I opened the red ledger again, staring at the empty column where the corporate registration number should have been.
A cold draft came from the window, carrying the faint smell of wet limestone from the courthouse square down the street.
The quarterly numbers were supposed to balance, but the thirty-five thousand dollars sat there like a broken tooth.
I reached for the internal directory to call Thomas, the night security guard who held the keys to the basement archive room.
I closed the heavy red cover, slid it deep into my desk drawer, and took the service elevator down to the basement archives. The air grew cooler with every floor we dropped, losing the scent of lemon furniture polish and taking on the damp draft of the old stone foundation.
Thomas stood by the locked security door, his heavy key ring clipped to his belt. He had worked for Whitmore Freight since my father bought the first six flatbed trucks in 1984, long before the company occupied this brick and glass building on the edge of Oakhaven. He did not ask why the board chair wanted access to the dead archives at eight o’clock on a Tuesday night.
“The lights are still on in row four, Miss Claire,” he said, using the name he had called me when I was a teenager. “I ran the security sweep twenty minutes ago. It is completely quiet down here.”
“Thank you, Thomas,” I said, stepping into the narrow hallway. “I am looking for the physical vendor folders from two years ago. Specifically the marketing contracts under the letter O.”
