Halfway down the bin was a handful of shredded white paper strips, sliced into thin vertical ribbons by our home desk shredder.

Far under those ribbons, jammed into the bottom corner of the bin, was a single whole sheet of paper that had been crushed into a tight ball.

I carefully unrolled it and pressed it flat on the hood of my car.

It was a carbon-copy receipt from the county recorder’s office downtown, with a sharp red clerk’s stamp dated four days earlier.

The total printed at the bottom was four hundred dollars, marked paid in full in cash.