What do you need? I need to go to the county seat myself, she said. Not to get the maintenance records. You can do that. I need to go to the supply office and request a certified copy of every repair order filed under Crane's company name in the last 5 years before Crane has the opportunity to have any of them removed or altered.
She held his gate. And I need a lawyer, someone who knows territorial law. Someone who can tell me what I can file and when and where it will be heard. I know a man, Silas said. Is he good?
He's honest, Sila said, which is a different thing in my experience. It's the thing I need more," Martha said. He went to his room. She heard him change out of the writing clothes he'd never taken off and come back to the kitchen. She had breakfast on the table by then, not because she'd planned it exactly, but because her hands needed something to do, and feeding people was the most reliable thing she knew.
He sat down and ate, and she sat across from him and drank her coffee. And they looked at each other across the table the way they'd been looking at each other for weeks now with the particular attention of two people who had stopped being strangers without quite deciding to u you said I know she said they left Roberto in charge of the ranch and took the faster road and made the county seat by afternoon the lawyer's name was Thomas Garrett and he was a small dry man of about 60 with fingers and the manner of someone who had seen most things and been surprised by almost none of them. He listened to Martha for 45 minutes without interrupting, which was the first time in 4 months anyone with legal authority had done that for her. When she finished, he looked at his notes. "You have the ledger," he said.
Written contemporaneously, signed by a witness. "Yes," she said. "You have purchase receipts for the tool chest and its contents. Yes, you have the damaged axle pin and the leather stripped from the wagon. In my tool chest, "You have Mr.
Boon's testimony regarding the handkerchief found on the mountain road." "And the deputy has the handkerchief itself," Silas said. Garrett looked at him. "Hol kept it, pocketed it right there in the yard," Silas said. Garrett's dry expression shifted slightly, which Martha was beginning to suspect was his version of significant emotion. Holt is a careful man.
He said if he kept it, he kept it for a reason. He looked back at his notes. What you don't have is the notebook. Not yet, Martha said. And without it, the specifications are your word against.
I have the repair orders from the supply office, Martha said. I requested certified copies before we came here. I'm picking them up tomorrow morning. The repair orders will show what was specified. Henry's notebook showed what was actually installed in his handwriting with dates and client signatures.