Page 32 of Thicker Than Water
Sienna riffles through the book, but only the first half is filled up, all in the same format. The dates at the end are recent—one from last month, a few others from late last year—but the dates at the beginning are from a decade ago.
“I have no idea what this means,” Sienna says. “Maybe he reallywasselling drugs, and these are his customers?”
She returns to the final columned page, and I squint at the list of names. “No, look,” I say, pointing to one in particular. “I don’t think it’s individual people. Linear—that’s that new gym in Hillstead. And this one up here, Zigoris—that’s a furniture store a few towns over.”
Sienna zips her gaze up at me. “How do you even know that?”
“Because they’re—” I pause. Dread pools in my stomach at the realization. “They’re Jason’s customers. They’re contracts he brought in. His commission from the Linear project paid for the HVAC work we had done on the house last summer.”
Sienna looks back at the names, the numbers, her brow crumpling in confusion. “These are allJason’scustomers?”
My legs are shaking now, rickety as an old ladder. I kneel down beside Sienna on the cement floor, grateful for its stability. I glance at the shoeboxes of money, my insides churning, before skimming the column of names again.
“Those are the only ones I recognize.”
“Okay, so why would—” Sienna starts, but the rattle of a doorknob silences her. We grab hands, eyes flitting over the gutter machine, open like a body during an autopsy. We don’t have time to cover it or return the lids to the boxes. The door—the one connectedto the building, hidden from view by the stacks of insulation that border the boneyard—pops open, and footsteps clap inside.
We lurch in sync toward the section of discarded desks, then crouch behind them, our hands tight as vises around each other. The footsteps draw closer, hurrying their pace, an exact match for my heartbeat. Sienna narrows her eyes, pointing them toward the approaching sound, and I try to quiet my breathing, which tumbles out of me in panicked huffs.
The person stops, the silence as sudden as a light switched on, and though we can’t see them from behind these desks, I know they’re staring into the gutter machine, taking stock of the screws Sienna removed, the lid we pushed aside, the money in all those boxes.
“Julia?”
I spill out another breath, my lungs loosening. My hand releases Sienna’s as she slumps in relief. We take a second to recover, then spring up in unison.
“Jesus!” Maeve says, hand flying to her chest. “You scared me.”
“You scared us,” Sienna says.
“I came to check on you, see if you found anything.” Maeve looks into the gutter machine, shaking her head in bewilderment, disbelief. “I guess you did. That is alotof cash.”
“Yeah, but look at this,” Sienna says. She picks up the notebook and opens it to the page with Linear and Zigoris. Nausea swims inside me at those familiar names.
“Does this mean anything to you?” Sienna holds the notebook out to Maeve, who takes it with a skeptical squint. As she scans the page, I focus on swallowing.
“It kind of looks like a job log,” Maeve says. “But these dollar amounts… Why are there two for every date?”
She chews on her bottom lip as she continues to read. Her finger runs across the page like a highlighter, pausing at times to lingerbeneath a name, then speeding up again. Finally, she sucks in a breath, her eyes flashing bright as high beams. “Oh my god!”
“What?” Sienna and I say together. Sienna lurches closer to Maeve.
“I think Gavin was cooking the books! Look: for every row, there are two dollar amounts, price and cash. And the price is always greater than the cash, see?” Maeve jabs at one example in particular. “Here, the price for the job is forty thousand, but cash is only thirty. I think he was offering certain customers a discount if they paid in cash.”
“But—why?” I ask.
“To keep it under the table. Classic tax evasion.”
“Tax evasion?” Sienna spits out. “Isn’t that what he blew up that merger over a few years ago? Because his would-be partner had committed tax fraud?”
Maeve nods slowly. “It sure is.”
“What a fucking hypocrite!” Sienna says. “There were, like, news stories about that! And he was all ‘Our name isIntegrityPlus for a reason.’ I remember the exact quote because I thought it was so stupid.”
“Yeah.” Maeve scrapes out a scoff, still staring at the open notebook. “Ifeelso stupid. I had no idea this was going on.”
“Do you think Jason did?” I ask, the question blurting out of me, loud as a belch.
Sienna’s gaze whips toward me. “Are you kidding? Of course he didn’t.”
