After I completed my paperwork, I propped my feet up on my desk and kicked back with the latest issue of Weird Tales magazine. I was in such a giddy mood, I couldn’t keep my mind on what I was reading. I set the magazine aside and played a few games of tic-tac-toe. That didn’t hold my attention long neither. I was so antsy, I could barely sit still. I couldn’t wait for the day to end so I could go back to Betty Jean’s house.

I had already loaded up my car with several boxes of stuff she’d requested. Gathering it was always a challenge. I had to swipe a thing or two throughout the day every time Buddy and Sadie got busy. I always parked behind the store on the days I took merchandise. Nobody had any reason to be snooping around my car, peeping in the windows. But I covered the boxes on the back seat with a tarp anyway.

Before I could haul the last two of the five boxes from my office to my car today, I had to stuff all of today’s profits in a brown paper bag. I done this every Friday after I closed the store before I delivered it to Mac and Millie. My in-laws didn’t trust banks to handle all their money. They only deposited enough to cover household bills and a few miscellaneous expenses. Since they’d put me in charge of bookkeeping, too, they had opened a separate checking account in my name only to cover employee paychecks and everything else related to the store. Long before I entered the picture, they had been storing their money in cardboard boxes that they kept in a windowless pantry behind their kitchen. Right there with canned goods, fishing poles, and other knickknacks. Like a lot of the elderly folks in our neighborhood, they didn’t always lock the doors to their house. They trusted everybody and had even gave me a key. So, if they wasn’t home on a Friday when I got there, I let myself in and put the money bags in the pantry.