When he’d first been elected to the council ten years ago, Montgomery Town Hall had been little more than a doublewide trailer with pre-fab additions to the front and back. Although it had since moved to a real building adjacent to the library, it was still pretty bare bones, even for a rural municipal building, and the mayor’s office was little bigger than a walk-in closet, its only furnishings a dented metal filing cabinet and a beat-up metal desk. On the wall to the right of the desk was an Arizona Highways calendar with the dates of council meetings circled in red.

Derrick usually came in here with his laptop an hour or so before each meeting to look over items on the agenda and do whatever research might be required. He was often the only person in the building, but tonight, although he’d arrived even earlier than usual, Roy Freeman was already there, waiting for him.

Uh oh, he thought. Roy never arrived early.

“What’s up?” he asked, opening the door to his office.

The other councilman held up his phone. “Did you see the new email from Vince?”

Derrick shook his head.

“You’d better read it.”

Derrick switched on the lights and put his laptop on the desk, opening it and turning it on. “What’s the gist of it?”

“Read it.”

He didn’t want to. Montgomery had been operating under a deficit ever since the start of the last recession, and though revenue had ticked up as the economy improved, they were currently in such a deep hole that it would be nearly a decade until they were once again solvent. And that was if good economic times continued. The finance director had always been the voice of doom and gloom, and his emails inevitably involved bad news accompanied by dire predictions. Derrick would have preferred to ignore the man, but he was usually right, and Roy’s early presence told him this was probably a curveball he was not going to like.

He found the email, clicked on it.

No.

Although there’d been no prior announcement of the fact, Vince’s email informed them that the town’s public debt was now being held by The First People’s Bank. In an effort to lower interest payments, the finance director had transferred the debt, through a complex series of transactions and arrangements, to the bank, which, according to Vince’s email, gave First People’s a say in the town’s budgeting process, specifically veto power over expenditures that might adversely affect the payment schedule.

“What do you think that means?” Roy asked when Derrick looked up from the laptop. “Sounds to me like we won’t be able to do our job.”