Farrah Cut The Blue Threads And Found Three Payments Repeated

Farrah arrived with a calculator, a camera, and a paper sack of cheese biscuits.

"Bad books go better with breakfast," she said.

She was fifty-two, a Black woman with silver braids pinned close to her head. Her glasses hung from a cord. She set them on her nose when I showed her the bill, then lowered them when I showed her the separation papers.

"Those are two jobs," she said. "Today we follow money. A lawyer can follow your marriage."

She made me clear a clean table in the cutting room.

"No grit. Grit eats paper. So does panic."

She took pictures of each packet beside its job number. Then I cut the blue threads while she wrote down the time.

The first sample was gray granite with small dark flecks. Its quarry draft showed four bases, each thirty inches wide. The signed authorization put the stone cost at $8,800.

The second and third packets held the same kind of records for two other jobs.

"Three orders," Farrah said. "Twenty-six thousand four hundred dollars."

I brought up the bank site with the owner's access I had kept since opening the shop.

My hands shook on the keys. They had stayed still while I cut letters a quarter inch deep that could never be put back.

"Take your time," she said.

The real quarry had received three payments of $8,800. Each matched a draft in a packet. Each delivery had a truck ticket, a weight, and my actual signature.

Tern Shoal had also received three payments of $8,800.

Same jobs. Same amounts. Different dates.

"Could it be freight?" I asked.

Farrah read the line marked Material Purchase.

"Very heavy freight. It appears to weigh exactly as much as the stone."

She called the quarry with me beside her. Their sales clerk knew my voice.

"Your account is paid, Dorian. You still want that extra gray sample?"

"Do you use Tern Shoal Granite?"

"Never heard of them."

Farrah asked for a written account history and copies of the paid invoices. The clerk sent them while we waited.

Then Farrah spread out the churchyard deposit slips.

Each board had paid $12,000 toward its restoration work. That was $36,000 I had promised to turn into level stones, sound joints, and clean names.

The duplicate payments had drained most of it.

I sat on a crate.

"Those people raised money with suppers."

"Yes," Farrah said. "So we give them facts they can use. Shame won't buy a base."

She found the next problem in a charge for $18.40.

"Why stop there?" I asked.

"Because somebody hoped I wouldn't."

It was a bank fee for changing a wire instruction. The new recipient details would apply to Monday's $9,600 payment.

The old destination ended in 1442. The new one ended in 9076.

"Someone moved the bucket," she said. "We need to know whose hands are on it."

She made no claim that a screen could tell her who owned another bank account. She said a lawyer could seek that through proper records.

For now, my bank could stop my money and save my instructions.

I called its weekend fraud number. After they checked my identity, I asked for a hold on outgoing transfers and for all payment records to be kept.

"Including the pending instruction and its changes," Farrah added.

The bank worker gave me a case number. She said Monday's scheduled order would meet the hold, and its full payment details would be kept with the exception report.

The $9,600 would stay in my account.

I wrote that down twice.

Next I removed Celeste's payment access. I saved the list of permissions before changing it, just as Farrah asked.

Celeste could pay approved bills. The agreement she had signed when taking over the office required my written approval for new suppliers or any purchase above $2,500.

The original agreement was in my business binder.

"You kept that too?" Farrah asked.

"She said I kept everything."

"Sometimes a wife is right for the wrong reason."

I put the cut blue threads in an envelope with the photographs. Nothing went back into a packet to pretend it had stayed sealed.

Before Farrah left, she helped me write a short message to Celeste. I had found payments needing review. The shop's records must be kept. No shop funds could be moved.

Her answer came in less than a minute.

You can't run payroll, Dorian. Stop touching accounts you don't understand.

Then another message arrived, this one with a photograph.

It showed the sample cupboard standing open.

Under it, Celeste had written, Those packets aren't yours to use against me.