Her name was Helen Barnes.
Sixty-two.
Silver hair.
Reading glasses hanging from a chain.
She looked at Maya.
“You Daniel’s daughter?”
“Yes.”
“You have his attitude?”
“Apparently.”
Helen smiled.
“Good.”
She dropped a stack of invoices on the workbench.
“Your father was right.”
Maya stared.
“About what?”
“Big Sky.”
Clayton, who had been standing nearby, stiffened.
Helen looked at him.
“You wanted records.”
“I brought records.”
Clayton said:
“Helen.”
“No.”
She set down another folder.
“I told you eight years ago the invoices were strange.”
Clayton’s face tightened.
“You said their coding changed.”
“I said the amounts changed after Daniel started checking serial numbers.”
Maya looked at Clayton.
He did not meet her eyes.
Helen continued.
“Then Daniel quit working here.”
“Big Sky closed.”
“Logan recommended Yellowstone Equipment two years later.”
“I never tied them until this morning because nobody ever asked me who owned both companies.”
Clayton looked at her.
“What did you find?”
Helen pulled a corporate registration printout.
“Big Sky was owned by Wallace Maddox.”
“Yellowstone Equipment is owned by Trent Maddox.”
“Wallace’s son.”
Clayton looked toward the office where Logan had disappeared.
Helen continued:
“Trent is Logan’s brother-in-law.”
“I know that.”
“Yes.”
“But did you know Logan’s wife owns twelve percent of Yellowstone?”
Silence.
Clayton’s face changed.
Maya said nothing.
He looked at Helen.
“Since when?”
“Four years.”
“Why wasn’t that disclosed?”
“It was.”
Clayton stared.
Helen pulled a document.
“Vendor conflict disclosure.”
“Signed.”
“Filed.”
“By who?”
Helen turned it around.
Clayton’s signature.
He stared.
Then shook his head.
“I never saw this.”
Helen’s expression softened slightly.
“You signed a packet of annual disclosures.”
“You probably didn’t.”
Clayton closed his eyes.
Maya thought of her father.
Invoices prove billing.
Not installation.
Signatures prove signing.
Not understanding.
Systems fail when signatures become reflex.
Clayton looked at Maya.
“Fix the machines.”
It sounded almost like a plea now.
Not quite.
She nodded.
“I will.”
Helen stayed.
Together they compared invoices against physical machines.
The results became worse.
A control module billed as replaced eighteen months earlier carried a factory serial number predating the supposed replacement and matched the original equipment record.
A hydraulic pump supposedly installed new two years earlier had casting marks consistent with the factory unit.
Three wiring harnesses billed as complete replacements had sections of original loom with date codes from manufacture.
One $11,800 “transmission electronic control package” did not appear to exist in the machine at all.
Maya took photographs.
Serial numbers.
Date codes.
Connector types.
She did not conclude theft.
Not yet.
But Helen did.
“He stole from us.”
Clayton heard.
He sat on a shop stool.
For the first time since Maya met him, he looked old.
“Don’t say that yet.”
Helen stared.