The Bank Statements Put A Price On My Niece's Concern

I read Paloma's email three times.

Then I put my phone facedown and washed a cup that was already clean.

The message had been sent to the woman preparing her sale packet. That woman had replied that the full inventory was needed for a title review. Paloma had later forwarded the whole chain to Martin without clearing the earlier messages.

The preparer had not changed the inventory. She had kept the version Paloma supplied and her own request for the missing schedule.

Nessa collected both.

"Intent can be hard to prove," she said. "This helps. It doesn't do every other job for us."

The next job was money.

An independent accountant reviewed the estate records under the accounting order. His name was Harold Moss. He wore reading glasses on a cord and asked questions so mild that people answered before they grew careful.

"Which account received rent?" he asked Paloma at the records meeting.

"My operating account."

"Operating what?"

"The property."

"Please give me the account number and every statement since the first lease."

She said some payments were reimbursements. He asked for the expenses they reimbursed.

She said her father had wanted her to have everything. He asked for the document that said so.

I sat beside Nessa and kept my hands folded.

Harold found five monthly rent payments from each of the three tenants. That was $24,000. Their deposits added $9,600.

Paloma had taken in $33,600.

Only $18,200 remained in that account.

The missing $15,400 had gone in three directions: $8,000 toward a personal credit card, $4,900 for kitchen cabinets at her own home, and $2,500 transferred to her personal savings and later spent.

"Management costs," she said.

Harold turned one cabinet invoice toward her.

"At an address twelve miles from the storage property?"

"I worked from home."

There was no approved management agreement. There were no receipts showing those purchases served the galleries.

The estate's actual bills had been paid from Tomás's bank savings. It had enough money for his valid debts and final costs. There was no unpaid creditor forcing a sale of the underground property.

Paloma had also received $1,140 for groceries and travel during his last illness. Harold found receipts for that. He marked it proper.

I was glad he did.

I did not want a false total just because a larger number would hurt her more.

Harold let me check his payment list against the copies each tenant supplied. I caught one check entered with its last two digits switched. The amount was right, but the check number was wrong.

He corrected it and initialed the change.

"Does a little thing like that matter?" I asked.

"It matters when somebody asks where the number came from."

I understood that. A bearing could fit badly by less than the width of a nail and still wear out a shaft. I put my finger beside each check number and kept reading.

June had advanced the $685 fan repair bill. Nessa asked that she be repaid separately, without taking it from another tenant's deposit.

The $18,200 still on hand went into controlled funds. Of that, $9,600 belonged against the tenants' deposits. The other $8,600 was rent awaiting the ownership ruling.

New rents stayed separate too.

For the first time since Tomás died, I could see where a dollar started and where it ended.

Paloma asked to speak to me alone after the meeting.

We stood near a window in Nessa's hall. Nessa remained within sight.

"You know I helped Dad," Paloma said.

"I know."

"You weren't there every Tuesday."

"No."

"He gave you those rooms because you two had your little projects. I got the work."

I looked at her face. For a moment, I saw the girl who used to wait on my steps with a broken bicycle chain.

"You got his house and hillside," I said. "And you could have asked me to talk about the work."

"Would you have given me the rooms?"

"I don't know. You never asked."

She looked past me.

"This is going to cost me money I don't have."

"It was money you collected from rooms you didn't inherit."

She left without touching my arm.

That evening, Cora brought me a copy of her old ventilation drawing on clean paper. She had marked nothing new on it. The old lines were enough.

We drank coffee at my table while a freight train sounded somewhere beyond the wet hills.

"You look tired," she said.

"I am tired."

"That doesn't mean she's right about you."

I set the blue thread beside the drawing. It lay still in the warm kitchen.

The next afternoon, June called from the vault drive. Her voice had lost its usual level tone.

"A service notice came," she said. "Your niece asked to shut off the power on Friday."