Maeve Opened The Bundles And Counted What Curtis Had Missed

Maeve worked from a small office above a tax service on North Limestone. There was no music, no soft chair, and no place to hide a bad number.

At fifty-five, she had silver curls cut close to her head and square glasses on a cord. She was Irish American, born in Ohio, and had lived in Kentucky longer than Curtis had run a forge.

He still called her "the Irish lady who does the books."

She called him Curtis Past Due.

"Sit," she told me.

I put the blue bundles on her desk.

"He touched your tools?"

"No. I have the older rig. Everything else is inside."

"Good. Keep earning. Getting angry doesn't pay the light bill."

She read our agreement before she looked at a single receipt.

"This is the final copy?"

"Signed at the old office. You witnessed it."

"I remember. He complained about paying a lawyer to write something nobody would ever need."

She found her own signature on the last page.

Then she untied the first equipment bundle.

We had bought the first mobile unit for $61,000. I had sent the seller the full amount from savings and money from selling a small parcel I had inherited. The wire receipt sat behind the signed schedule.

The next unit had cost me $36,600, paid in two transfers.

"That one was used," I said. "Needed a new burner."

"The burner is a repair expense. Don't mix it in."

She drew a line through my pencil note, without changing the signed page.

The newest rig had cost $58,400. I had paid the dealer directly after Curtis said the business account could not carry it.

"He said we'd settle ownership when things got quiet," I said.

Maeve tapped the agreement.

"You settled the method here. He kept putting off the arithmetic."

She checked each bank record against the payee, date, and equipment number. Then she opened the business ledger on her screen.

"Your total is $156,000. His verified capital is $84,000. Cash, shop equipment, and the original trailer. Combined, $240,000."

She turned her calculator toward me.

"Sixty-five percent," I said.

"Exactly."

For years I had heard apprentice so often that I still felt a need to ask.

"That gives me the larger vote?"

"Under this agreement, yes. It doesn't give you his share. It gives you your share."

She printed the ledger and marked the items she needed to check against her archived files before she would sign a report.

"How long?"

"As long as it takes."

"He's trying to sell the truck."

"Then tell a lawyer that. Hurry belongs in the lawyer's office. It doesn't belong in my totals."

She forwarded the sale email to me. Curtis had found a buyer in Frankfort. The price was $49,000, with pickup Friday at noon.

It was Tuesday.

"That truck cost more than that in March," I said.

"People accept less when they want money quickly."

I called a business lawyer named Lena Morrow from the stairwell. Her office could see me that afternoon. I sent the agreement and Curtis's text through the secure link her assistant gave me.

Back upstairs, Maeve was staring at two lines on her screen.

"Your newest unit," she said. "Was the price definitely $58,400?"

"Yes."

"Did you buy anything living with it?"

I thought she was joking. Her face told me she wasn't.

"A spider in the glove box, maybe."

She did not smile.

"The purchase document Curtis gave me totals $72,800. It includes three training geldings at $4,800 each. He booked your payment as equipment capital and the remaining $14,400 as money he advanced. Then the business reimbursed him."

I looked at the page she printed.

Below the rig description were three names: Pilot, Cinder, Parish.

"We don't own horses," I said.

"I asked him about them in April. He said they stayed off-site for apprentice practice. He sent support for later costs. I've been asking for the full file since."

"There isn't an apprentice except me in his stories."

"I know."

She called the equipment dealer on speaker, using the number from my bank record.

"We need a duplicate purchase invoice," she said. "Straight from your records. Every page."

While we waited, I thought of all the real horses we saw each week. Tender heels. Old tendon injuries. Ponies that leaned because nobody had taught them to stand.

Three made-up names could take money from their care without ever lifting a foot.

The printer woke behind Maeve.

She read the first page, then held it up.

"Jonah. This dealer says it has never sold a horse."