The Blue Binder Opened Beside A Cold Cup Of Coffee

Rosalie read the lockout notice twice.

Then she put it under a clear sheet protector.

“That’s a bold title,” she said. “Sole owner. Did he buy you a very expensive lunch I missed?”

“He still owes me twelve dollars for the last one.”

Her office occupied two rooms behind a tax shop near Commercial Street. Through the wall came the low rumble of a freight train. A plastic fern leaned over her adding machine.

Rosalie James was fifty-seven, a Native American woman with silver hair cut at her jaw and reading glasses on a red cord. She worked for small shops, roofers, and people who brought receipts in feed sacks.

“A sack is fine,” she told clients. “A memory is not a filing system.”

I set the blue binder beside her cold coffee.

She opened it to the first page. Conrad and I had signed our company agreement at her old kitchen table. It named me the managing member. The attached ownership schedule gave me sixty-two percent and Conrad thirty-eight.

Major equipment sales required both signatures. Changes to ownership required a written agreement signed by both of us.

“Did you ever sign a change?” she asked.

“No.”

“Did you give him your share?”

“Also no.”

“Good. That saves us a page.”

She turned to the machinery ledger.

Our first equipment had cost $50,000. I had supplied $31,000 from years of repair work. Conrad had supplied $19,000.

The lane sander alone had cost $36,000. I had paid the seller with two personal checks, one for $18,000 and one for $13,000. Conrad had paid the remaining $5,000. His other $14,000 had bought the dust vacuum and edge machine.

Every payment was listed as capital put into the company. Each machine had a serial number beside its cost.

Conrad had signed the bottom of that ledger.

“People like a machine better when someone else bought most of it,” Rosalie said.

She spread out three annual capital statements. Each showed our contributions and the same ownership split. Each carried Conrad’s signature.

“These support the signed agreement,” she said. “We’ll give a lawyer the whole set. No loose pages trying to tell the whole story.”

She placed each statement in date order. The oldest had a coffee ring across Conrad’s name. The newest was barely six months old.

I rubbed my thumb over the scar on my other hand.

“He called me a thief.”

“I heard.”

“In front of people who hire us.”

She took off her glasses.

“Micah, you can be hurt and careful at the same time.”

She asked what was missing.

“The trailer. Maybe the compressor. I saw a bare patch beside its hose reel on Friday.”

“Did you ask?”

“He said they were out for repairs.”

We made a list from my last shop inventory. The trailer had cost $4,800. The compressor had cost $7,200. Both belonged to the company, with no loan against them.

Then we reached the twelve gallons of finish.

“He said I stole all twelve,” I told her.

Rosalie pulled up the records she kept for our monthly bookkeeping. She used her own account, which Conrad had not shut off.

The supplier invoice showed twelve gallons delivered the previous Tuesday. A scanned pickup slip showed the cans leaving our shop Thursday.

In the destination box, someone had written OPS.

Conrad had signed the release.

“What’s OPS?” I asked.

“At present,” she said, “three letters with an expensive smell.”

She saved the records and their dates to my case folder. She also printed the original email that had delivered the slip.

My phone buzzed. Nell had sent a picture of the loading door after I left.

The sander sat on its dolly beside a rented lift gate truck.

I called her.

“Is that happening now?”

“Ten minutes ago. I told the driver we were having a wedding, and he agreed to come back Monday.”

“Who was driving?”

“A man named Owen Pike. He buys used equipment. Conrad said you wanted everything moved.”

Rosalie held out her hand for the phone.

“Nell, keep your own copy of that picture. And please don’t let anyone take machinery from your locked service room tonight.”

She listened, then nodded.

“Yes. Enjoy the cake. Business trouble can wait outside.”

After she hung up, Rosalie wrote down a lawyer’s number.

“Dana Voss. She handles business breakups.”

“Can I afford her?”

“Let’s ask before your partner sells the thing you earn with.”

A new message arrived from Nell. Owen had left a purchase sheet behind.

Across its top were the words Ozark Pin Service, followed by our sander’s serial number and an $18,000 deposit marked paid.