I let him in. He wouldn't sit. He stood in my kitchen and turned the folder over and over in his hands.
"I need to give you something," he said. "And I need to tell you something first, and I want you to understand I'm not saying it to make myself look better. I'm saying it because it's true." He took a breath. "I've been treasurer for eleven years. For the last two years, I signed whatever Candace put in front of me. Checks. Transfers. She'd bring them to my house with the invoices clipped on top. She was so organized. She always had everything. I'm seventy-four. My wife was sick for a long time. It was easy to just sign."
He put the folder on the counter and opened it. Bank statements for the Heron Bend reserve account. Two years of them. Someone, Thad, presumably, had gone through them with a yellow highlighter. Every highlighted line was a payment to the same vendor. Lakeshore Paving and Seal LLC. Eleven payments, all between three thousand and five thousand dollars, all under the amount that would have required a full board vote. They added up to forty-six thousand eight hundred dollars.
"There's no such company," Thad said. "I looked it up after your question in April. It's registered to a post office box in Delaware County. The pool money was supposed to come out of that account. The pool money's gone. That's why we had the special assessment." He took off his glasses and pressed his fingers into his eyes. "I knew in April. I didn't know for sure, but I knew. And I didn't say anything, because I'd signed all of it, and I thought, if it comes out, it's my name on every check. And then you filed to run for my seat."
I stood very still.
"And then the letters started," I said.
"And then the letters started," Thad said. "Eleven days later. And she told me at the September meeting, before it started, in the parking lot, that once you were delinquent you couldn't run, and then it would just be her and Vince choosing the next treasurer, and everything could get, as she put it, sorted out quietly." He put his glasses back on. "I didn't raise my hand that night. That's the bravest thing I've done in two years. Isn't that pathetic?"
"Thad," I said. "Why are you giving this to me? You should give this to the sheriff."
"I did, this afternoon," he said. "I gave the same folder to a Detective Amberley, with my lawyer present. He told me I might need a better lawyer." He laughed, a thin dry sound. "I just thought you should see it from me. Before you heard it from someone else. You were right. About everything. I'm sorry I made you be right by yourself."
After he left I sat at my kitchen table with Rook's head on my foot and thought about Candace on my porch that very first week, stepping back so fast she almost fell off it, her hand going to the scar on her arm. I thought about Curb Appeal Corner and the basketball hoop and every home sale in Heron Bend for ten years. I thought about the special assessment and the round numbers and my records request, sitting in someone's inbox all summer like a lit match.