“Just bring it right to my desk before four so I can give it to Donald.”

I went back inside and set the sealed envelope on the hall table next to my handbag.

At a few minutes past four, I pushed through the glass double doors of the hardware store on Main Street.

The clerk on the front floor pointed me toward the back hallway behind the row of riding mowers.

“Bob went out back to the lumberyard to look at a cedar board order,” the clerk said.

“His office door’s open.”