“He gasses up his truck at the Cenex in Elk Mound around eight,” I said.

Patricia gave a single nod.

“Then you be standing at that pump, Amy.

You ask him what he’s got in writing.”

I picked the deposit slip up off her desk and tucked it safely into the back of Arvid’s ledger.

When I turned into the farm driveway twenty minutes later, a cloud of dry dust was hanging over the south fence line.

Brad’s red pickup was idling right by my mailbox at the end of the road.