Chapter 54

On the drive back to the motel I wondered why everything had to be so difficult. I was going to take all the bills and charges for the boat and send them to the trustees. I would ask him to have a bookkeeper take a look and research the charges. Ev was a nice guy, but that didn't mean that I wanted to finance his business and get nothing for it. He had already proved to me that he would pad a bill.

When I got back to the motel, I found Osborn's belongings were cleared out. I felt bad that our friendship had ended on such a so bad note. But that was the way life went. If she tried to blackmail me about our orgy, I was planning to make her produce the two men. I felt pretty sure they would be off to Afghanistan before she could work it out. I guessed that having money was going to make me a lot more circumspect in my thinking. Maybe I would just set up a fake identity to use for getting laid. I did smile at that thought. It was pretty late and I was pretty tired, so I signed on with the burner computer and went to a chatroom. I spent about an hour looking around, but I could relax enough to play fantasy games, so I went to bed.

I went for a run early in a morning and found it extremely boring. I had run the route about five times now and all the new had worn off the sights. I had a plan in the back of my mind. I went to the boat yard and the barge was still being scrapped and prepared for panting.

"Hello Ev, it seems to be coming along," I said.

"Yes it does. Have you talked to the bank yet," he asked.

"No but I do have a contract of sorts ready for you to look over. Use it as a guild when you write your contract. It includes the wording we used, with a lot of liberal wording to help you. What I think would be a good idea is for me to work out a deal with the bank, but the marina then pays your charge back as part of the boat build. Then we can work on it from there."

"That would be fine," he said.

"My trustee will want the name of the workers on my boat and their hourly salary. There might be an inspector around to verify those records," I said.

"You don't trust me?" he asked.

"I'm alive today because I don't trust anyone completely," I said. "I'll be dropping in now and then and parking over here where I can see the work being done. Just to make me feel better," I said.

What I really planned to do was drive home and pick up the pedal trike. The motor trike I planned to leave in the storage building for a while. I could drive up one day and drive back the next. It would also give me a chance to talk to Wilson. I needed to be sure he was up for our arrangement.

The phone rang while I was in the boat yard that afternoon. According to him, I could buy the boatyard for 105k more or less. "Buy it would you rather use trust money or use my mad money?" I asked.

"Makes no difference it's all your money." he said.

"I'm gonna authorize you to pull the money out of my personal account to buy it. Hopefully I won't have to do anything to effect the trust account." I said.

"It would be best to leave the investments in place so we can analyze the results, unless you feel you are going to need whatever this house boat is going to end up costing you," he said.

"I think the total will be under 300k definitely," I said.

"Then unless you foresee some heavy duty expenses I'd recommend you take if from those first year discretionary funds," he said.

"Okay, lets buy it that way," I said. Sounding as if I had an inkling of what I was saying.

I went back inside to talk to Ev, "I'm going back to the mountains for a couple of days, but I will be back before you finished the painting. We can discuss the next move, when I get back."

"Aren't you afraid I'll stiff you on something," he said resentfully.

"Ev that may be something we need to talk about. This is difficult for both of us, I don't like being here. I wish I felt I could trust you not to pad the bill, but frankly I don't." I said.

"Well I haven't charged you for the use of the dry dock yet?" He said.

"I haven't showed you the three charges of other shipyards for use of their dry dock. And they aren't charging it off at cost, as you should be doing. You might want to keep that in mind, when you make out the charge sheet." It was unfortunate that our relationship had become adversarial. My guess was I had managed to keep his padding of the bill down to maybe 25% of what he would have done otherwise. He was just trying to keep his family business open. He just saw me as a bag of money. I had a big shock for him, he was not going to wind up on the short end, if I could manage it. I planned to help him get solvent again, but first I had to get his credit fixed. None of that didn't include giving him a wad of money.

The drive up to County Seat was no fun at all without Osborn. I had no idea what she had done, and it was none of my business. I got to country seat early in the afternoon. I went directly to the Pub.

"Well I will be damned," The Brit said. Jeremy ran to me for a hug almost in tears.

After a half hour of catching up, Nita brought in her Hamburger pie. "My god you have no idea how I have missed this already, and it's only been two weeks," I said. I explained to the Brit about the house barge and he laughed.