The Driver Brought Her Receipts In A Grocery Sack

I let June inside and locked the door.

"Where's your daughter?"

"With my sister. Rafe doesn't know where she lives."

She set the sack on my table. Receipts spilled out beside a half-empty bag of peppermints.

"He paid me direct for those runs," she said. "Said the trucking office would only slow things down."

"Let me call Mateo."

"Can he keep that picture out of the papers?"

"We'll ask him."

I wanted to promise more. Instead, I filled the kettle.

Mateo listened on speaker. He asked June whether she faced an immediate threat. Then he arranged for a local deputy to come to my house while his team took her report.

"Keep the message on your phone," he said. "Don't answer it. We can meet somewhere you choose."

June chose the sheriff's office.

She took the peppermints with her. I carried the receipts in a clean envelope, with her permission written across the flap. Mateo put the envelope into a proper evidence bag when we arrived.

"You don't have to make my forms for me," he told me.

"Habit."

"Useful habit."

June showed him the message. It came from Rafe's number. Under her daughter's picture, he had written: Keep your family out of a misunderstanding.

Her hands shook so hard she couldn't sign her statement.

Nobody hurried her.

I stayed in the chair she could see through the open door. Whenever she looked out, I lifted my cup. She lifted hers back.

While she spoke with a victim services worker, Mateo brought me water.

"He'll say she misunderstood," I said.

"Then we'll preserve what he sent and ask the court to read it."

June's receipts showed three trips between Vernal and Belloc's event storage in Nevada. Each load was listed as display resin, worth $4,800.

But the scale tickets showed something else.

The loaded crates weighed hundreds of pounds more on their first trip than they did coming back.

"Plaster jackets," I said.

Mateo looked up.

"Maybe," I added. "Foam stands can change the weight too. You'll need the packing lists."

He wrote both possibilities down.

On the last ticket, June had paid $63.40 for fuel with her own card. Rafe had told her to claim it as exhibit setup. The reimbursement carried his approval and the same job number as V-Seventeen.

"I kept asking why the museum didn't pay," she said when she came back. "He said museum women made everything hard."

I looked at the small black figures on the receipt.

For $63.40, he had joined the driver, the load, and his own office on one page.

June agreed to stay with relatives at an address kept out of the public filing. Officers checked the place before she went. Her daughter changed her school pickup list. None of that made June stop looking over her shoulder.

Three mornings later, a warrant search in Nevada recovered a lower jaw from a Belloc crate.

Mateo called while I was mixing plaster.

"The jaw fits the field team's species estimate," he said. "Our examiner is comparing the stone around it."

"June?"

"We've told her. Her protective order request is going in today."

At lunch, she called me herself.

"They told me to return the truck by dark or they'd report it stolen."

"Who?"

"Rafe's lawyer. I need it to work."

I put down my fork.

"Send that to your lawyer. Don't take it to him yourself."

She had a lawyer now, through a legal aid referral. It was a small relief, but it had a name and a phone number.

The truck went back by an agreed pickup. June stayed away.

That afternoon, museum security called me upstairs.

Rafe sat at the end of the boardroom table with two trustees. He had a folder in front of him and no coffee.

"Federal agents have been very busy," he said.

"Yes."

"Your poor judgment has cost us a sponsor."

The board chair slid a letter toward me.

Paid suspension, pending a review of collection handling. My key would be held by security. I could not enter the workroom without an escort.

"Am I accused of taking something?" I asked.

"We aren't making findings yet," the chair said.

"Then please put that in the letter."

She blinked, then picked up her pen.

I signed only the line that said I had received it.

At home, I took out an old brush and made eight strokes of water across my kitchen counter. The first dried before I finished the last.

My phone rang.

Mateo's voice was low.

"Do you remember the man who delivered the plaster jacket? Owen Pike?"

"Yellow gloves. Quiet."

"We found his pickup outside town. His phone was under the seat."

I waited for him to say more.

"And there's a note addressed to you."