“No,” Noah said.

I went back to Ruth with the dates, because it was the dates that would not sit still in my mind.

She ran a finger down the public index while I copied each one into my notebook.

The filing had been entered on the fourteenth.

The sale itself was not recorded until the seventeenth.

“The seventeenth,” I said.

“That is the date Keith gave me.

He told me he learned about the sale on the seventeenth.”