Part 3 — The Stamp Number
I turned the little paper over, and on the back, in Elva handwriting, was a number and four words.
“Commission number 7731 Expired.”
Under it she had written, “Nestor, look it up. Anybody can. It is public.”
Clay grabbed at the deed on the table, and I put my hand flat on it. Fay, who had said let the boy have it, took her glasses off and bent over the paper.
The stamp on the corner of Clay deed was round and purple and smudged. The number was 7731.
My granddaughter Aubrey was in the doorway with her phone. She searched the California Secretary of State website, and she read out what it said in a flat clear voice. The notary was named Lyle Dunning, and his commission had expired two years before January.
A notary with no commission cannot notarize a deed. And without the thumbprint in the journal, there is no real signature to speak of.
Clay said that nobody could prove he had known. Fay said quietly that his friend stamps anything for twenty dollars, and she had overheard Clay say that on the phone herself.
The room was very quiet.
Elva had said I knew the date and I knew you, and she had never once been wrong about this boy.
My lawyer, a patient woman in Redding named Mrs. Okafor, took the deed in a clean folder. She said a forged or improperly notarized deed is void from the start, and the county recorder would remove it from the record once it was challenged.
Clay returned the truck, the savings book, and the sewing machine within the week. He did it with his head down, and his wife drove behind him.
The county attorney wanted to hear from him, as the law requires when a false deed is recorded. I told Mrs. Okafor that I wanted the land safe first, and everything else could follow the rules without my help.
Then came a knock on my door. A woman in her sixties stood there holding the old coffee can, and behind her stood the boy who had paid five dollars for it.
She was the boys grandmother, and she had read about the sale in the church bulletin. She said no child should have a dead mans marbles for five dollars.
I counted them on the kitchen floor. All of them were there but three.
That evening I rolled the cat-eye across the linoleum, the way Elva used to, and I waited. The boy next door rolled it back, grinning.
“Your turn, old man,” I said to myself, and I did not miss.