Adela Found Our Blue Tags Inside The Buyer's Holding Shed

The alert showed a $36,000 transfer from the nursery account to Shore Ahead Services.

Under the payment, Trenton had typed Management Work.

Our bookkeeper, Marin Keene, called while I was still looking at it.

"I didn't approve that," she said. "He told the bank I was behind on entries."

"What is Shore Ahead?"

"I asked him. He said it was outside help. I've never received an invoice."

I thanked her for saving the alert and sent it to June.

Then I used my own bank login. As a company member, I had kept access to the statements, though I had seldom needed it.

Owen's $57,600 had come in on Friday. The $36,000 had gone out that afternoon. That left $21,600 from the sale in the nursery account.

I downloaded the statement. I did not move a dollar.

In the morning, Adela drove me toward Taylors Island. Rain lay across the road in thin silver sheets. She had brought her scale, calipers, clean sample cups, and a folding stool for me.

"I'm not that helpless," I said.

"Then carry the stool."

Owen met us beside a long shed. His boots were wet, and he looked as if he had spent the night reading the same page.

"I've got thirty-eight thousand dollars in farm bills coming due," he said. "I can't have this money tied up."

"I don't want it tied up either."

He looked at my cane.

"He really did change your locks?"

"Yes."

Inside, water bubbled through six groups of holding bags. Adela checked the flow before she touched a tag.

"They're feeding," she said. "That's the first useful news."

I heard myself whistle the refill tune.

Owen glanced up.

"Sorry," I said. "Habit."

"Keep doing it. It's better than my pacing."

Adela lifted the first bag. Someone had crossed out M-31 with a thick black marker. On the back, her tiny AW remained clear.

She held it toward Owen.

"Did you mark this?"

"No. They arrived that way."

She placed it beside her grading sheet and photographed both. Then she worked through the rest.

The blue tabs had small cuts at one corner. I used those cuts to tell the batches apart when river mud covered the ink. One notch, two notches, then a short slot for the later lots.

"You made a code?" Owen asked.

"I made something I could read with wet glasses."

Adela checked sizes and sample weights. Her count was an estimate, just as the invoice count had been, but the six groups matched the six lots in my books.

She wrote down her method and the limits of the count. She would not call an estimate exact to help me win.

"Some have chipped edges from shipping," she said. "Most look sound. There's no present die-off."

"Can you promise that keeps up?" Owen asked.

"No. That's what makes the other paper a lie."

He nodded once.

He showed us his receiving log. The delivery driver had signed the time beside each group, and Owen had kept the original freight ticket.

"I nearly threw the empty bags out," he said.

"You didn't," Adela said. "That's the part we can use."

She asked him to write down what he remembered before anyone else told him how the day had gone. I did the same in my own notebook.

A truck stopped outside.

Trenton came in without knocking. He carried a clean clipboard into a shed full of wet wood.

"This inspection is over," he said.

Owen stood between him and the bins.

"This is my shed."

"Those are company oysters. Hollis is interfering with a completed sale."

Adela kept writing.

"I'm recording the condition of a delivery," she said. "You can watch quietly."

"You're being paid by him."

"Owen hired me this morning. At my usual rate. It's on the first page."

Trenton looked at me.

"We could have handled this like partners."

"You could have opened the gate."

He tapped his clipboard.

"I'll send the five-thousand-dollar offer again. After legal costs, you may wish you'd taken it."

Owen picked up the warranty.

"Did Hollis sign this in front of you?"

"Of course."

"Where?"

"At the nursery."

"When?"

"It's dated. Read it."

May 9, at 10:20 in the morning.

I remembered that morning well. A nurse had helped me stand for the first time since surgery. I had been so proud of those six steps that I had asked her to write the time on my discharge notes.

"I was in the hospital," I said.

"You don't remember every hour."

"The nurse did."

His face went still.

Owen lowered the paper.

"Leave my property, Trenton."

He left without his clipboard. Owen put it in a drawer without opening it and told June where it was.

Back in the truck, I called the hospital records desk and asked for my own chart.

As we reached Cambridge, June called back.

"The court has set a hearing," she said. "Bring the original agreement, not just my copy."