Every month, on the third, a transfer.
$3,800.
To something called KC Holdings.
Twelve months.
Forty-five thousand, six hundred dollars.
I went back further.
I called the bank again and asked for two years.
Twenty-four transfers.
Ninety-one thousand, two hundred dollars.
Gone.
I knew those initials.
I’d put them on his lunchbox in kindergarten.
Kyle Cole.
I sat there until the coffee went cold.
Then I did what I’d done thirty-four years of nights when a chart told me something I didn’t want to know.
I wrote it down.
Date. Amount. Running total.
On a legal pad, in block letters, so there’d be no misreading it later.
Not by me.
Not by anyone.
That Sunday, Kyle came to dinner wearing a new Swiss watch.
I’d never seen it before.
He sat in Ray’s spot and said grace.
Gene passed the potatoes.
And I said, “Kyle, what’s KC Holdings?”
PART 3
He didn’t drop the potatoes.
