Eighteen dollars and forty cents, and my daughter had come up the porch steps in the middle of the night with no coat on.

“Where did the money go?”

“He said he moved it into the house account.

I asked for a printout in October, and he told me the printer was out of ink.”

I folded the receipt and put it in my shirt pocket.

“Get your shoes.

We’re seeing Arthur at eleven.”

Arthur Vance, the county clerk, met us in the bank lobby at a quarter past eleven with his hat in his hand and his spectacles wrapped in a silk handkerchief.