“Don’t say I didn’t try to give you two grand out of the goodness of my heart.”

He walked to his truck, climbed in, and drove off down the lane.

By three that afternoon I was sitting across from Patricia Haugen in her law office on Main Street in Menomonie.

Patricia slipped off her reading glasses and folded them neatly on top of her case file.

I set the folded Royal Credit Union deposit slip flat on her desk blotter.

Patricia lifted it with two fingers and held it under her desk lamp to read the date and account number.