“Where’s his check book? Carry it with him?”

“It’s here.” She jumped up, went around to the front of his desk, and tried the top drawer. “Locked.”

I joined her, straightened out a wire clip, and with that and a blade of my knife fiddled the drawer open.

The girl took out a thin, flat First National Bank check book. The last used stub was marked $5,000. Nothing else. No name. No explanation.

“He went out with this check,” I said, “and was gone twenty minutes? Long enough to get to the bank and back?”

“It wouldn’t have taken him more than five minutes to get there.”

“Didn’t anything else happen before he wrote out the check? Think. Any messages? Letters? Phone calls?”