“You carry these everywhere?”
“I wasn’t leaving them at the shop.”
He understood immediately.
Jory had not known what she was building.
She had simply known information could disappear.
That instinct may have saved the entire case before there was a case.
“We do this correctly,” Calvin said.
“Meaning?”
“No threats. No shortcuts. No club nonsense.”
She raised an eyebrow.
“Club nonsense?”
“You know what I mean.”
“I actually don’t.”
“Good.”
He pushed the notebooks gently back toward her.
“Diane. Ron. Lawyers. Police if there’s enough to justify it. Everything documented.”
“Devo has people everywhere.”
“I know.”
“He sits on municipal advisory boards.”
“I know.”
“His company’s on half the development signs in Sudbury.”
“I know.”
“He’ll come after the garage.”
“He already is.”
“He could come after you.”
Calvin shrugged once.
“That would be inefficient.”
Jory almost smiled.
Then she asked, “Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why are you doing this?”
Calvin considered giving her something simple.
Because Wes vouched for you.
Because you work here.
Because someone watching people from parked trucks makes him angry.
All were true.
None were complete.
“Your father built something honest.”
Jory said nothing.
“Somebody decided they were entitled to take it because he wouldn’t sell.”
Calvin leaned back.
“If they hurt him to make that easier, then they need to answer for it.”
He looked at the photographs.
“And this showed up in my garage.”
His eyes returned to her.
“That means it isn’t something you’re carrying by yourself anymore.”
Jory looked down.
For the first time since walking through the Iron Pines door, some small part of the tension in her shoulders released.
Not all of it.
Just enough to notice.
“Okay.”
She stood.
Picked up her coffee.
Picked up her tool bag.
“There’s a forty-nine Knucklehead in the back bay that nobody’s touched since Wednesday.”
Calvin stared at her.
“That’s what you’re doing now?”
“What else am I supposed to do?”
He almost laughed.
“Go.”
She left.
Calvin called Diane.
The next forty-eight hours looked quiet from the outside.
They were not.
Diane traced the numbered company through Ontario corporate filings.
The company was held by another corporation.
That corporation listed two directors.
One was an accountant whose name appeared across several entities connected to Devo developments.
The other was Reginald Vickers.
The truck had been registered to the numbered company eleven days before it entered Iron Pines for bodywork.
Four months later, ownership transferred to another shell corporation connected to the same accountant.
Someone had taken care to create distance.
They had simply failed to create enough.
Ron Stelzer found something more important.
A planning application.
Lawrence Devo’s company had submitted preliminary documents for a mixed-use development involving the Kier Street corner property fourteen months before Gerald Baxter’s stroke.
Baxter’s Garage was identified in the planning package as property expected to become available pending transfer of ownership.
There was no contract.
No signed purchase agreement.
No option.
No memorandum of understanding.
Gerald Baxter had never agreed to sell.
Yet Devo had already been planning around ownership he did not possess.
Calvin read the application twice.
Then called Diane.
“Bring in your best lawyer.”
Diane did.