“You have some currency in your wallet that perhaps we need to take a look at,” I said.

“Pardon me?”

“You were going to give the clerk a hundred-dollar bill. Could I see it?”

She smiled. “Sure,” she said, and took her wallet from her purse. “Actually I have two of them. Are you looking for counterfeit money or something?”

“We let the Feds worry about stuff like that,” I said, taking the bills from her hand. “Where’d you get these?”

“At a casino in Biloxi,” she replied.

“You mind if I write down the serial numbers?” I said. “While we’re at this, can you give me some identification?”

She handed me a Florida driver’s license. “I’m living in Lafayette now. I’m not in trouble, am I?” she said. Her face was tilted up into mine, her eyes radiantly blue, sincere, not blinking.

“Can you show me something with your Lafayette address on it? I’d also like a phone number in case we have to reach you.”

“I don’t know what’s going on,” she said.

“Sometimes a low-yield explosive device containing marker dye is placed among bundles of currency that are stolen from banks or armored cars. When the device goes off, the currency is stained so the robbers can’t use it.”

“So maybe my hundreds are stolen?” she said, handing me a receipt for a twenty-three-hundred deposit on an apartment in Lafayette.

“Probably not. Dye ends up on money all the time. Your name is Trish Klein?”

“Yes, I just moved here from Miami.”

“Ever hear of a guy named Dallas Klein?”

Her eyes held on mine, her thoughts, whatever they were, impossible to read. “Why do you ask?” she said.

“I knew a guy by that name who flew a chopper in Vietnam. He was from Miami.”

“That was my father,” she said.

I finished copying her address and phone number off her deposit receipt and handed it back to her. “It’s nice to meet you, Ms. Klein. Your dad was a stand-up guy,” I said.