The key had been in the box of funeral odds and ends all along, attached to a red plastic tag June had once used for the garden shed. They had come back from the bakery, and Tess had brought the case out without asking for more time. Mara watched her fit the key into the brass lock. If June had wanted a forbidding object, she had spoiled the effect by using the key for three decades and letting the red tag fade almost pink.
“Ready?” Tess asked.
“No.”
Tess turned it anyway.
Inside the case, June had packed a ruled notebook, envelopes of receipts, and two bundles of slips held with elastic bands. Mara knew the slips. Some had come off the pad beside her own dispatch phone. June had never told her she copied them into a book.
Tess photographed the open case before either of them moved a page. Mara reached for the top bundle, then let Tess take it. Tess slid the bundle toward herself.
Bess had recognized the woman called May and Nora by her face. The slips brought the other names close: the same contact number repeated beside different labels; payments carried over from one cover to the next; one receipt bore June's neat correction, Nell Voss, use this name for payment. Mara had to turn a slip sideways to read the last note. She read the six names from the list again, out loud, and Tess followed on her own page.
“So none of them disappeared,” Tess said.
“Nell stopped using the names.”
“June crossed out six women who were all Nell.” Tess looked at the seventh line. “What am I supposed to be?”
Mara could not offer the comforting answer that Tess was another cover. June had written Tess's full name. She had also written Friday, as if a person were an appointment that could be entered while still unconfirmed.
They opened only the recent pages of the notebook. A sheet had been folded over the rest, and Tess kept it there. Mara found Alma's name between a note about a work entrance and a penciled plan for Friday. June's entries were short until that page. She had written that Owen had been seen near the community center and that she had told Alma the work access might be exposed. Beneath it: Alma says she will not move again. Needs time. Ask Ren to sit with us Friday; prepare fallback if she changes her mind.
Mara read the last phrase twice. Alma had stood at the funeral and told Tess that June kept suggesting she leave. She had not been hinting. She had been telling the truth in the only room where she could.
June had listed a possible car, a safe place that was unnamed on this page, and a hotel packet of selected copies addressed to Tess for Tuesday delivery. Beside the meeting was a note: Ren's first free Friday, three weeks from now. Send copies that Tuesday. In the margin, below the six retired names, was Tess — Friday. The same two words on the loose sheet. Tess put a finger on them, then took it away.
“She planned to ask you to collect the packet and help if Alma chose to go,” Mara said.
“She planned it before she asked me.”
“Yes.”
“Did Alma know I was in it?”
“Not from what she's written.”
Mara found the next date. June suspected Nell had sold Owen a piece of Alma's work routine. There was no proof of the sale in the notebook, only the sequence: Nell had known the entrance, and Owen had appeared near it. June wrote that she needed to tell Alma the suspicion with Ren present. She had already warned Alma of possible exposure. Mara had not known about the warning. Since hearing Owen's name outside the hotel, she had been afraid Alma might know nothing of his return. She put the dated warning beside the later note.
Tess looked at her across the case. “She told Alma about the entrance and kept Nell's name to herself.”
“That is what she wrote.”
“Why?”
Mara thought of Nell waiting in a car for a payment June had forgotten, of June letting a courier stay for supper and then asking one more favor as if supper paid for it. “She wanted to be certain,” Mara said, then shook her head. “I don't know. That's what I would say if I were trying to defend her.”
June's last entries were messier. The dated delivery instruction came first: the selected copies had already gone to the courier, sealed and scheduled for the Tuesday before that Friday meeting. Two days later Nell had learned about them. She wanted both the packet and the original case. June recorded a threat to use Tess's name to get them. Beneath it she had written, Hotel: hold for Tess herself, ID only. Keep copies out of the house and off Mara's dispatch desk. Tess can collect without passing them through another driver. Ask Tess before involving her. The next page was blank.
“She stopped Nell collecting it,” Tess said. “She didn't stop putting me in it.”
Mara checked the date. It was the last date before June's illness. The meeting had been fixed weeks ahead, not for the Friday immediately after that entry. June had arranged the delivery and still left Tess waiting for a question she never made time to ask. Mara pictured June sitting at her own table, writing down the right thing to do after she had begun doing another.
Tess pulled the loose seven-name page beside the notebook. “She wrote this for herself. Six labels she was done using, then the daughter she was going to use next.”
“That isn't the only thing you were to her.”
“I didn't say it was.”
Mara wanted to take the sentence back for making Tess defend her anger. “I know.”
For a while they could hear the apartment's refrigerator click on and off. Tess pushed the case an inch toward Mara. “You never knew?”
“I knew Nora. I arranged Alma's first ride. I've told you that.” Mara looked at the payment slips. “I knew June used me more often than I admitted Monday. I didn't know Nora had six names. I didn't know June had written yours here.”
Tess nodded once. Mara let out the breath she had been holding.
“What did you tell Nora about Alma's later job?” Tess asked.
“Nothing. I arranged the clinic pickup and the pharmacy handoff months ago. Alma got the community center work later. But Nell may have learned it from June. The notebook says June spoke to her about the entrance.”
Tess closed the slip bundle. “We have to reach Alma.”
“Ren's number is here. June had already asked him about Friday.”
“Alma first, through him. And we tell her what June didn't.”
Mara lifted her phone. Tess covered the facing notebook page before Mara dialed. Other names were there, other doors June had written down. Mara waited for the ring without lifting the covered page.
Ren answered on the fourth ring. Mara gave him her name and said June's daughters had found a warning concerning Alma. She did not say they had found everything. Tess sat beside her, close enough to speak when Ren asked what Alma already knew.
“We don't know what June told her about Nell,” Tess said. “We know she told Alma the entrance might be exposed. We need Alma to hear what June held back.”
Ren said he would ask Alma when and how she wanted to speak. Tess put the loose list back in its folder.