“I don’t need five hundred dollars, Claire,” he said, letting his glasses drop back down on his chest.

“I need somebody with common sense who knows how to put eighteen years of county land deeds in chronological order.”

I looked past his shoulder at the nine cardboard archive boxes stacked three deep along his back wall, each labeled in faded black marker.

“Three afternoons a week,” I said.

“Two o’clock until five.”

“Deal,” Marcus said, sliding a red ballpoint pen out of his shirt pocket.

“Now let’s look at what Arthur Vance signed before he locked the front doors of Whitman Engineering.”