Chapter 6: The Store on the County Road

Lyle Kenyon had my phone in his coat pocket and the feed store's copy of the note in his hand, and he smiled at me over both of them.

I stood on the other side of the counter with my checkbook open and nothing left to trade.

Garner locked the front door behind us and kept his keys in his fist.

"I already told Lyle," he said. "I won't swear to anything in front of a bank officer."

I set the checkbook flat on the counter.

"You don't have to swear," I said. "You just have to say what you saw."

Garner looked at the door, then at me.

"That's swearing, Miss Gentry."

I opened the checkbook to the balance and wrote the number I had been saving since the first foal dropped.

Nine thousand eight hundred dollars.

My hand shook on the last zero.

I tore the check out and pushed it across the counter.

"This is the season's foal money," I said. "It's yours if you'll stand in that room and tell the truth."

Garner picked it up and folded it into his shirt pocket.

"I'll speak," he said, "if the store's copy is in my hand when I do it. Not yours."

The bell over the door rang.

Lyle came in from the lot with Dessa a step behind him.

He laid two papers on the counter without touching mine.

The store lease. The assignment of the note.

"Morning, Garner," Lyle said. "I hate to do business before coffee."

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