Martha, a teller I had known since our boys were in kindergarten, smiled from behind the high mahogany counter.
“Good morning, Mrs. Lane,” she said, her fingers already hovering over the keyboard. “Just the usual deposit today?”
“Actually, Martha, I need a balance statement for the joint savings account,” I said.
She tapped the keys, the steady clicking the only noise in the quiet lobby. Then her hand stopped, her wrist staying completely still.
“Is something wrong?” I asked.
“Let me get the manager, Helen,” she said in a quiet voice, her eyes darting toward the glass offices at the back.
“I just need the balance, Martha. I do not need the manager for a balance.”
“The balance is twelve hundred dollars,” Martha said, keeping her eyes fixed on the lower corner of her screen.
“That is impossible,” I said. “We had over seventy-one thousand dollars in that account yesterday morning.”
Martha turned the screen slightly toward me, her face pale. “There was a wire transfer yesterday afternoon at four o’clock.”
“Who authorized the transfer of the seventy thousand dollars?” I asked.
“It was completed online with the primary secure token,” Martha said, looking down at her desk. “It went to a corporate holding account.”
I stood there, the warm air from the vent blowing against my ankles.
“Can you print the authorization receipt?” I asked.
“I can request it from the central office,” Martha said, “but the digital signature audit takes forty-eight hours to clear the archive.”
The coffee shop on Chain Bridge Road was nearly empty at two o’clock. David sat in the corner booth, two mugs of lukewarm black coffee sitting between us. He had his reading glasses pushed up on his forehead as he flipped through the Hollis Transit Systems annual report.
“The numbers do not match the old ledger sheets you showed me five years ago, Helen,” David said.
“In what way?” I asked.
“The first three pages of the historical summary are missing,” he said, pointing to the bottom of the glossy page. “It starts with year three, after the county contract was signed.”
“We founded it in my father’s garage,” I said. “The incorporation date should be listed as October twelfth.”
“It is not here,” David said, sliding the report back to me. “According to this, the company was registered two years later in Delaware.”
“Adrian must have filed the transition papers himself,” I said.
“If he did, he did it without listing your original share,” David said, leaning closer. “You need to find the blue binder from the safe.”
“Adrian changed the combination last month,” I said.
David took a slow sip of his coffee and looked out the window. “Then you have a problem.”
“What kind of problem?” I asked.
“If those original papers are gone, you cannot prove you owned a single share before the merger,” David said.
The garage smelled of damp earth and old motor oil. I carried a flashlight, the beam cutting through the dark as I walked past the stack of winter tires. In the corner, behind the lawnmower, stood the green metal filing cabinet we used when the business was just three vans and a single telephone line.
The bottom drawer was stuck, the metal rusted from the Virginia humidity. I pulled hard, the rollers screeching against the tracks.
