The Buyer Brought A Certificate With Eighty-Eight Empty Places

The certificate arrived at 7:12 the next morning.

It asked me to confirm that Prairie Ledger had 214 active, paying site subscriptions. It also asked me to confirm that all of their bin histories had moved intact into the buyer's test system.

Those were two different claims, squeezed above one signature line.

I printed the page. Then I called Leah.

"I can compare files," I said. "I can't certify money I haven't counted."

"The seller says your archive supports the count."

"My archive supports grain history. Closed sites have history, too."

She paused. "Could we meet?"

We met in a rented room near the airport. I wore my good brown jacket and carried one canvas bag. Leah brought a laptop and a thin folder. She looked tired enough to be honest.

Adrian arrived ten minutes later with no folder at all.

"Bernice," he said. "I thought we'd handled your exit."

"We handled my desk."

He gave Leah a smile. "There's some confusion about ownership."

I laid the oldest agreement on the table.

The heading read HOLLOWAY HARVEST ESCROW LLC. Below it, the cooperative named my service as custodian of its verified bin-history backups. Prairie Ledger remained the software provider. The cooperative owned its data.

"You worked for us," Adrian said.

"And you signed page six."

I turned to his acknowledgment.

His old signature was smaller than his current one. Back then, he had still read things before calling them routine.

Leah studied the page.

"Does ending her employment end this agreement?" she asked him.

"Naturally."

"Show me where," I said.

He reached for the document, then stopped.

I opened a current renewal. Each cooperative paid my service $360 a year directly. Forty-two cooperatives, $15,120 in total. That bought storage, a second off-site copy, file checks, and my time. It was modest income, plainly reported.

"They thought I kept your lesson sheets," I told Leah. "I held the independent record that could prove whether an export was complete."

"The only verified backups?"

"The company kept nightly snapshots. Nobody had tested those against the signed harvest totals. Mine had been tested."

Adrian tapped his watch.

"Can we just move the files?"

"With each owner's written approval," I said. "They can leave my service whenever they choose. They get their records either way."

Leah nodded. "That's the transfer process we need."

I handed her my comparison sheet. The archive held 214 site folders. Only 126 had current service records. The other eighty-eight had signed closeout sheets and no current subscription.

I had put a red square around every zero in the renewal column.

Adrian leaned over the paper.

"Those are legacy accounts."

"Then why does this certificate call them paying?" Leah asked.

"They have value. They may come back."

"What did they pay this year?"

He spread his hands. "Our model isn't that simple."

"Your price sheet is," I said. "Two thousand four hundred dollars per site per year."

The number in his sale packet was $513,600 in annual subscription revenue. The 126 current sites accounted for $302,400. That left $211,200 resting on sites whose renewal column held zeroes.

Leah wrote the amounts down.

"Could some customers be late paying?" she asked.

"Certainly," I said. "But a late bill needs a customer who still owes it. Start with the contracts."

I showed her the renewal for one open site. It had a named treasurer, a service address, and a payment date. The closed folder beside it had a final invoice stamped paid and a request to stop service.

"Same kind of folder," Leah said. "Different meaning."

"That's why I label the covers."

"I'm not calling this fraud," she said. "I'm asking for invoices, receipts, and contracts."

Adrian stood.

"I'll have finance clear this up. Bernice isn't trained in acquisition accounting."

"No," I said. "I was trained to ask which bin a number came from."

After he left, Leah requested a short statement. I wrote that the archive contained both open and closed locations, and that file count alone could not prove active subscriptions.

I signed that statement. I kept a copy.

By noon, she had sent the buyer's team my limited findings. They paused the closing review and asked Prairie Ledger to preserve its records.

I went home with my canvas bag feeling lighter.

Esteban was waiting on my porch. He held a flat cardboard box tied with kitchen string.

"You said you were free Tuesday," I told him.

"I moved that up."

Inside the box were his cooperative's bank reports, canceled checks, and old site closure notices. Every total had been added in pencil.

"Adrian asked me for a fresh confirmation," he said. "Eight sites."

"How many do you use?"

"Three. The other five were torn down or sold. He knows that."

My phone chimed before I could answer.

An email from Adrian filled the screen. Its subject line read RETURN OF STOLEN COMPANY DATA.