We Opened The Workshop Before The Auction Truck Could Arrive

I met Loretta at Granddad's workshop the next morning. Freight cars rattled somewhere beyond the buildings in Old Town. The sound had filled that block for as long as I could remember.

I still had my key. Terrell had asked for it, but I had never agreed to give it up.

"Pictures before fingers," Loretta said.

I filmed the lock, the door, and each row of shelves. Then I set my inventory binder on the workbench and opened it to movement 043.

In the photograph, its brass seal hung from a wire through the frame. Granddad's signature crossed the edge of the print.

In front of us, the same seal hung from a fresh loop of wire. The old clipped ends lay below it, tucked into a greasy rag.

I almost picked them up.

Loretta caught my wrist.

"Let somebody besides us see that first."

We photographed the rag where it lay. I called Mara Voss, the lawyer named on Granddad's envelope. Her assistant asked us to come at eleven and leave the shop as we had found it.

While we waited outside, Loretta opened her grocery bag.

"Bank copies," she said. "February close. March entries through the fifth."

"Could he have kept $12,500 somewhere else?"

"He could have. That's why I won't say he couldn't. But it didn't reach any account I kept."

She showed me the last check he had signed: $74.28 for heat. He had written SHOP in the memo line, then drawn a small box around it.

The check number matched the stub in her book. The bank image showed when it cleared. Three small records for one small payment.

"This is how he did things," she said.

I remembered him paying me eight dollars to wind a clock when I was a boy. He made me sign a slip, even then.

"So you'd know your work had value," Loretta said when I told her.

For years I had thought those slips were only another chore.

"He made me chase him for a missing eleven-dollar receipt," she said. "I want to see the paper for this."

Terrell drove up at ten.

He stepped out smiling, as if we had arranged to meet him.

"Good. You can help identify the loose stuff."

"Who cut seal 043?" I asked.

His smile held.

"Probably my packer. A wire isn't a contract."

"It connects the frame to its record."

"And the buyer doesn't need your childhood scrapbook."

Loretta shut her bag.

"Those photographs were business records before you decided to call them names."

He looked at her then.

"Miss Gaines, family needs to handle family."

"I'm family enough to tell the truth."

For a moment he stopped sounding reasonable.

"The truck comes Tuesday. Every extra day costs me money."

"Show us what you paid," I said.

"Cash. At his kitchen table."

"Who saw it?"

"He and I did."

I let the pause sit between us.

He checked his watch first.

Mara's office occupied two rooms above a shop with a sun-faded awning. I paid an $1,800 retainer from my savings. My checking balance afterward was $612.19.

Mara took the bill's photograph, the dispatch order, and our shop pictures. She asked for a timeline before she asked what I thought of my cousin.

"I think he stole them," I said.

"That's a conclusion. Give me what you saw."

I started again.

When I handed her Granddad's sealed envelope, she checked the signature over the flap against her own file.

"We'll review these papers in full tomorrow," she said. "First, we need to keep the collection in place."

She called the lawyer handling Granddad's probate, who confirmed that nobody had authority from the estate to strip or ship the clocks. Terrell was claiming a purchase, not acting as personal representative.

Mara sent Basin Lot Sales written notice that ownership was disputed. She attached the inventory's cover page and asked the firm to preserve its sale records.

Then she prepared a sworn request for a court order to keep the property where it was until both sides could be heard.

"Will that stop him?" I asked.

"A request won't. An order can. We'll also ask the auction firm to hold voluntarily."

I liked that she kept those things separate.

Before I left, she enlarged the notary mark on my phone photograph.

"June Tabor works at a county service desk," she said. "The county bought her work stamp. Their property records may help."

She gave me the number for Oskar Lind, the clerk who kept those records.

I called from the stairs. He asked me to spell Tabor, then went quiet long enough that I checked my signal.

"Was it the stamp with two little diamonds?" he asked at last.

I looked at my picture.

"Yes."

"Come tomorrow," he said. "I need to pull the stamp-replacement register. That one has a date you should see."