The spoon clicked six times against the rim of the thick ceramic diner mug before Nathaniel Whitmore noticed that the black coffee inside had stopped steaming.

He rubbed his right wrist where his gold watch hung loose against the bone, sliding the heavy metal band two inches up his arm before letting it drop back down.

Evelyn Vance set a folded yellow paper on the laminate counter beside his saucer.

“Arthur left his site roster on the end booth seat,” Evelyn said, wiping the chrome trim of the coffee machine with a wet gray towel.

“He was in a hurry to get to the highway before the freeze hit the bridges south of town.”

Nathaniel unfolded the paper.

It was the December man-hour breakdown for Project Four, the six-story commercial warehouse build outside Strasburg.

His own company name was printed across the top in clean block type, but the third sub-tier line had been heavily crossed out in thick blue ballpoint ink.

Three names were missing from the framing roster.

He knew every hand on that site by boot size and morning coffee order, yet the total billed labor hours were exactly the same as on the November report.

“Did Arthur say why he cleared the site crew two days before Christmas?” Nathaniel asked.

Evelyn turned toward the kitchen pass-through without answering, her apron strings trailing along the floorboards as she reached for a stack of clean glass water pitchers.

Nathaniel reached inside his heavy canvas work jacket and touched the small tin box of dried clover he kept in the inside pocket.

The metal corner was cool against his thumb, a small weight he had carried every day for two years.

He looked down the long aisle of red vinyl booths toward the back corner under the low ceiling speaker.

A young woman in a faded green coat sat across from a seven-year-old girl who was kicking her heels softly against the wooden booth legs.

The child had three yellow paper placemats spread across the laminate.

She was drawing stars with a blunt crayon, careful to keep her small collection of folded paper stars dry inside a wax napkin ring, away from her water glass.