“How much money did Clara actually take from the estate?” Noah asked, his voice low and tight.
“I can’t tell you that,” the clerk said, sliding Noah’s license back across the counter.
By six o’clock, the wind had grown stronger, whistling through the gaps in the wooden siding of Noah’s garage behind his apartment. A single bare bulb hung from a black wire in the center of the ceiling, casting long, swaying shadows across the concrete floor.
Noah’s old sedan was parked inside with the hood propped open by a wooden broom handle. He was leaning over the engine bay, his face smudged with black grease as he worked a socket wrench against a rusted bolt on the alternator.
“She took the money, Noah,” I said, sitting on an overturned plastic bucket near the workbench. “That’s why she sealed the files. She didn’t want us to know there was a trust.”
