“And he had the locks on my front door changed while I was standing in Clara’s spare room.”

Ruth came around the counter, took a black ballpoint pen from the register tray, and signed her name along the bottom line of the white statement.

“Take this to Donald,” Ruth said.

I crossed back over the county line at one o’clock and pulled into a parking space behind the First Community Bank branch on Main Street.

Donald was in his glass office, filing loan folders into a tall gray cabinet.

He looked up when I tapped on the window, nudged his wire-rimmed glasses with one finger, and opened the door.