Six Clay Animals Stood Watch While We Counted The Visits

Nina's next bill was $720.

I paid it with money I had earned making Keene's urns. Then I stood at the sink until the water ran cold.

She filed my answer and opposed his request to take the archive. A hearing was set for the following Friday.

"Keep everything," she said. "Don't hide it, don't destroy it, and don't start adding notes to old pages."

"Even his papers?"

"Especially his papers."

At the next evidence session, an officer photographed my drawer and listed its contents. I signed a receipt for the six glaze tiles they took. They copied the original images from my drives and recorded where each file had come from.

The animals stayed.

"Do you need them?" I asked Dahlia.

"The tiles give us the glaze samples. Unless your rabbit knows the bank password, he can remain here."

I put them across the packing bench that night: fox, rabbit, wren, otter, badger, mouse.

Six batches. Six rounds of four urns.

The animals had never seemed so busy.

Three other funeral operators agreed to speak with investigators. Dahlia checked their accounts apart from mine. She did not give me their statements or ask me to make my records fit.

She brought narrow questions instead.

"When did K63 leave your shop?"

"February fifth."

"Your pickup photo is dated the sixth."

I opened my calendar. February fifth was written in my delivery column.

My mouth dried out.

"I don't understand."

"Let's check the messages."

There it was. The kiln had cooled too slowly. I had moved the pickup from Wednesday to Thursday but failed to change the paper calendar.

"I made a mistake."

"Yes," she said. "Now we can explain it."

"Won't they use that against me?"

"Probably. Keeping it secret would make their job easier."

She saved the original calendar entry, my correction, and the message that supported it. Nothing vanished because it was inconvenient.

Nora gave permission for Dahlia to show me her six collection photographs. Each pictured the same route card, LR-17, inside a different urn.

"The card follows the stop," I said.

"Right. It doesn't identify one pot."

"But the code tells us which firing. The packing picture tells us which pot."

"And her records tell us why a crew visited."

It was slow work. A pale glaze patch here. A lid with a low spot there. A pickup message sent at 11:43. A cash photo taken at 1:06.

On the fifth visit, Perry had a second collector with him. My window camera had caught both men carrying cartons. Nora's message named the same second man.

Dahlia wrote down the match without smiling.

"Is that useful?" I asked.

"Very. Useful isn't the same as finished."

Bank records came through legal requests. Cash deposits followed several collection rounds, but some combined more than one stop. Dahlia refused to call a deposit Nora's money just because the amount looked close.

I began to trust her most when she crossed something out.

We worked late twice that week. Other staff came and went. At the end of Thursday's review, we ate noodles in the break room while a clerk argued with a jammed printer.

Dahlia held up her fork.

"A machine built to put things on paper has strong feelings about paper."

"My kiln only argues with electricity."

"An expensive position."

I smiled. She did too, then grew quiet.

"Luca, I enjoy these meals."

"So do I."

"More than I should while I'm working on your evidence."

The printer stopped. The sudden quiet made me look down.

"I wasn't sure," I said.

"Neither was I. I wanted us to be clear before we stopped being careful."

"What happens now?"

"We keep the work here. No private dinners. When my work involving you is over, we can see where we are."

I had spent weeks with a man who made every kind word a debt. Dahlia had offered me something honest and asked for nothing in return.

"I'd like that," I said.

She told her supervisor about our conversation. Another investigator took over my later witness interviews. Dahlia stayed with the financial audit, and our contact stayed in the office.

At home, I practiced explaining a batch code in plain words. I could describe heat and glaze all night. Saying it while someone watched for a lie was different.

I put the rabbit beside my alarm clock.

At 11:26, an unknown number called. I let it go to voicemail.

Perry's voice sounded smaller without the van outside.

"I kept a second route book," he said. "The one with what we actually collected. If I take it to somebody, can I go home afterward?"