The Pink Copy That Caught the Treasurer

I wrote $832 on the legal pad. Then I wrote $7,008 above it and drew a line, and the difference was $6,176.

My hand went cold, and I put the pencil down.

Royce came in at ten from a wind-storm callout, still in his co-op jacket, and read the legal pad standing up with his thermos in one hand. Then he set the thermos on the counter very carefully, the way he does when he is angry.

“I’m going over there,” he said.

“Royce.”

“Dean’s eaten at our table since Maddie was in T-ball. He held her at the christening. I’m going to walk into that office and ask him, man to man.”

“And then what?”

He opened his mouth and closed it again.

“We have three numbers on a legal pad and a pink piece of paper,” I said. “We do not have one dollar proven. If we go in tonight, he says he made a mistake, he fixes the books by Friday, and the only people who look foolish are the Hanlons.”

“So we call the sheriff.”

“Don Reiner is twenty minutes up the highway, and the first thing he does is freeze the account. The uniform deposit is due the twentieth. The tournament entry in Sioux Falls is due April first.”

He stood very still.

“And Dean is not a stranger,” I said. “If I am wrong, if there is some reason I cannot see, a man in a town this size never gets that word taken off his name. I want to be certain before I do that to anybody.”

He looked at Maddie’s pink copy for a long time.

“What do you want to do?” he asked.

“Paperwork,” I said. “I want every pink copy in this town.”

Banana Bread and Carbon Paper

I am forty-one years old. I teach second grade, and I had never in my life investigated anything more serious than who ate the last of the church-supper pie.

Twenty-two girls had sold wreaths. I started with the families I knew best, and told them the truth, or part of it: that I was trying to fix a wreath count before the uniform company asked, and could I borrow the pink copy for one evening.

Three families live out on gravel roads where the cell service has not improved since 2009, so Royce drove forty-one miles of section roads on Saturday to fetch their copies. He came home with a dusty hat and a foil pan of Mrs. Teigen’s caramel rolls.

I typed all twenty-two copies into a spreadsheet at the kitchen table, girl by girl. The total came to four hundred thirty-eight, and it matched the delivery sheet to the wreath.

On Monday I called the wreath company from my classroom during lunch. The name on the order book was Northwoods Evergreen, out of Cloquet, Minnesota, and a woman named Lorraine answered on the second ring, with the voice of somebody who has sold wreaths to church groups for thirty years.

“Verdell Girls Softball,” she said, and I heard keys clicking. “Four hundred thirty-eight at twelve dollars wholesale. Fifty-two fifty-six, paid in full by check the twentieth of November. We never charge freight on a group order over three hundred.”

“Is there a profit statement we should have received?” I asked.

“Oh, honey, we mail one to the treasurer every December. Group profit, seven thousand and eight dollars.”