My mother-in-law put her hands on me, then drove me to the emergency room like she was doing me a favor and told the triage nurse I was clumsy. What she did not know is that I spent nine years as a forensic accountant, and that six months earlier I had found the hole in her books — and that the account she had come to my apartment about was one of the places the money sat.

That is panic, and panic in a person who has never once in her life had a consequence is an extremely dangerous thing to be alone in a kitchen with.

PART 4

There was a bookkeeper before me.

Her name is Ines Bardo. She is forty-seven, she worked at Strand Mechanical for nine years, and in the autumn four years ago she took a printout to Verna’s office and asked about Corvin Ducting.

Eleven days later she was dismissed for theft.

There was an accusation about a company card. There was an internal investigation that lasted four days and was conducted by Verna. There was a settlement with a confidentiality clause, and Ines Bardo signed it, and took the money.

I found her through a former colleague and I drove out to see her in October.

She would not let me in the house at first. We stood on the step for about ten minutes.

And the first thing she said to me, before anything else, was: I took it.

She said it like a confession she had been carrying around for four years waiting for somebody to hand it to.

She had two kids, one of them fourteen, and no job, and an accusation of theft attached to her name in a small county where everybody hires by reputation. She said her lawyer told her the settlement was the best outcome available and that fighting it would take three years she did not have.

She said: I know what I should have done. Don’t tell me. I’ve had four years of telling myself.