The Purchasing Analyst Read the Numbers Wade Had Ignored

"Because it was mine," I said.

"That may be true," Simone said. "It is not yet an answer I can put in a report."

I liked her at once, though I was too tired to show it.

She asked me to meet her the next morning at city hall. I brought my drive, the supplier invoice, a bank payment record, and the yellow exit form.

Simone was forty-one, a Black American woman with close natural curls and reading glasses on a blue cord. She had spread clean paper across a small meeting table. Her coat was still on the chair.

"I haven't told you where to sit," she said when I paused.

"I thought you might have a system."

"I do. Anywhere without documents."

I took the chair beside the door.

She placed Wade's report between us. He had accused me of taking fourteen sheets of city aluminum, then hiding some among my own supplies. His report valued the loss at $18,480.

"He counted six sheets in the photograph," she said. "He did not explain the other eight."

"There weren't any others."

"We'll write what we can prove."

She compared my invoice with the mill certificate. Both listed 5052-H32, one-eighth inch, heat H4721. My bank record showed the $4,680 payment clearing eleven days before the city ordered its plate.

Then she laid down the city purchase order.

"5086-H116," she read. "Three-sixteenths inch. Heat L8836. Fourteen sheets. These aren't interchangeable entries."

"They aren't interchangeable sled bottoms either."

She nodded and wrote that down.

I showed her the nesting files. A full sheet appeared on my laptop, packed with cargo-pan sides and bottoms. The file header named H4721 and sheet P03. Beside it sat my supplier's packing list, with all six private sheet numbers.

"This is what remained when he locked your city access?"

"Yes. My records. My computer. I didn't enter the city system."

"Good. Please continue not doing that."

"I couldn't if I tried."

"I meant do not try."

For the first time since the red notice, I laughed.

Simone did not. She was looking at the dates on the city transfer form.

It said I had received fourteen sheets at 2:40 on Friday. Wade had approved the transfer. The signature was the loose spring I had seen on his clipboard.

"At 2:40 I was at the county training pond," I said. "Testing the old sled with the rescue crew."

"People?"

"Six. Plus their training log."

She wrote another line.

"Did you sign anything at the yard that week?"

"A request for a delivery date. Tuesday morning."

"I'll obtain that too. A signature on one form doesn't grant permission to put it on another."

She said it without heat. That made it sound stronger than anything I had said since Wade took my keys.

"A heat number alone won't establish ownership," she said. "The same batch may go to several buyers. We need the individual sheets and their route."

"I know. It's why I number the leftovers."

I showed her a narrow strip from P02. I had brought it in a bag. Its number was punched near one end. The nesting file showed the same strip beside two pan bottoms.

"You keep scrap records?"

"A sheet costs $780. Scrap gets expensive if you forget what it is."

She turned the strip over as carefully as someone handling a key.

"Mr. Fenwick described you as poorly organized."

"He doesn't like my filing cabinet."

"Where is it?"

"Three cabinets. Also this drive."

She made a sound that might have been a laugh.

We moved to the pictures. The dirty fan had a square control box. Mine was round. In the rack image, Wade's crop cut off most of the supplier tag but left enough to read the heat.

The last picture showed L8836/09 on thick plate. Below it was that yellow strip.

"That could be city material," I said. "It wasn't in my shop."

"What tells you?"

"Floor color. And that metal eye on the left. That's a dock tie ring."

She leaned closer.

"I thought it was a handle."

"It might handle a boat."

She wrote dock hardware, then underlined might.

Before I left, she gave me a receipt for the copies I supplied. She also sent a formal request to preserve the city's files, including every version of Wade's attachments.

"Will that open my shop?" I asked.

"It will keep someone from making the record shorter."

That afternoon, the rescue chief called. The first hard freeze was in the forecast. Her crews needed time to train with the new sleds.

I told her I was working on it.

At 4:06, Simone sent me an attachment recovered from the original upload. Wade's full photograph showed a dock sign beyond the plate.

The sign read BELLGLASS MARINA, SLIP SEVENTEEN.