I reached into my canvas bag on the floor, took out the two heavy blue binders of store accounts from the market, and lifted them onto the table.

I slid the first binder across the mahogany.

I slid the second right behind it.

They stopped an inch from the blank transfer form.

“There’s no forty-thousand-dollar check today, Mark,” I said.

Mark stared at the binders.

His jaw tightened.

“Today you explain where two hundred eighty thousand dollars went,” I said.