The Missing Clerk's Signature Put Her Back Inside The Yard

"Nine twelve," I said.

Rosalie looked up. "You remember the minute?"

"My intake slip does."

I unlocked the sample room. The shelves smelled of dry wood and paper dust. Each narrow box held a month of work.

April sat between March and an empty space waiting for May.

I found sleeve T4. Inside was the square I'd cut from June's trial board, along with the yellow carbon of her receipt.

APRIL 28. 9:12 P.M.

The customer name was Creek Gate Yard, Horne's shipping site outside Blue Ridge. Beneath it, June had signed J. Vale.

"She paid sixty-three dollars cash," I said. "Asked for a species check and a written opinion on the salvage claim."

"Tell me what you remember. Don't read the paper into your memory."

I shut my eyes.

June had parked a white yard flatbed beside my shed. I'd been working late on a rush order. Her taped cuff had dripped on my bench.

"Don't grade the label," she'd told me. "Tell me what the wood says."

I'd asked who wanted the answer.

"Somebody who still has to sign the checks."

She'd left before I could finish. I had called the yard number the next morning. A man told me she no longer worked there. I'd mailed the report to her at the yard.

It was one small job among dozens. Now I hated that it had stayed small in my mind.

Rosalie waited until I opened my eyes.

"Did she seem injured?"

"Scared. I didn't see an injury."

"Did anyone follow her?"

"I didn't see anyone. That isn't the same as nobody."

She nodded and wrote my exact words.

The cooperative had received my April index on May 1. T4, the payment, and the time were listed there, before anyone accused me of theft.

Rosalie requested their copy directly.

Then she told me why the time mattered.

Silas had said June quit at four that afternoon. He'd supplied a settlement form showing a two-thousand-dollar payment. According to him, she'd left for Atlanta and never returned.

"She was still making a delivery for his yard five hours later," I said.

"Your record supports that. We need to find what else does."

We looked at T4 through a small lens. A dark scar bent across the end grain. Beside it ran a narrow, slanted hole.

"Could be a bore," I said. "Could be something else."

She photographed it with a scale.

The next day, Ada confirmed the hole's size fit the research tool used at Morrow Brake. The ring pattern and old scar matched archived tree 47. R17-B showed the same pattern farther across the trunk.

The second lab agreed on the growth match. Its report said the findings strongly supported a common tree, while warning that ring patterns weren't fingerprints.

Tree 47 had stood alive during the survey. The site photo showed its old scar and numbered tag.

June's trial board had come from that tree. So had a board on the load Silas had wanted me to approve.

Rosalie spread the reports out with my two intake slips.

"This gives us a connection we can test," she said. "The same timber passed through the yard when June vanished and again when Horne threatened you."

I touched the empty payment box on June's requested report. I'd written CASH in the next column, leaving the check number blank.

"He said he'd paid her two thousand dollars."

"He did."

"Then why was she counting out ones for my fee?"

"A question worth asking. Not an answer yet."

Outside, tires crunched slowly across the gravel. Both of us turned.

It was only the mail carrier.

I laughed once, without any humor.

Rosalie helped me seal the originals for a formal transfer. I kept certified copies. She gave me a receipt bearing each sample number, each document, and the time she took custody.

"What if he says I made all this?" I asked.

"Then he has to explain the cooperative's copy, the labs, and the photographs. One witness shouldn't have to hold a whole case upright."

After she left, I called my bank. They offered a sixty-day hardship plan on the mortgage. Nothing vanished; the missed payments would still be owed.

I accepted anyway.

At four, a man in a dark jacket walked up my drive. He wasn't a deputy. He was a process server.

Silas had filed an emergency civil petition demanding the return of company property.

His list named my end cuts, my intake slips, and seven years of sample records.

The hearing notice gave me three days.