The Deposit Receipt That Put My Brother Beside The Lake

Della Pike had done Mason's books for eleven months. Before that, she had kept accounts for a feed store.

She knew the price of things. She also knew how long a person could stretch a bag of rice.

I found her outside Celia's office, twisting a tissue between both hands.

"I should have said something sooner," she told me.

"About what?"

"He told me the cash was for refunds. Then he gave me a deposit receipt to file as equipment. I asked how both could be true."

"What did he say?"

"That I was paid to file things."

She looked at the ground.

"My husband hasn't found steady work. I let that stop the next question."

I understood being scared of a missing paycheck. I didn't tell her that made it right.

"Ask it now," I said.

Ben interviewed her without me in the room. I waited by a shelf of old town maps.

When they called me in, he had two records side by side.

The first was a company cash withdrawal for six thousand two hundred forty dollars. Mason had signed for it at the bank on May third.

The second was a receipt from Lake Road Marine Sales for the same amount, on the same date.

Under item, it said USED FISHING BOAT AND TRAILER.

"He bought a boat?"

"This was the down payment," Ben said. "The full price was eighteen thousand dollars."

I pictured the RENT envelope with its bent corner.

"Could that be different cash?"

Ben nodded.

"It could. That's a fair question. The receipt alone doesn't settle where the money came from."

He said it so plainly that I trusted him more.

Della had brought the company bank statement Mason gave her each month. She had also brought his email telling her to record that withdrawal as twenty-six refunds.

The boat receipt had been scanned into the same month's folder. She had kept it because he told her to claim it as a company vehicle deposit.

"Was the boat in the company's name?" I asked.

"His name," Ben said. "I'm seeking confirmation from the seller."

"He thought nobody would compare the folders," Della whispered.

Mason called me before I got to my car.

"You need to stop upsetting the staff."

"I didn't call Della."

"You think a pile of children's craft paper makes you an accountant?"

I stood under a live oak and watched an ant cross my shoe.

"No," I said. "That's why the fund hired one."

He breathed hard into the phone.

"Dad left me debts you don't know about."

"Then show the debts."

"You always got to be the good one."

I almost argued about every hard year of our childhood. Then I heard what he had done. He had moved the fight away from the money.

"Did you pay those riders?" I asked.

He hung up.

That afternoon, Mother came to the duplex with a casserole and an envelope.

I left the casserole on the porch rail.

"If that's a statement Mason wants signed, take it back."

"It's five hundred dollars from my savings. A loan, if you need it to be."

"What did he tell you about Dad's signature?"

She sat on the porch step.

"That he used an old image to finish routine paperwork."

"Did that sound routine to you?"

"No."

It was the first clear answer she had given me.

"I should have stood beside you at that supper," she said.

"You should have."

She nodded. She didn't ask me to make her feel better.

I accepted the loan. I wrote the amount and date on a sheet of notebook paper. We both signed it.

Then she helped Nora with spelling while I paid for groceries and the rest of the medicine.

For one evening, the house sounded ordinary.

At seven, Ben emailed Celia and me a short update. The boat seller had confirmed Mason paid in cash and put the purchase in his own name.

Below that was one attachment I had never seen.

It was a sheet titled CASH RELEASE ACKNOWLEDGMENT. It claimed I had received the entire bank bag on May third at ten fifteen in the morning.

At the bottom was a perfect copy of my signature.