Forbidden Guest House novel · Chapter 4 of 32

Chapter 4: Thirty Days

I took the receipt out of Leif's hand before I thought about it.

Then I gave it right back, because it was his.

"Forty thousand dollars," I said. "In 1981."

"His whole life savings," Leif said. "He was going to marry her that afternoon."

Hedy got out of the truck.

"Gran's lawyer is two doors down," she said. "He's ninety and he still owes her for a pie."

The lawyer's office was above the hardware store.

He had hair in his ears and a framed photo of himself shaking hands with a walleye.

He read the receipt, the ledger page and the purchase agreement with a magnifying glass.

Then he put the glass down.

"Proving a forgery takes months. Handwriting experts. Depositions. Money."

"How much money?"

"More than you've got, if you're three payments behind."

"And the receipt?"

"The receipt proves a man handed a teller cash in 1981. It doesn't prove the bank lost it." He tapped the paper. "For that you need the bank's own ledger from July 1981. Their books. Not yours."

"They're not going to hand me their books."

"No," he said. "They're not."

He walked us to the stairs.

"Your grandmother was the most stubborn woman in Itasca County," he told me. "Don't let me down."

We drove home without the radio.

At the inn I got out a legal pad and sat at the kitchen table.

Hedy put a cup of coffee at my elbow.

Leif sat across from me and didn't say anything for ten minutes.

I liked him for that.

I wrote at the top: THIRTY DAYS.

Under it: $14,100.

Under that: Every room full in June. Raise the dinner price. Sell the old pontoon.

"Sell the pontoon," Hedy said, reading upside down. "Your Gran's ghost will drown you."

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