The next day, Maya drove the twenty miles to the family's fishing cabin before dawn. It stood at the end of a narrow gravel road surrounded by pines and the smell of damp earth, its windows boarded against winter and its porch steps softened by age. Thomas had repaired the roof himself, and the uneven shingles still followed the line of his work rather than the tidy geometry of a professional crew. Maya had not entered since the first year after his death because every room held the unbearable promise that he might come around a corner carrying a fishing rod.
Sarah arrived a little after eight in a gray sedan carrying gloves, labeled envelopes, a notebook, and a laptop that belonged to her consulting business. She hugged Maya before asking any questions, an embrace brief enough to allow Maya to keep herself together. Sarah had worked as a financial analyst in federal cases for years before leaving government service; she understood that a promising clue could become useless if people handled it carelessly. She established a simple inventory of the material from Thomas's tackle box, and together they made a documented copy with the original safely set aside.
"I remember your father's last phone call," Sarah said as the laptop finished examining the device. "He asked whether a company could appear to be importing furniture while maintaining accounts that looked nothing like a furniture business. He sounded exhausted, but he also sounded close to an answer."
"Why didn't you come forward after he died?" Maya asked.
Sarah considered the question before replying. "I gave a statement to the investigator assigned to the case. I said Thomas had been exploring suspicious transactions. They told me it was irrelevant to the allegation against him, and later said the conversation had been included in their file. I should have asked for proof that anyone followed up."
Maya stared at the grain of the cabin table. She wanted to be angry at Sarah, at everyone who had moved on after Thomas's death, and perhaps at herself for spending years trying to turn the subject into something the sisters could endure. Sarah did not ask for forgiveness. She simply turned the screen toward Maya, where a directory of dated folders had appeared.
There were public procurement records, property listings, financial summaries, photographs, and notes Thomas had written in the language of a careful detective. The documents did not prove an entire criminal enterprise on their own, but they demonstrated why Thomas had begun asking questions. A company called Clearwater Holdings purchased storage space near the old riverfront, reported a wholesale furniture business with surprisingly little visible inventory, and made frequent payments to service businesses connected to people in Milfield law enforcement. Thomas had noted the names and dates without drawing conclusions he could not yet establish.
One folder contained a scanned letter requesting a meeting with a federal prosecutor in Chicago. Its date was five days before Thomas died. A second page was a mailing receipt showing that an envelope had been sent to the office, although the contents of that envelope were not listed. Maya touched the screen where her father's signature appeared and felt as though someone had opened a door in a house she believed had been sealed forever.