Crowe Crushed the Wrong Mold While His Lawyer Took Notes

"The field records stay mine," I told Crowe.

"Everything on my property belongs to me."

"Your signature says otherwise."

His breathing changed. For a moment, the friendly voice fell away.

"Five o'clock," he said.

Rafael did not reach for my phone or tell me what I ought to have said.

"Are you planning to go?" he asked afterward.

"No. I was planning to finish a report with the title question left open."

"Then finish it somewhere with people around. I'll make sure he receives a request to preserve the stone."

I worked in the conservation workshop's front office. The manager let me use a table beside the window.

At four twenty, the first client called.

"Imani, we got an email about you taking private samples. We're putting the hotel survey on hold."

That job was worth $6,400.

A second caller canceled a $3,440 stair appraisal. Both had received a letter accusing me of stealing molds and inventing a claim against Crowe's company.

I asked them to forward the letter. I saved the cancellations beside their signed work orders.

Then the regional salvage association sent notice of an ethics complaint.

I had belonged to it for seven years. Its little directory supplied half my new work.

The complaint said I had changed my price when Crowe refused to pay a secret fee.

"What fee?" I said aloud.

The workshop manager looked up.

"Don't answer angry. Save it first."

I saved it.

At five ten, Crowe arrived with a thin man carrying a leather folder. The manager called Rafael's office and stayed beside her desk.

"This is Mr. Bell, my attorney," Crowe said. "We came to collect company property."

Bell laid a demand letter on the table.

It asked for all impressions, notes, and photographs. It also asked me to sign a statement saying I had seen no evidence of stolen material.

"You haven't been given my findings," I said.

"We can settle the fee dispute tonight," Bell said.

"There isn't a fee dispute. There is an unpaid balance of $1,300 and a missing source release."

Crowe reached into his bag for the small practice tray I had left at his office. I recognized the brown wrapping as he pulled it free.

"Here's your masterpiece."

He set the tray down, lifted out the plain clay sample, and folded it between his hands.

The word DEMONSTRATION disappeared under his thumb.

"Mud," he said. "That's all you've got. Now let's have the rest."

My face grew hot. I wanted to snatch it away, though it held nothing useful.

Instead, I wrote the time.

Bell looked at the clay, then at Crowe.

"Bennett. Please."

"She needs to understand."

"I understand," I said. "That was a practice sample."

Crowe stopped rubbing his hands together.

"The numbered field impressions and their reference casts are in police custody," I said. "They were logged this morning. You signed away any claim to owning them yesterday."

"I paid you."

"You paid for an appraisal. You didn't buy my records."

He had thought he had hired a quiet pair of eyes. He had signed a contract with the person who held the record of every broken face he wanted cut away.

For the first time, his smile looked like work.

"A few scratches won't rebuild an arch," he said.

"They already found its foot."

Bell closed his folder.

"We'll communicate in writing."

"Please do," I said.

After they left, my hands shook so badly that I spilled water down my shirt.

Rafael arrived twenty minutes later. He read the demand letter while I held a dry towel against my collar.

"Did you tell him the evidence location?"

"Only that police had it."

"Good."

"Was telling him about the match foolish?"

He thought before answering.

"It told him we have a reason to look. Now we watch what he tries to move."

He asked the manager for her account of the visit. He photographed the folded practice clay and left it with her after recording that it held no case evidence.

"I hate that he made my hands shake," I said.

"Your hands got the work done first."

He said it without pity. I looked at him longer than I meant to.

The next morning, I hired Nora Vale, a civil lawyer whose office was above a tax service. She read my contract twice.

"Good clause," she said. "Now we give the judge a clean timeline."

By noon, I had signed a sworn statement. By two, Nora had filed it with the contract, storage log, and cancellation letters.

At four, a process server arrived carrying Crowe's lawsuit.

He demanded $185,000 and an emergency order making me surrender every original record before the next day's hearing.