but we need someone who has no stake in the land."

June joined our call.

"Your grandfather asked me about that payment in January," she said. "He said he'd approved forty-eight hundred for clearing branches and fixing the ditch after the storm. He wanted the rest traced."

"Did he confront Denise?"

"He planned to. Then he went into the hospital."

Denise had handled bills while Grandpa recovered from a fall. She called it another family emergency. I had brought meals and done his taps. She had insisted the banking would only upset him.

"There's an email," June said. "I told Denise I needed the tree-removal records and parcel history before I could close the farm books. I gave her until Monday."

Monday. The same morning Wes wanted his saws running.

I opened the contract again. The credit appeared beside a charge for new cleanup work, then a balance payable to Denise. Mara said she wanted the full ledger before she tried to explain that strange deal.

"Don't fill the gaps with anger," she told me. "We'll demand the ledger."

I made a folder called Standing Trees. Then another called Payments.

The tags had clicked in the wind all afternoon. Now I heard that small sound even in my quiet kitchen.

At nine, Denise called.

"I've heard you've been upsetting June."

"Grandpa asked her to check a payment."

"He was sick."

"The trees weren't removed."

Her breathing changed.

"You need to think about what your grandfather would want kept private."

"He kept receipts for screws."

She ended the call.

Ten minutes later, June forwarded an email Denise had sent her before the funeral.

The subject line said: DO NOT OPEN THE OLD PARCEL FILE.