Reeves arrived with Deputy Hill twelve minutes later. He glanced at the crane truck, then at me. "No credentials today?"
"No reason."
He nodded.
Vanessa met him halfway across the yard. "Sheriff, this has gone on long enough. We have historical asset records, board authorization, and a licensed contractor."
Reeves held out his hand. "Show me what ties your asset to this machine."
She handed him the same fixed asset sheet. He barely looked at it. "What changed since my last visit?"
"We confirmed that the association acquired a generator of this manufacturer and capacity during development."
I walked to his cruiser with my binder. "And I found the sale documents for this one." I laid out the liquidation invoice, the canceled check, the bank archive image, the delivery receipt, the insurance schedule. Each document identified or corroborated DSB7419KC.
Deputy Hill walked to the generator and photographed the plate again.
Vanessa said, "Those documents show his father bought a generator."
"That was my concern, too," I said. She looked at me. "So, I asked the dealer to pull the service history." I handed Reeves the preliminary dealer confirmation. "Twenty-one years of maintenance under my father's name and later Cole Ranch."
The contractor supervisor leaned in. "Twenty-one years?"
"That's what the dealer has."
Vanessa crossed her arms. "Service records do not establish title."
"They don't need to carry the whole burden," Reeves said. "They corroborate the purchase records."
Vanessa pointed at the generator. "We cannot miss another week because he keeps producing paperwork."
Reeves looked at her. "Then help me with the criminal part."
"What do you mean?"
"You reported this as stolen property. For me to treat that as theft, I need more than a disagreement over old accounting records. I need a reasonable basis to identify this machine as yours."
"We have the asset register."
"And he has a documented transaction tied to the serial on the machine."
Vanessa's expression hardened. "So now it's civil?"
"Right now, it looks like an ownership dispute with competing records. That matters, because a contractor recovery and a criminal seizure are not the same thing."
That distinction appeared to matter to the contractor, too. He looked at the documents spread across the cruiser hood. Then he looked at the generator. "Ma'am, I need to ask something."
"What?"
"Do you have the machine serial on your recovery order?"