He nodded and led the way through the rows of tall gray cabinets. Our rubber-soled shoes made no sound on the painted concrete floor. He kept his flashlight beam pointed at the ground ahead of us, avoiding the places where the basement floor buckled slightly from the old oak roots outside.
We stopped at a row labeled with white grease pencil. The cabinets here held the paper documents Evan had insisted on keeping in physical format, away from the shared digital servers that our IT department monitored.
“We started using these green hanging folders when Mr. Cole changed the filing system,” Thomas said, pulling open the heavy steel drawer of cabinet twelve. “Before that, your father kept everything in the white legal boxes. It was much easier to find things then.”
I reached into the drawer, my fingers sliding over the tabbed labels. The letters ran from M to P. My thumb rubbed against my platinum wedding band, the heavy metal cold against my skin.
“Is this the only place where the physical marketing files are stored?” I asked.
“For that year, yes,” Thomas said, shifting his flashlight to his left hand. “Mr. Cole had three boxes brought down from the executive suite last winter. He told me to log them in as miscellaneous correspondence, not as active accounts.”
That was the first detail that did not fit the pattern of our standard billing cycle. Every legitimate marketing vendor contract was processed through the second floor accounting office and logged onto our secure network.
I found the tab labeled Oakhaven Events. The green folder felt thin between my fingers, far too light to contain two years of promotional consulting agreements and event planning receipts.
I pulled the folder from the drawer and laid it on top of the gray cabinet. When I opened the cover, there were no glossy marketing brochures, no itemized invoices for corporate dinners, and no signed marketing proposals.
