I asked to see the manager and a balding man with sweaty palms and enormous spectacles came to greet me. After I mentioned I had a delicate matter to discuss with him, he hesitantly led me to his office. He was the nervous kind, the type of person who doesn’t seem to know what to do with his hands. One moment he was rolling a fountain pen on his desk and the next he was shuffling papers from one pile to another.

I introduced myself as Don Armand Lafont’s son-in-law. The news in Vinces traveled more quickly than I thought as he’d already heard about me. He stuttered his condolences on my wife’s passing.

“How c-c-can I help you, Señor Balboa?” Through the glasses, his eyes looked monumental.

“I trust this conversation will remain private, Señor Aguirre?” I said. It was remarkable how I was learning to control the low register of my voice.

“Of c-c-course.”

How on earth had this nervous little man climbed to such an important position in the company?

I removed the check from my pocket and placed it on the surface of the desk. For a moment, I hesitated. What if this man was friends with whoever had tried to kill me?

He looked at the check.

“Mr. Aguirre, I found this check among my wife’s belongings. I know it’s postdated to May and I don’t intend to cash it, but I’d like to know whose signature this is.”

Aguirre removed a magnifying glass from his top drawer and examined the penmanship for a moment.

“Mr. Balboa, this is Mr. Lafont’s signature.”

“Mr. Lafont? As in Armand Lafont?”

“The very same one.”

“Are you sure?”

“Sir, I would r-r-recognize his signature anywhere. He was one of our most important clients for over t-t-t-twenty years.”

This made no sense. “Is there anyone else who can sign on this account?”

“I believe Don Martin Sabater has a power of attorney given to him by Mr. Lafont for when he could no longer make business decisions, but Mr. Sabater can sign with his own name.”

So, he wouldn’t need to sign under my father’s name. Unless he didn’t want anyone else to know he was the one signing. But this didn’t make him any more suspicious than my sisters. The only thing this proved was that someone had either forged the signature or that my father himself had signed a blank check and this person had stolen it. In either case, someone else was behind all of this because it made no sense that my father would send someone to kill me after making me his heir.