“He gave me a blue paper check,” Martha said.

“He told me to take it to the drive-through teller on Route 30.”

“Do you know the serial number on that subcontractor payout check?” Nathaniel asked.

“I don’t know,” Martha said, looking down at her coffee mug.

“I handed it straight through the window to pay for gas and food.”

Nathaniel looked at the four-hundred-dollar deduction on the ledger copy and felt the weight of his own failure to keep watch over Arthur’s sub-tier records.

At half past four, Nathaniel stood in the gravel driveway of his Strasburg lumber yard.