Chapter 34
Henrietta drew a fresh column in her notebook.
“December third,” she said. “You paid?”
“Two hundred.”
“How?”
“Fifty in cash. One hundred fifty by draft from the cattle buyer in Cheyenne.”
“Silas recorded one hundred fifty.”
Calvin’s eyebrows drew together. “Then he lost fifty.”
“No.” Henrietta turned another page. “He found it again in January.”
Mercer leaned forward. “Meaning?”
She slid two statements beside each other. “Meaning that the fifty dollars disappears from the December payment, then reappears as a fee supposedly charged in January for ‘document preparation.’”
Calvin’s face went still.
Mercer set down his cup.
Henrietta felt the pattern open wider beneath her fingertips. “And the document preparation fee is duplicated in February. Another fifty.”
“That’s theft,” Calvin said.
“It is something worse than ordinary theft.” Henrietta sorted the pages quickly, her cane hooked against the chair where she could reach it. Her joints had been stiff since the ravine, and cold lodged in her knees like ground glass, but the pain had receded behind concentration. “Ordinary theft wants money. This wanted something else.”
“The ranch,” Mercer said quietly.
Henrietta nodded. “Silas did not merely take extra dollars. He needed the account to appear delinquent at chosen moments. He shifted legitimate payments forward or backward, created penalties, then charged interest on the invented penalties. Each false entry widened the apparent default.”
Calvin swore under his breath. “So no matter what I paid—”
“He could keep you behind.”
Wind struck the west wall in a long, low shove. The lamp flame bent inside its glass chimney, recovered, and resumed its thin yellow burn.
Henrietta opened the oldest statement she had found and placed it beside the foreclosure notice recovered from Calvin’s torn coat. “This is the piece that matters most. The notice was prepared before our wedding. Before the five thousand dollars was transferred. Before Silas accepted the money.”
Calvin looked at the date again, though they had all looked at it a dozen times. “He already meant to foreclose.”
“Yes.”
Mercer rubbed at the gray in his beard. “A judge won’t care much for that.”
“A judge may care. An auctioneer tomorrow may not.” Henrietta sat back, flexing fingers cramped from writing. “We need enough to force the deputy to delay enforcement. Not suspicion. Not an ugly pattern. Proof he cannot wave aside as bad bookkeeping.”
Calvin’s eyes shifted toward the pile of records. “Then find it.”
She looked at him.