Richard was upstairs in the hallway, talking loudly on his cell phone to some golf buddy.

His brown leather briefcase sat wide open on the dining room sideboard.

A pile of unopened mail and printed pages spilled out of the middle divider.

I went over to the heavy wooden cabinet and looked down at the pile.

The top envelope was a fifty-dollar monthly utility bill addressed to me.

Under it lay a thick, yellowed real estate abstract file with a frayed cardboard edge.

I passed over the old abstract file and looked at the sheet of printer paper lying right next to it.