I gave a brief but—I hoped—moving picture of Mrs. Frizell’s plight. “She used to be a customer here, but sometime in February she moved her account to U.S. Metropolitan. I can’t believe she’s got much. But I also can’t believe the pair who leaped in to act as her guardians are neighborhood angels. I’m not asking you to tell me what her assets were—I know you can’t do that. But could you tell me if she gave any reason for making the move?”

Alma fixed bright, merry eyes on me for a minute. “What’s your interest in this, Vic?”

I spread my hands. “Call it neighborly. Her world rotated around her dogs. I agreed to help look after them when she went into the hospital, but came home from a trip out of town to find they’d been put to sleep. It keeps me suspicious of the people who did it.”

She pursed her lips, debating the matter with herself. Finally she turned to the computer on the far side of her desk and played around with the keys. I would have given a week’s pay—from a good week—to read the screen. After a few minutes of tinkering she got up with a brief “I’ll be right back,” and headed for the rear of the bank.

When Alma had disappeared into an office built into the back of the lobby, my baser instincts overcame me: I got up and looked at the screen. The only thing visible was an opening menu. Untrusting woman.

Alma spent quite a while pitching my case to her boss. After ten minutes or so the phone rang on one of the other loan officers’ desks. The woman spoke briefly, then got up and disappeared into the back office as well. I finished the coffee Barbara had given me, memorized an upbeat pamphlet on auto financing, found an ornate ladies’ room in the basement of the bank, and still had time to study a home mortgage brochure before the two women emerged.

They stopped at the second officer’s desk long enough for her to pull a file from her cabinet. Alma brought her over to me, introducing her as Sylvia Wolfe. Ms. Wolfe, a tall, spare woman of about sixty, wore a tidy gray cardigan suit more in keeping with a bank than Alma’s flamboyance. She shook hands briskly, but let Alma do the talking.

“We had a long talk with Mr. Struthers about what we could tell you. Sylvia came along because she actually worked with Mrs. Frizell. Your neighbor had been a customer here since 1926 and it was a blow to lose her. Mr. Struthers decided we could show you the letter Mrs. Frizell sent us, but of course, Sylvia can’t let you look at any of her financial records.”