I also requested an independent review of any departmental contact with the Bellamy family during the previous decade.

I did not want anyone to discover a conflict later that we should have disclosed ourselves.

My deputy chief, Andrea Sloan, told me the request would create additional paperwork.

I said that was better than creating additional doubt.

She agreed and took responsibility for the review.

At home, I found my father’s old work gloves on a shelf above the garage bench.

One thumb was stiff with dried paint.

I put them on and tried to remember the last time I had seen him wearing them.

For years, I had treated the Mustang as a memorial that needed protecting.

Now I understood that protecting his memory might require accepting what the evidence revealed.

That possibility frightened me more than Karen’s tow truck ever had.

Chapter 30: The Blue Ledger

The blue ledger turned up in a place that had nothing to do with the Mustang.

A retired accountant named Samuel Reed contacted Lena after reading the newspaper report.

Samuel had worked for a title processing company that handled paperwork for several local dealerships in the early 2000s.

He remembered a dispute involving Victor Bellamy and a missing batch of transaction records.

The company had closed after its owner retired.

Samuel had kept a box of personal work notes because he had been asked to testify in a civil case that never reached trial.

Inside the box was a small blue notebook with numbered pages.

Samuel said he did not know whether it was the ledger investigators wanted.

He remembered receiving it from a frightened young mechanic who asked him to check several entries.

The mechanic never returned for it.

Samuel had placed it in the box and forgotten it.

Lena arranged for the notebook to be collected and documented.

The first examination found entries that corresponded with the payments described in the copies from my Mustang.

Several names appeared beside vehicle identification numbers.

Some entries contained initials rather than names.

A notation beside one transfer read VB approved.

Another referred to a payment made through a company associated with Victor.

The notebook also contained a page that had been partially torn away.

Its remaining edge matched the position where Schedule C should have been referenced.

The examiner cautioned that physical resemblance did not establish who removed the page.

But the discovery brought the documents closer together.