I Slept With My Fiancé's Hot Uncle novel · Chapter 16 of 24

Chapter 16: His Own Hand

I called the number on his note, because the board wanted his handwriting and I didn't know who else had it.

"Coombs Bindery," Costa said when I told him where I was. "I'll come now."

"You don't have to come in."

"I'll leave it on the step if you want."

"Come in," I said, and hung up before I could hear what that sounded like.

He arrived at six, when the shop was dark and the street lamp had come on over the framing store next door.

He carried a cardboard box tied with kitchen string.

I unlocked the door and he came in and stopped in front of the worktable, where the cracked Bible lay open in its cradle.

"You work in here?"

"Every day."

"It smells of paste and old leather."

"That's the paste."

He set the box on the stool and untied the string.

Inside were envelopes, and ship orders, and a stack of postcards from Norway with the corners gone soft.

"Six years of my signature," he said. "Contracts. Customs forms. A letter to my mother. Every one is dated after the transfer, and every one has the loop the right way round."

I took the top letter and held it to the lamp.

His hand was square and fast, and the G made its loop the opposite way from the forged one.

"This is a good specimen," I said.

"Take all of it. Give it to whoever the board hires."

"They'll want you in the room."

"If they ask. I'll stand wherever they put me." He didn't move toward me. "I told you I'd stay out of your way, and I will. This is the last time I come to your shop unless you say so."

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