It held my own quiet review of the Duncan estate’s public filings, the notes I had been taking for weeks, numbers that did not match the glowing articles about Jonathan in the local business papers.

I had started it almost idly, the way a person in my profession cannot help starting things, pulling a public record here and a filing there, not because I suspected him of anything in particular but because reading balance sheets is how I think, the way other people hum while they work.

And the figures had not sat right.

A development that was supposed to be thriving carried the quiet signatures of a development that was bleeding.

Receivables that never aged into cash.