“There has to be a safe,” David muttered, kneeling to tap his knuckles against the wooden floorboards near the closet wall. “Or a lockbox she kept hidden from the county tax office.”
I left him kneeling on the floor and drove down to the Millersburg Savings and Loan on Market Street.
The lobby smelled of wet wool and floor wax, the linoleum slick from the gray slush tracked in by the morning farmers.
“I can only show you the final balance on the estate account, Clara,” the teller, a woman named Sarah who had gone to school with my mother, said as she tapped her keyboard.
“I just need to know the final number,” I said, leaning against the cold marble counter.
She turned the small gray monitor slightly toward me, pointing a manicured finger at the bottom line of the statement.
The balance read exactly twelve dollars and forty cents.
“Was there a transfer?” I asked, my voice rising slightly at the end of the sentence? “A large check written before she went into the hospital?”
