The Board Opened My Contract And Found Who Held The Originals

I did not drive to the theater alone.

I called the local police about the image, then Elias. An officer met Tessa at the loading door. Elias arrived while I was giving my statement in the lobby.

My book was gone. So was a folder of printed color tests. The flat case lay open beneath my table.

"Anything else missing?" the officer asked.

"I'm checking against my tool list."

I wanted to be the sort of person who could say that without shaking. I said it while shaking.

Tessa gave the officer the entry-code list. Only four people had the current loading code. Vaughn and Cal were two of them.

That wasn't proof either man had entered. The officer said so, and wrote down their names.

My camera had been home with me. The original files were safe. June had scanned every used page of the book during the evidence transfer. My daily copies covered the same pages.

Still, I missed the book. A smear of river green crossed page nineteen where I had rested my wrist. Copies kept the words. They didn't give me back my wrist on that day.

Elias stood beside the empty case.

"I should have moved it," I said.

"Someone chose to take it. That's the choice we're looking at."

He helped me arrange a time to collect my materials with an officer present. He didn't touch the backdrop or tell me which brushes mattered.

"You pack," he said. "I'll carry what you clear."

He carried two closed tubs to Tessa's car. At my request, she stored them in her spare room.

One tub held the paste I had mixed that morning. It would spoil before I used it again. I started to explain that, then stopped. Elias waited beside the car.

"It seems foolish to worry about paste," I said.

"It's your work."

"Six dollars' worth."

"Then put down six dollars."

He gave me the officer's property-loss form. I wrote the amount in the next empty box. He didn't laugh, and I didn't have to defend why a small loss still counted.

Ruth called an emergency board meeting for Thursday. Vaughn arrived with a folder and a lawyer. I arrived with my contract, duplicate logs, and the damage dispute.

Rain tapped the high windows. The room smelled of dust and old velvet.

"This has become personal," Vaughn said gently. "I've supported this theater for eleven years."

"Then you know why we need records," Ruth said.

He slid a form toward me. It called for the deletion of all photographs containing freight operations. It also required me to state that no copies remained.

"Standard release," he said. "Sign that, and the mirror matter can disappear."

His lawyer looked at the form, then at him.

"We haven't discussed this document," she said.

I left my hands in my lap.

"The mirror matter should disappear because you billed me for a different mirror."

Ruth placed my intake photograph beside his damage picture.

"Where did this gold frame come from?" she asked.

"A clerical mistake."

"Then withdraw the claim in writing."

His neat pen stayed in his pocket.

He turned toward me.

"You're temporary labor. You don't get to hold company property over my head."

I opened page four.

"I'm an independent conservator. You approve loading hours. You don't own my equipment or my records. The theater hired me to keep a permanent condition archive."

Tessa moved her signed copy into the center of the table.

"They aren't loose pictures," I said. "They belong to a numbered record. Deleting the ones you dislike would break that record."

Vaughn had mistaken the paint on my thumb for the whole of my job. He had never asked who held the originals.

Ruth read the preservation clause aloud. Then she asked the board to freeze new payments to Rusk Shore Freight while an outside accountant examined its invoices.

The vote was four to one. Vaughn wasn't allowed to vote on his own account.

His lawyer gathered the deletion form. Ruth requested a copy before it left the room.

That night, I checked older condition pictures. There were more reflections: a brass scope in September, a wooden instrument case in October. I marked the file numbers without guessing what they proved.

Elias came the next afternoon with June to collect those copies properly.

"You found the pattern," he said.

"I found pictures. You'll have to find the rest."

"Fair division of labor."

His coat sleeve had a loose button. I noticed it with a foolish ache. I wanted a future in which that was the thing I could ask about.

He saw my green thumbnail.

"River still wrong?"

"River's waiting."

"Some things do."

Before I could decide what he meant, June's phone rang. She listened, stepped into the hall, and returned with a printed message from the office downstairs.

Elias read it and went still.

"The judge signed the search warrants."