Daniel Opened His Notebook While I Cut The Red Thread

I left the door locked until I had called the office number on Aaron's old card and checked the man outside.

He waited without taking offense.

"Daniel Okafor," he said when I let him in. "I'm a federal investigator. I worked with your husband."

He was forty, Nigerian American, with close black curls and a faint crease between his brows. He wore a navy coat with one loose button.

I noticed the button because loose things eventually fell off.

"Did you know Vincent would come?"

"No."

"Did Aaron think you could keep us safe?"

Daniel laid his closed notebook on the folding table.

"He expected to have more time. So did we."

I waited for an excuse. None came.

"What did you get from his laptop?"

"Some records. Missing sections. His statements gave us leads, but we still needed records from outside Bell Quay."

"So Vincent thinks the case died with him."

"I can't tell you what Vincent thinks."

I liked that answer less than a promise. I trusted it more.

Daniel asked before recording our talk. I agreed. I showed him my photographs, the truck plate, and the paper I had been ordered to accept.

He wrote down the exact words about my business.

"Was the $84,600 ever raised with you before today?"

"Never. Aaron paid bills on Tuesdays. If we owed that much, Tuesday would have looked different."

He almost smiled.

I made tea in paper cups. He left his untouched while I spoke.

When I reached the part about the reading glasses, my voice stopped working.

Daniel moved the tissue box within reach. He looked at the dryer doors instead of watching me cry.

The machines had gone quiet. Without them, I could hear buses on Ferry Street and rain tapping the vent hood.

"Aaron told me something," I said. "The night he fixed that book."

Daniel followed my eyes.

"What book?"

"The lonely socks. He said if anybody took the matched set, I should keep the things still waiting for their other half."

I had been tired that night. We had argued over whether he needed another lawyer. I had heard a sad joke about us.

Now I lifted the binder.

It weighed more than socks should.

"Don't pull anything apart yet," Daniel said. "Can I photograph it where it sits?"

He took pictures. He asked who had handled it since Aaron's repair.

"Me. Customers. Mrs. Alvarez. It's a sock book."

"That's an answer we can record. It doesn't make it useless."

The red thread crossed the spine in rough little bars. Behind the last sleeve, I found a knot where no knot was needed.

"May I?" I asked.

Daniel switched on his camera.

I used the small scissors from my hemming kit.

The spine loosened. Each stiff divider was really a folded pocket, sealed along its inner edge. Inside lay thin sheets covered in Aaron's tight numbers.

Thirty-two sheets. Sixty-four written sides.

At the top of the first was a date. Under it were vendor names, bank account endings, check numbers, and columns marked Billed, Paid, and Returned.

"His ledger," I said.

I knew the handwriting. His seven always had a slash through it.

On the third sheet, I saw Rinse And Return.

My shop had supposedly received $4,700 for linen cleaning.

We did not have a linen contract.

"That money never came to me."

"We'll check the bank records," Daniel said.

"You believe me?"

"I believe we need to prove it."

There was a short note tucked into the back pocket.

Grace owns this book. I kept these records myself. She did not know what Bell Quay was doing.

Below his signature was a line that hurt more than any apology.

I should have told her sooner.

Daniel waited while I read it twice.

"Was he clearing himself?" I asked.

"Maybe he was trying to tell the whole truth. Some of these entries may hurt him too."

I looked at my husband's slash through a seven beside $12,700.

"Then keep those pages with the others."

We counted every sheet before Daniel placed them in evidence sleeves. He gave me a signed receipt with a property number. I photographed that too.

"The ledger gives us a map," he said. "We still have to walk the streets."

Outside, a car idled across from the shop. Daniel called a colleague and stayed until it moved away. Later, he helped arrange a safe place for me to sleep through the office handling the case.

Before we left, I checked the mail slot.

An envelope lay against the door, dry despite the rain.

Inside was a demand for $84,600, due in ten days.

At the bottom, beneath my husband's name, someone had signed mine.