The Title Clerk Set Six Forms Beneath His Desk Lamp

Everett Sloan did not begin with my marriage.

He checked my driver's license, my trust papers, and the names on the titles. Then he placed six copies beneath a desk lamp.

He was sixty-two, a white American man with a narrow face, white eyebrows, and reading glasses tied to a brown cord. His drawl was slow enough to leave room for thought.

"These haven't been approved," he said. "There are missing documents. There are also things I won't wave through."

I sat in the chair across from him. People waited behind me with numbered slips. A child rolled a toy truck along a window ledge.

The first application named Prairie Lantern Touring as the buyer. The sale price was $1.

My name sat in the seller's signature space.

"I didn't sign that."

Everett pushed a second sheet toward me.

"Or this?"

"No."

All six carried the same tight loop in the last letter of Boone. I sometimes made that loop. I never made it exactly the same way twice.

"We will need your statement," he said. "Use your own words. Don't guess who held the pen."

I liked him for that.

I wrote that I had not signed, sold, or approved a transfer of any of the six vehicles. I listed each identification number and signed in front of him.

Everett compared the attached pages with the originals I had brought.

"Here," he said.

The attachment looked like my booking agreement until the last paragraph. The sentence limiting Brielle's power was gone. In its place was a line granting her power to transfer the fleet.

The print was darker there. One line leaned uphill.

"An altered form can look tidy from across a room," Everett said. "Up close, it has to answer questions."

He recorded my dispute, explained that the applications remained incomplete, and gave me copies I was entitled to receive as the named trustee and supposed seller. He did not promise an arrest or a quick rescue.

"Titles establish what's in our records," he said. "If somebody has your property and won't return it, you'll need help beyond this counter."

Outside, the air smelled of wet pavement. I called a lawyer named Lena Ortiz from the parking lot.

She had reviewed our first fleet lease years before. She remembered the sidecars.

"You made that cardboard seat for my father's hip," she said.

"He told me it felt like a church chair."

"He meant it as praise. Bring everything."

At her office, I put the titles down first. Then the trust records, the lease, the booking agreement, and the bank statement.

She read for a long time.

"A trust doesn't make every money question disappear," she said. "Your rental earnings and the work you both did still matter in the divorce. But this lease did not give your wife the fleet."

"Can I go get it?"

"Where is it?"

"A fenced storage yard east of town. She won't give me the code."

"Then we ask for lawful return. We don't test the fence."

She sent written demands to Brielle and the touring company. They ended permission to use the rigs under the lease's breach terms and demanded their location, keys, and return. She also demanded that the company preserve its records.

I paid Lena a $3,000 retainer from my personal savings.

That number hurt. So did the empty rental account. I had a $1,140 shop payment due the next week, and two customers still needed handrails finished.

"What did you expect?" Brielle asked when she called that evening. "That I'd keep asking you for permission forever?"

"I expected you to ask before taking six motorcycles."

"They were sitting there."

"They were booked for inspections."

"Always another inspection. Always another little list."

I looked at my workbench. There were six small cardboard tabs pinned above it. Each carried a rig number in blue pencil, from B-01 through B-06. I moved a tab from one nail to another when a rig entered or left service.

She had once teased me about those tabs. Now all six hung on the nail marked OUT.

"Send the keys to Lena," I said.

Her voice turned light.

"You're going to embarrass yourself. People know I run this."

After she hung up, an email arrived from the touring company's public booking address. I was still on its test mailing list.

FOUR FALL DEPARTURES. SIX GUESTS EACH. $1,200 RESERVES YOUR SEAT.

The photo showed my low doors under fresh cream paint. She had named the fleet the Lantern Six.

Below that was a second offer aimed at business partners: a chance to buy the fleet and lease it back to her.

The deadline was Friday.

Before I could forward it to Lena, my phone lit up again.

"A transport driver just asked for your loading measurements," Brielle said. "Try being helpful for once."