The Deposit Slip

34





The pot was taking forever to boil, so Jessie leaned down and squinted. The gas light was out. She scraped a wooden match across its box and held the flame to the burner until it fired up again with a pop.

Four days had passed since Jared left, and it was only this morning that Jessie received the first news from him. It was a text message dated the day before saying he’d found the hostel where Spangler was staying.

There was no mention of Jessie’s note.

She’d expected some response to the news that she was quitting. His silence was the most powerful sign of how far they’d grown apart—or how much Jared had changed.

She’d resisted an urge to text Jared herself—at least to find out what was going on in Greece. She hadn’t. This wasn’t her fight anymore. He had broken the rules and lied to her. And now he was letting her go without a word. He wasn’t the man she’d thought him to be.

“Jessie?”

It was Rachel, working at her laptop on the living room couch. She’d told Rachel it was okay to work at her own apartment, but the clerk insisted on working at Sam’s house during the day. Frankly, she was underfoot, but Jessie guessed it was her call.

“Yes.”

“Did Jared send word on whether he found the witness at that hostel?”

“Nope.”

Rachel asked hourly. Jessie had shared the news about finding Cory’s hostel, but the clerk kept badgering for updates. Since she hadn’t finished a draft of the memorandum for Jared’s review, what did it matter?

The pilot light was out again. Jessie dropped the matches on the stove in disgust, turned off the burner, and headed down to the basement.

Angry as she was, Jessie was still being paid and time passed more easily if she kept busy. Downstairs, she looked at the two unopened boxes stacked against the “unfinished” wall. Jared would want to review those himself, as he had the rest.

So what. Jessie pulled the first of the two boxes from the wall and began to thumb through the pages.

Forty-five minutes later, she found something. It was just a simple sheet of paper, a routine bank memorandum about acquiring computer supplies, dated from the mid-1990s. She nearly passed it by, but something about it caught her attention, and she read it more carefully.

As much as she told herself this wasn’t her concern anymore, she felt a surge of excitement. It was not a “smoking gun,” but definitely interesting. She headed upstairs to make a photocopy.