By noon my sister, Sarah, had two big cardboard boxes open across the living room rug and was sorting wooden crib slats onto the carpet.

“Hold this side panel still while I line up these wooden pegs,” Sarah said, aiming her screwdriver at the half-built frame.

I braced the pine rail against my knee while my left thumb traced the little red paper cut on my other hand.

Sarah jingled the heavy ring of car keys in her right coat pocket, a sharp brass sound that filled the quiet room every time she shifted her weight.

“You look like you swallowed a bad nickel,” she said, squinting at the assembly instructions.

“I looked up his old company over breakfast,” I said, setting my laptop on the velvet couch cushion between us.

“A man named Greg posted a public review on the consumer forum three days ago.”

Sarah leaned over the pine rail to look at the bright screen.

The review was seven lines long, typed all in capital letters by someone who called himself a former account manager at the firm in Milwaukee.

It said David had mishandled four hundred thousand dollars in client retention funds before he left suddenly in June, leaving six junior employees without the severance pay they’d been promised.

“That’s six months of silence he owes you an explanation for,” Sarah said, tapping her fingernail on the plastic case.

“He told me he left that firm because all the regional travel was wearing him out,” I whispered.

“Check the joint checking account, right now,” Sarah said, dropping her screwdriver onto the rug with a dull thud.

I logged into the online banking site and typed our seven-digit account code into the box.