The First Customer Brought A Notice Instead Of Lumber

The woman arrived at Fatima's office the next morning with a grocery sack and a folded notice.

"I'm June Mercer," she said. "I called about my walnut."

Fatima had asked the six customers for their contracts and proof of payment. June was the first to come in person.

I stood up.

"I'm Toby. I run the mill."

Her face changed.

"He said you were out driving."

"I was available. He didn't ask me to inspect your job."

June put the sack on Fatima's desk. Inside were two jars of pickles.

"These were supposed to be for the crew," she said. "My husband liked to feed people who worked outside."

She left them in the sack.

Her deposit was $2,800. She had paid it from money saved for a porch repair. Travis had promised that walnut slabs would earn back part of the cost.

"He said the tree was condemned, so the city wanted it gone," she said.

"Where did he say your property ended?" Fatima asked.

June flattened the folded notice.

An attached map showed her yard ending before a narrow strip of public land. The tree stood inside that strip.

"I told him it wasn't mine," she said. "He said he handled the city side."

The notice named six trees along the drainage strip. They were marked for removal because they had failed a safety check. The work was assigned to a city contractor. Residents could not hire someone else to remove or sell them.

"Did he show you written permission?" I asked.

"He showed me a screen with green checks."

She looked at my hands.

"He said his mill partner had approved every site. Was that you?"

"Those are my initials on your contract," I said. "I didn't put them there. I didn't approve the site."

Her mouth pinched shut.

"So where's my money?"

I could have told her about my lock. I could have shown her what Travis had done to me.

Instead, I slid a clean page across the desk.

"Let's write down the payment date first."

Fatima checked June's receipt against the bank deposit. It matched to the cent.

"I won't promise a refund date we can't meet," Fatima said. "But we'll give you the numbers we can prove."

June nodded once.

By lunch, four other customers had sent their records. The sixth, a man working nights, called after he woke up.

Their deposits were $3,200, $3,000, $3,400, $2,900, and $3,300. With June's payment, the six jobs came to $18,600.

Each contract promised removal, milling, and a share of the wood's value. Each carried my typed initials.

Nobody had paid for a lesson about property lines.

I took the records to Nora. She asked me to write a statement about the initials and list every device I used for business.

"Tell the truth you know," she said. "Don't guess who pressed which key."

"I know I didn't approve those jobs."

"That's what we put down."

She sent Travis's lawyer a demand to preserve the sales account, contract history, emails, and bank records. She also told him no tree work should begin while the authority to cut remained in doubt.

Outside her office, Travis called.

"You've got customers asking for refunds."

"They want work you had no right to sell."

"The city marked the trees to come down. You're turning trash into a lawsuit."

"Then show Nora the permission."

"You're scared of everything. That's why I do sales."

I rubbed the cedar shim in my coat pocket. The pencil-box smell rose warm from my fingers.

"Sales doesn't move a property line," I said.

He hung up.

That afternoon Wade met me at a diner off Sixth Street. He set my old time sheets beside the sugar jar.

"Four of us are owed $4,800," he said. "Friday's pay didn't come."

I checked the hours. They covered completed cleanup jobs, before the new deposits arrived.

"Fatima will match these to the invoices," I said.

"I don't want your personal money. I want the money we earned."

"So do I."

He pushed a second sheet toward me. It was a printout of Travis's message to the crew.

Toby no longer has authority to discuss jobs or equipment. Direct all questions to me.

Under that was a new instruction.

Load the mill first. Expansion inventory moves next week.

I photographed both pages and sent them to Nora.

At closing time, Fatima called me back upstairs. A city employee had answered her request for records.

The employee had attached an earlier email refusing Travis permission to cut the six trees.

It was dated nine days before he took June's deposit.