The Missing Crate Turned Up In A Client's Return Photo

I carried the court papers home without opening the second envelope.

The first had been enough.

Gavin had put the missing blocks beside my name as if setting two things next to each other made them fit.

Leena called before dinner.

"A claim isn't a finding," she said. "We answer it with evidence. Open the rest."

The second envelope contained the court schedule. Our request for temporary relief would be heard in two weeks.

I wrote the date on my kitchen calendar.

Then I called Bernice.

"Eighteen blocks," she said. "That's crate seventeen."

"It was six years ago."

"There were eighteen when I put them in. There were eighteen when he signed them out. I remember because one stand pinched my thumb."

I could hear pages moving.

"Don't stay up doing this," I told her.

"I wasn't planning to sleep until you stopped sounding like that."

The next morning, she sent the first storage list. It proved the blocks belonged to Lantern Lace. It did not prove where they had gone last month.

Leena thanked her and said exactly that.

"Then we'll keep looking," Bernice said.

We looked in places we had a right to look. My old order photos. Shop packing records. Messages from clients. Nobody went near Gavin's new door.

I found a photograph from five weeks earlier, taken before the stock move. Eighteen spare blocks stood above the cutting table. Their canvas bases carried the number LL-17 in black ink.

Gavin's lawyer received a copy.

Two days later, a touring assistant sent Bernice a return question.

Which shop wanted the loan block back?

Attached was a picture of a wig packed for return. Beside it stood one of our blocks, the black LL-17 mark clear on its base. A yellow thread hung from the canvas cover where I had meant to mend a split seam.

The return label named Rusk Touring Hair in Kearny.

I knew that little split. I had put a safety pin in it because a fitting had started before I could finish.

"That's one of ours," I said.

"One isn't eighteen," Bernice said. "But it's a place to start counting."

The assistant's company supplied its delivery sheet. Gavin had signed for that loan block under his new shop's name. The sheet also referred to a larger freight delivery the week before.

Leena requested the carrier record through the case. A week later, it arrived with a clear copy of Gavin's signature.

Pickup: Lantern Lace, Newark.

Delivery: Rusk Touring Hair, Kearny.

Contents: eighteen wig blocks, six stands, crate LL-17.

The delivery date was three days before he had announced I was leaving.

I sat down when I read it. Anger hadn't done that to me. Relief did.

"He knew," I said.

Leena didn't soften her voice.

"We'll show the dates. Let the judge see what he knew."

We spent Saturday building a set of exhibits. She gave each document a number. I checked every copy against my original.

Agreement. Buy-in acknowledgment. Paid cashier's checks. Payroll records. Demand for accounts. Missing records. Freight receipt.

The list looked small beside six years of work.

"That's all?" I asked.

"That's plenty for the questions we're asking now."

My payroll records were plain. Every weekly payment had been listed as wages, with tax withheld. There was no sale agreement, no transfer signed by me, and no note saying my share had been bought back.

The agreement required my signature to transfer it.

Gavin had sent plenty of things for me to sign. The chair license was the latest. I was beginning to understand why he'd wanted it so badly.

On Monday, he waited by my bench.

"We could settle this without strangers," he said.

"Our lawyers can talk."

"I built your customer list."

"You helped build it."

"You're going to lose everything paying her."

That one found the sore place. I had counted my savings three times that weekend.

I took a breath.

There had been a time when I would have tried to make him smile again. I would have named a client he liked, offered coffee, or let him say the last thing.

That morning, I noticed a loose screw on the bench lamp. I tightened it with the little driver from my drawer while he waited.

"Are you hearing me?" he asked.

"Yes."

The lamp held its place when I let go. I put the driver away.

He had asked for a response, and I had one ready. It just wasn't the response he expected.

"Send your offer to Leena."

It came that afternoon: $5,000 for a full release, my resignation, and silence about both shops.

I declined through Leena. Then I went back to sewing a torn lace front, one knot at a time.

The evening before our hearing, his lawyer sent another document.

It was a statement Gavin had signed, saying he had never received my money as payment for ownership.