“I saw the heap of gray ash by the incinerator behind the hardware store,” I said.

Gene didn’t change his posture or look away.

“There’s sixty-five thousand dollars in leftover store equity that has to be cleared before the court closes the estate on November twenty-fourth.

I don’t need thirty-year-old paper records holding up a clean liquidation.”

I picked up the blue cashier’s check and held it under the booth light overhead.

In the bottom left corner, typed neatly on the memo line, were six words: final settlement of maternal claim.

“You wrote this check out of Frank’s identity account,” I said.