Three Deposit Slips Led Us To A Forgotten Storage Number

I read my name on the orders until it stopped looking like a name.

It was typed, not signed. That mattered. I would not call a typed lie a forged signature and hand Malcolm an easy argument.

I called Vera.

"I didn't authorize any of them."

"Write down exactly what you did authorize," she said. "Don't guess about the rest."

I wrote that I had made the North Wind study in 2017. It was eighteen inches wide. The missing original was fifty-four inches wide.

My study had a smooth right cheek because the old photograph showed that side in deep shadow. A short leaf near the mouth was my own guess.

I set a ruler beside a picture of the study and took a clear photograph for Vera. Size was easy to argue about when nobody put a number in the frame.

"Could someone enlarge it?" she asked.

"Yes. They'd enlarge my guesses too. They wouldn't turn it into a cast from a thing I never touched."

The Bellweather committee had paid $900 for the study and a display sample. Our written terms allowed that use. Copies for sale needed a new agreement. The mold remained mine.

The old sculpture was not mine to claim. My work, my mold, and the promises made about them were separate things.

Greta listened while I read the three new orders to her.

"Approval from its owner?" she said.

"That's what they bought."

"We own the panel. I would remember approving a $42,000 batch of anything."

She called an emergency committee meeting for that morning.

I expected shouting. Instead, she handed each member a copy of the orders and asked the secretary to record their answers.

Had anyone approved commercial copies? No.

Had anyone recovered the original? No.

Had anyone given Malcolm permission to speak for the theater? No.

The committee passed a written statement. Vera sent it, along with my statement, to Malcolm's lawyer. She requested the related sales and banking records in our partnership accounting.

Then Greta opened a battered file.

"I hate an empty space in a list," she said.

It held the 2019 removal records. A contractor had taken loose facade pieces down after a winter thaw opened the joints. Most had reached a theater storage room. The North Wind had not.

"Malcolm wasn't involved then," she said. "Whatever he did now, we shouldn't invent what he did before."

I spread the old shipping sheets across the table.

There was the panel: crate 6, approximately 380 pounds, fifty-eight inches across the outside packing.

The destination line said Municipal Holding, Bay C.

"We searched the city's theater entries," Greta said. "Nothing."

I looked at a faint number below the destination.

"What was the theater called before Bellweather?"

"The West Arcade Hall. Before the name change in 1931."

"This says WAH."

She leaned closer.

I knew freight clerks. Give them one old stencil on one borrowed crate, and that could become the name forever.

Greta called the municipal property office. She asked for a search under the old name, the shipping date, and the number 4417.

The clerk promised to check archived transfer sheets. Greta thanked her as if she had already found gold.

"You weren't rude," I said when she hung up.

"She didn't lose it. She's helping us find it."

Greta wrote the clerk's name and extension on the file cover. Her severe eye had room for that difference.

Then we went back to the yard for the theater inspection allowed under the agreement.

Malcolm met us at the rack of fired cornice sections.

"You're poisoning customers against me," he said.

"We are correcting statements about our property," Greta said.

"They wanted a face on a wall. They'll get one."

"From an original you recovered?"

"The study came from the original."

"It came from my photograph," she said.

"It's the same image."

She held up one of his order sheets.

"Then why charge extra for a recovery that never happened?"

He stepped toward the office.

"Talk to my lawyer."

"We have. I enjoyed it."

I checked the cornice while she stood beside me. Twenty-eight pieces. Correct glaze. One rough bed joint. Two crate braces split near the nails.

There was still enough time if we started early Friday.

Malcolm watched me mark the packing list.

"You always needed me to get you into these buildings," he said.

I closed the marker.

"I needed someone to answer the phone while I worked. I confused that with needing you."

Outside, lake wind pushed grit along the gutter. Greta's phone rang before we reached her car.

She listened, then put the call on speaker.

"We have a crate under West Arcade Hall," the clerk said. "Bay C was closed years ago. The transfer sheet points to a different depot."

Paper rustled at the other end.

"Can someone meet me there at seven tomorrow?"