Fenway turned her head to Dez.
“Miss Chan,” Dez said, indicating Isabella, “thinks you want her to close the business today.”
“Only until we get everyone’s statements,” Fenway said.
“We have clients,” Isabella said, “and Tyra won’t be pleased if our customers can’t get to their storage units. Some of them have schedules. They’ve got other people depending on them.”
“We’ll get everyone out of here as soon as we can.” Fenway shot a look at Dez.
“I’ve already taken Ms. Chan’s statement,” Dez said. “She insisted on going first.”
The woman and man sitting on the blue plastic chairs looked up expectantly.
“So we should interview…” Fenway glanced at Dez.
“Hope Dunkelman,” the woman said.
“And George Pope,” the man added.
“We’re married,” Dunkelman hastened to add. “I didn’t take his name.”
“Then Mr. Mathis Jericho,” Dez said. “Maintenance and landscaping.”
“Gotcha.” Fenway glanced at Isabella, whose frown was directed right at Fenway. “Miss Chan, we appreciate the use of these offices for interviews. I’ll let you know if we need anything else.” She turned to Dez. “Sergeant Roubideaux, why don’t you take Ms. Dunkelman into Tyra’s office to interview her? I’ll talk to Mr. Pope in, uh...”
“We’ve got a break room in the back,” Isabella said.
“Can I go out and get some of my work done?” Mathis Jericho asked.
“Stay in the waiting room, if you don’t mind,” Fenway said. “We’ll be done shortly.”
A quick scan of Jericho’s face told Fenway that he did very much mind.
They needed photos. Fenway pulled her phone out, tapped the camera app on her phone, and quickly took pictures of all four of them: Isabella, Mathis, Hope, and George.
Mathis’s frown deepened, but he said nothing.
George Pope stood. Isabella pointed through a doorway to the break room on the left side that Fenway had first assumed led to a closet or a bathroom.
She opened the door, holding it for George Pope. The tiny break room held only a water cooler, a vending machine, and a rectangular café-style table with two chairs pushed against the opposite wall. Fenway pressed her lips together. It would do.
She pulled out the chair farthest from the door and motioned for Pope to sit.
“We were headed to the Estancia Harbor Festival,” Pope said as he sat down.
“Who?” Fenway pulled out her notebook and pen from her purse, then sat across from him.
“Oh, sorry. I figured you’d want to know why we were here.” He folded his hands together. “Tyra and Hope and me. We wanted to go to the Harbor Festival before the tropical storm comes through. Taking the afternoon off.”
“I see.” Fenway opened the notebook, turned the pages until she found a blank sheet, and wrote Harbor Festival. “You can take the afternoon off like that?”
“Hope’s a nurse at St. Vincent’s. She doesn’t work Tuesdays. Me, I own a custom screen-printing business over on Thirty-Fifth Street. I can take off whenever I want.”
“How do you know Tyra Cahill?”
“We’ve been friends since high school,” Pope said. “Hope and me, we started dating junior year, and Hope and Tyra were best friends. She and I married once I got my contractor’s license and she finished at Fresno State.”
“Hope Pope,” Fenway said absentmindedly.
George Pope laughed, his light brown mustache and goatee quivering. “Yeah, I think that’s one reason it took so long for her to say yes. I had to propose three times. My father was angry that she didn’t take my name, but I wasn’t even going to suggest it.”
Fenway herself didn’t think she’d take her husband’s name, should she ever decide to marry. A flash in her head: Fenway McVie. The thought caught her off guard. She cleared her throat. “So the three of you have been friends since high school?”
“Just got the invitation for our twentieth reunion.”
“How about Seth?”
“Tyra met him at Fresno State. His family lived up in Sacramento.”
“They get married right after college?”
“Not till Seth got a job in P.Q. about ten years ago.”
“So the three of you became the four of you.”
Pope pressed his lips together.
“What is it?”
He blinked, looked at Fenway, and smiled. “Yes. All four of us started hanging out when Tyra and Seth started dating. He didn’t really know anyone else in the area.”
“And the four of you still hang out?”
“Well, until Seth started disappearing. He’d work late, get home to Tyra at five in the morning, that kind of thing.”
“When did that start?”
“A few years ago. About five years after they were married.”
“What did you think of that?”
Pope frowned. “Tyra’s been my—my wife’s best friend for over two decades. He cheated on her—for years. Of course, I didn’t like that, but I hardly saw him over the last eight or nine months. I tried not to think about him.”
Fenway nodded. “All right. So where were you last night?”
“Uh—home. Hope and I went to dinner around seven. La Cucina Urbana.”
Fenway blanched. Terrible food—bland, no spice, no personality. She wrote it down. “When did you get home?”
“I didn’t pay attention to the time. Maybe eight thirty. We sat on the sofa, watched a little TV.”
“Then you went to bed?”
“Oh—no. Hope got a call while we were watching TV. Maybe nine thirty, nine forty-five.”
“Who called?”
“Tyra.” Pope swallowed hard and looked down at his folded hands. “Seth had promised to pick up his things, but he showed up in his Corvette, yelled at Tyra, and drove off.” He looked up at Fenway, a glint in his eye. “I wouldn’t be surprised if he’d been drinking.”
Fenway tapped the end of her pen on her bottom lip. “They fought.”
“Yeah—but look, they’d fought before. He’s a real piece of work.”
“Right. You’re on Team Tyra.”
Pope shifted in his chair. “Uh—I mean, look, you can ask anyone. I think the world of Tyra. Best friend Hope could have. The kind of friend who’d help you b—” He paused.
“Bury a body?” Fenway asked.
“That’s just a figure of speech,” George said. “I mean, they were real close. Tyra was good to her.”
“You know Tyra well?”
“Course I do. Hope and Tyra were roommates for a couple of years before we got married. I had to pass the test.” He puffed his chest out. “I was an idiot in high school, but by the time Hope finished college, I’d grown out of my stupidity.” He chuckled. “Well, I guess if you ask Hope, she’d say I still have a little of it left.” George sighed deeply, then rubbed his eyes with the thumb and forefinger of his right hand. “I’m not nearly as stupid as Seth, though. He didn’t treat Tyra very well. I’m glad they got divorced.”
Fenway kept silent. Was there more to the story?
Pope hesitated for a moment, then the words rushed out. “He wasn’t a good guy. Not just that he cheated on her—I mean, that was bad enough. No, I mean, hiding things from her.”
“Besides his mistress.”
“Yeah. Getting mixed up in some—” Pope dropped his eyes to the table again.
“In what?”
Pope raised his head and stared at the ceiling. “Tyra didn’t have anything to do with his shady activities, all right? But them being married…”
Fenway nodded. Pope didn’t want to get his friend in trouble. Fenway had to tread carefully. “This afternoon, we found evidence of a squatter in one of the storage units. Tyra told me she thought Seth would take care of that. Do you know whether this squatter is involved with Seth’s ‘shady activities,’ as you put it?”
Pope scrunched up his nose. “Look, I’ve heard things, but I don’t know anything for sure.”
“What did you hear?”
He hesitated. “Drugs.”
Fenway nodded, unsurprised. “He was using?”
“Uh—he was storing them. Here.”
“Oh. How long has this been going on?”
Pope shrugged. “Just a rumor I heard. Maybe I shouldn’t have said anything.”
“Right.” Fenway studied his face. How much did he know? Maybe nothing. “So what happened after Tyra called?”
“She was upset,” Pope said. “Hope went to pick her up.”
Probably had been drinking, too, though Pope probably didn’t want to mention that. Fenway didn’t press the issue. “What time was this?”
“About, I don’t know, nine fifteen, nine thirty.” He pressed his lips together. “You know, I think it was closer to ten.”
“And when did they get back?”
“I guess about eleven thirty.”
Fenway raised her eyebrows.
“We live by Prospero Park. Tyra’s only a fifteen-minute drive away, but Hope figured she’d need to stay with her a while before bringing her to our place. Like I said, Tyra was pretty upset.”
“Did she stay overnight?”
“Yeah. Hope convinced her to pack a bag and come stay with us. The house she shared with Seth has some terrible memories.”
“You didn’t go with your wife?”
“We’ve been friends for almost twenty-five years, but sometimes they need girl time. Especially through the divorce.” He gave Fenway a sad smile. “I’m sure they had a few unkind words to say about Seth. Maybe about men in general. I shouldn’t be there for that.”
“And what happened after Hope and Tyra arrived?”
“I came out to the living room, and we all had a few glasses of wine. Tyra calmed down enough to go to sleep in our guest room. We were all in bed by one.”
“She didn’t leave after that?”
Pope shook his head. “I’m a light sleeper. If she’d left, I’d have woken up.”
Fenway tapped her pen on the table. She’d have to research whether Hope was at Tyra’s house for that long. Could Tyra have murdered her ex in the fifteen minutes it took for Hope to drive to her house? More importantly, if Tyra and Hope were really the kind of friends who’d help each other bury a body, would Hope lie in order to give Tyra an alibi?
If Fenway had to, she could track the phones of both Tyra and Hope. She’d have to apply for a warrant, so she’d need to find enough evidence to convince a judge.
Pope shifted in his seat.
“All right,” Fenway said, “that’s all the questions I have for now. Can I get your contact information and address if I have more questions?”
“Of course.”
Fenway handed Pope her pen, turned her notebook to a blank page, and pushed it across the small table. Pope wrote his phone number, email address, and mailing address.
They stood, and Pope opened the door and held it for Fenway. Dez and Hope Dunkelman were waiting in the office, and Mathis Jericho sat on the stool behind the workstation, his arms folded.
“Got everything you need?” Dez asked.
Fenway nodded.
Dez nodded at Dunkelman and Pope. “Thank you for your statements. You can go.”
“I hope we were helpful,” Dunkelman said.
“And I hope you catch whoever did this,” added Pope.
As they hurried out the door, Dez stepped toward Fenway, away from Mathis, and lowered her voice. “Where’s the ex-wife?”
“Lawyered up,” Fenway murmured.
Dez raised her eyebrows. “Think she’s involved?”
“Not sure yet. I thought she’d be forthcoming until she wasn’t.” Fenway set her mouth in a line. “What did Ms. Dunkelman say?”
Dez hooked her thumb over her shoulder at the closing door. “She swore up and down that Tyra Cahill stayed with her all night. She went to Tyra’s house around nine forty-five, calmed her down, brought her back to her house.”
“Pretty much what Mr. Pope said, too. Then they all had some wine and went to bed.”
“Does that track with what the ex-wife said?”
Fenway bobbed her head diagonally. “She didn’t mention spending the night at her friends’ house, but she did tell me Seth stopped by at nine last night.” Fenway stopped—did Ms. Cahill actually say nine?
“A lot depends on time of death. If the timing is below—what, eighteen hours? Then she’s got an alibi.”
Fenway didn’t mention her doubts about the validity of Hope providing an alibi. Instead, she pulled out her phone and turned to Mathis, still sitting behind the counter. “Okay, we take your statement, then we can get this business open again.” Then Fenway paused. “Where’s Isabella?”
Mathis pointed through the office window to the front of the building. “Meeting customers at the gate. Telling them to come back once you’re all finished.”
Fenway nodded and appraised Mathis for the first time. The young man had a few days’ worth of stubble on his face and a rumpled navy blue polo shirt. He wore his straight light brown hair in a Beatles mop, except for a cowlick at the top of his head where a lock of his hair puffed up about an inch. His bloodshot eyes showed he’d likely had a rough night and not much sleep.
Fenway flipped the notebook to a blank page.
“Name?”
“Mathis Jericho.”
“And you work here at Cahill Warehouse Storage.”
“Yeah.”
“For how long?” Dez asked.
He looked down at the counter and tapped his foot on the rail of the stool. He wouldn’t be forthcoming with much information.
Fenway sighed. “We found the owner of this business dead in—”
“Former owner,” Mathis interrupted.
“What?”
“Former owner. Tyra got the whole business as part of the divorce settlement.”
Fenway nodded. That’s right, Tyra had corrected herself from “co-owner” to “owner”; had that been on the phone with her lawyer? “Former owner,” Fenway said. “So like any decent investigator, I need to know how long you’ve worked for the business, how much interaction you had with the own—the former owner. Did anyone have any reason to do him harm?”
“None of that is relevant to how long I’ve worked here.”
Fenway raised herself to her full five-ten height. “Maybe you don’t understand how this investigation will work.” She pointed to the back wall of the office, in the general direction of the crime scene. “In a few minutes, the crime scene techs will be here. They’ll be gathering evidence. Taking all kinds of photographs of this property, including your workspace, the parking lot, even your tire treads.”
Mathis frowned. “That’s a violation of—”
“There’s no expectation of privacy when you’re on your employer’s property,” Dez interrupted. Technically, she stretched the truth, but it did apply to checking the tire treads of employees’ cars.
“Then,” Fenway said, “when that’s all over, we’ll be going through this company’s finances. If we see something about you that doesn’t make sense to us, and you haven’t cooperated with the investigation, how do you think I’m going to react?”
“I think you should react like I’m innocent until proven guilty.” But Mathis knitted his brow, drummed his fingers on the counter, then looked up at Fenway. “Almost two years.”
Fenway hesitated. “Is that how long you’ve worked here?”
“Yeah.”
“Can you tell me where you were last night?”
Mathis folded his arms, breaking eye contact. “I was here until nine o’clock. Then I went home, fixed myself dinner, and went to sleep.”
“You said Mr. Cahill formerly owned the facility, so do I have it right that he used to be your boss?”
Mathis nodded. “I’d call him a pretty hands-off manager, but he hired me and I reported to him. I mean, he stayed off-property most of the time, and Tyra would assign me jobs and stuff. So she was sort of my boss, too.”
“Had you met Mr. Cahill before you started working for him?”
“I dropped out of Nidever U after my freshman year, and I started working odd jobs. I met him then.”
“What job was that?”
“Scuba instructor.” Mathis chuckled. “Sounded fun. I had pictures in my head of sunshine, boat trips, bikinis—but no, it was boring. And gross. A pool they didn’t keep clean, locker rooms with mold—I should have figured that if they’d hire me without the right credentials that they’d be okay skipping a paycheck or two.” He cleared his throat.
“And that’s where you met Seth?”
“Yeah. He signed up for a scuba class but didn’t seem as excited as everyone else. The vacations they were planning, that kind of thing. Seth just wanted the basics. The technical stuff.”
Fenway nodded.
“Anyway, we got to talking. He said he needed someone to work at the storage place, and I jumped at the chance to work for a place where my paychecks didn’t bounce.”
Fenway scribbled in her notebook.
“How well did you know him?” Dez asked.
“Uh, not that well. We’d say hi to each other when we worked together.”
“Never outside of work?” Fenway turned another page in her notebook.
Mathis hesitated.
“What is it?”
“Not really. Like, he asked me to do some stuff for him.”
“What kind of stuff?” Getting information out of Mathis was excruciating.
“Yard work for his house. Errands on the weekends if he was busy. And I’d go down—” Mathis paused.
“You’d go down where?”
“To, um, to the harbor,” Mathis said. “Sometimes he wanted fresh fish as soon as the shipments came in. I’d wait for the, uh, the fishermen. Sometimes get some great seafood right off the boat.”
Fenway and Dez exchanged glances; Mathis flinched.
“And he paid you for that?” Fenway asked.
Mathis looked stricken. Ah, off the books. Mathis probably had a few thousand in cash he hadn’t claimed on his taxes.
Had Unit 112 smelled like fish? No, not fish, but it did smell like the ocean—but almost everywhere in Estancia smelled like the ocean unless the wind blew differently than normal.
“What do you do here?” Dez asked after a moment.
Mathis shifted in his seat, his shoulders hunched, his eyes darting back and forth between Dez and Fenway. Maybe he wasn’t being forthcoming because he felt ganged up on. Usually, having two people conduct an interview gave better results, but Fenway tilted her head in Dez’s direction.
Dez pulled her phone out, glanced at the blank screen. “Oh, sorry, I have to take this. Please continue without me.” She held the phone to her ear and strode out of the office into the parking lot, the door closing behind her.
Fenway turned back to Mathis. “You were about to tell me about your job duties.”
Mathis nodded, his shoulders lowering, his eyes on Fenway. “Maintenance, landscaping, that kind of stuff. I make sure the place looks presentable to clients. Replace light bulbs, make sure the gate works, clean the units after a client moves out.”
“Make sure it’s clean when a client moves in?” As soon as the words left her mouth, Fenway regretted saying it. Sounded like she was complaining about the squatter.
“I’m sorry,” Mathis said. “I was supposed to get your unit ready, but I—I wasn’t feeling well this morning, and I didn’t check out your space before you got here.”
“So you weren’t aware squatters were using the space?”
“I wouldn’t—” Mathis began, then blinked. “No. I had no idea.”
Fenway took a step closer. “I’ve taken a bunch of classes in criminology, Mathis. Psychology, interviewing witnesses, that sort of thing. I’ve gotten pretty good at recognizing the signs when people are lying.” She tapped the back of her pen against the notebook. “You want to rethink your last answer?”
Mathis shifted uncomfortably. “Seth told me not to worry about it.”
“When? Yesterday?”
“No, no,” Mathis held up his hands, palms out. “Not recently. Like, when I got hired.”
“He’s had people staying in these units for two years?”
“Not all the time,” Mathis said. “Not like they were living there. They needed a place to crash for a few hours, or maybe a day or two.” He hesitated. “At least, that’s what Seth told me.”
He wasn’t telling her the whole truth, but he was at least talking.
“You have any idea who these people were? Friends of Seth’s?”
“Nope.” Mathis couldn’t meet Fenway’s eyes.
“I bet you figured Seth knew them,” Fenway said.
“I think so.” Again, no eye contact.
“Tyra,” Fenway said carefully, “thought they’d stop staying here once Seth stopped being part-owner. She said Seth would take care of the problem.”
Mathis met Fenway’s eyes. “I don’t know anything about that.”
Fenway held Mathis’s stare for a moment. “The first place I want to look is at the person who stayed in Unit 112 last night,” Fenway said. “Know how I might find that information?”
Mathis dropped his eyes to the counter again. “I wish I could help you.”
Fenway crossed her arms. Mathis was hiding something shady or illegal. Drug trafficking, or maybe even human trafficking. Cahill Warehouse Storage might have been a waystation where the people traveling could stay for the night without leaving a paper trail.
And Mathis had sunk up to his eyeballs in it. The only question: how to get him to open up—and not scare him off.
I thought Seth took care of that.
Tyra Cahill’s voice rang in her head. Something didn’t feel right; had Tyra suspected something illegal? When the judge awarded Tyra the business in the divorce, she’d wanted nothing to do with the shady business deals. She could have convinced Seth to tell his business partners they’d have to find somewhere else to stay. Maybe those business partners didn’t like that answer.
Sergeant Mark Trevino had suggested the squatters had a confrontation and killed Seth Cahill. The information from Mathis supported that suggestion—at least as a possibility. Fenway scribbled in her notebook. “Do you know anyone who’d want to hurt Mr. Cahill?”
Mathis shifted his weight again. “Tyra didn’t like it when she found out about Miranda.”
“Miranda—Mr. Cahill’s girlfriend? Miranda Duchy?”
“Yeah. They, uh, started seeing each other right after I started working here. At least, that’s when I first saw them together.”
“Miranda came to the storage facility?”
“Just when Tyra was out of town.”
“Do you know when Ms. Cahill found out about the affair?”
“No.”
“Did things ever get violent between Seth and Tyra?”
“Not that I saw.” Mathis’s eyes darted to the ceiling for a moment.
“What did you see?”
“A lot of passive-aggressive talk from both of them, whenever they were in the office together. It got so bad that they’d go into their separate offices and not talk for the rest of the day.”
Fenway raised her eyebrows. “Seth still has an office here? Even though he’s no longer an owner?”
“He said he was transitioning out. Ms. Cahill didn’t like it.”
“Can you show me where his office is?”
“Sure.”
Mathis opened the back door, which Fenway had assumed led to Tyra’s office. Instead, she saw a small hallway. A door on the right side—faint voices could be heard. Dez and Isabella. Dez must have convinced Isabella to agree to an interview and entered Tyra’s office through a rear door.
Mathis turned to his left and arrived at another door. He tried the knob: locked. Pulling a keychain out of his pocket, he looked through half a dozen keys before selecting one and sliding it into the lock. It unlocked and Mathis turned the knob, then pushed the door open. He started to enter the office.
Fenway put her arm in front of him. “Sorry, Mathis. We’ve got to check it out first. Mr. Cahill was found dead on the premises, so we’ll need to go through his things and get fingerprints. You’ll need to stand on the other side of the doorway until we’re done.”
“Don’t you need a warrant?”
“This is Mr. Cahill’s office, right?”
“Uh, yeah.”
“Anyone else using it?”
“No.”
“Then there’s no reasonable expectation of privacy for anyone but the victim. One of the few exceptions noted in Flippo vs. West Virginia. So, no, I don’t need a warrant.”
The office had a small window in the upper corner behind the standing desk, a Scandinavian-style table with two sets of low file cabinets underneath. Pushed against the wall, about six feet in front of the desk, two metal-framed guest chairs were stacked together. A large expanse of concrete flooring lay in front of the desk, about six feet by ten feet. A high armless task chair sat halfway between the window and the desk. No plants or greenery of any kind were in the room. A large but blank dry-erase board hung to the right of the desk. The walls were painted an industrial medium gray, which reminded Fenway of the women’s state prison in Hanford.
The desk held a monitor with two cables dangling from the back. A wireless keyboard and mouse sat on the desk as well, along with a pencil cup, a stapler, and a stack of paperwork. Fenway put on fresh gloves as she walked to the desk. She leaned down and leafed through the first few papers; all were invoices that had been stamped with Paid and a date from March.
“Very bachelor-pad chic,” Fenway said. “No computer?”
Mathis cleared his throat from outside the doorway. “I think he took it home.”
“Even though it belongs to the company, and he no longer works here?”
“Sometimes you have to pick your battles. That’s what Tyra said.”
Fenway crouched and opened the topmost of the three drawers on the left, a short drawer. A squeak of protest from Mathis, but Fenway ignored it.
Pens, paper clips, and on top, a black leather wallet. Fenway unfolded it. Seth Cahill’s California driver’s license stared back at her from the clear ID pocket. She checked the card slots: several credit cards, a roadside assistance card, three for various stores in the Estancia area. In the cash section, one hundred and seventy-three dollars in bills. She put the wallet back and pushed the top drawer shut.
The half-full middle drawer held hanging folders divided by month; all paper invoices. Easier to organize everything on the computer, but maybe Seth was the kind of person who needed to hold the paper in his hand. Or more likely, customers who still insisted on forgoing paperless billing.
More of the same in the bottom drawer.
Fenway turned her attention to the file drawers on the right. The heavy top drawer was full of cords, cables, adapters, and power strips. The bottom drawer was heavier, and Fenway struggled to pull it open.
A safe.
The door of the safe faced the ceiling, and a numeric keypad showed white numbers on black plastic buttons.
“Did you know Seth had a safe in here?”
“A what?” Mathis said unconvincingly.
Fenway didn’t bother calling him out on his misdirection. “Did Seth ever tell you what he put in the safe?”
Mathis hesitated as if he wanted to deny knowing about the safe, then slumped his shoulders. “Papers, mostly,” he said. “I saw him, once. He didn’t think I saw it, but I did.”
Fenway knelt and looked at the keypad. None of the numbers were worn, which would have given her a place to start. “What’s Mr. Cahill’s birthday, Mathis?”
Mathis screwed up his face. “Maybe sometime in August.”
Fenway opened the left-hand top drawer and grabbed Seth’s wallet.
“You, uh, planning to be in here a long time?” Mathis asked, trying to sound casual.
“As long as it takes.” She unfolded the wallet. On his driver’s license: August 7, 1978.
Fenway put the wallet back in the drawer and pushed the numbers on the keypad of the safe: 8778. A small red light blinked angrily back at her.
She tried again: 0807. Nope: same angry blinking.
She picked her phone up again.
Maybe it wasn’t his birthday at all. Maybe it was—
Oh, of course.
She pulled out her phone from her purse, tapped on the screen, and launched the Photoxio app. She hadn’t used it in so long that she had to log in again. Fenway had few followers, which suited her fine. She tapped the Search button and typed Miranda Duchy.
There she was, a fair-skinned white woman with long, wavy blonde hair, smiling coquettishly over a bare shoulder in her profile picture. The photo looked almost too perfect.
Just a beach girl who loves to see the world.
She had more than forty thousand followers.
And on her profile, her birthday: May 28.
Fenway pushed 0528 on the keypad.
A green light came on and a quiet click came from the safe door. Fenway lifted the door and peered inside.
A book.
She reached in and took the book out with her gloved hands. Leather-bound, black with burgundy corners and a burgundy spine. The book, about two or three hundred pages, had a blank cover and spine.
She opened the book.
Rows of numbers and dates—the telltale red and blue lines of a ledger. Abbreviations, gibberish in the line for the descriptions. The first date had been entered almost two years ago, and the entries grouped in bunches: ten or fifteen within the space of a few days, then another ten to fifteen two weeks later. The numbers were large, too: some of the figures were over ten thousand dollars. A couple of them were over forty thousand.
She flipped through the ledger. The bunches of numbers continued on subsequent pages, but not regularly spaced out. Sometimes there were only eight days between groups of entries, sometimes as many as twenty or twenty-five days.
The book was half full, and the last date listed a transaction for $37,251.
The date of the transaction: tomorrow.