Chapter 6 - The Audit
Monday morning at Maple Street Books smelled like freshly ground coffee and old paper—the two smells that had always made me feel like I was standing on solid ground.
Mr. Arthur Henderson, the bookstore owner, was a seventy-year-old man with a white beard that made him look like a retired sea captain who had traded his ship for a cash register. He was standing behind the front counter when I walked in at 8:55 AM, wearing my backup sweater and carrying my canvas gym bag over my shoulder.
“Morning, Maya,” he said, not looking up from his crossword puzzle. “You look like you wrestled a bear and lost.”
“Happy Monday to you too, Mr. Henderson,” I said, forcing a tight smile as I tied my green canvas apron around my waist.
He looked up then, his bushy white eyebrows drawing together as he scanned my pale face and the dark circles under my eyes. He laid down his pen.
“Trouble at home?”
“Not anymore,” I said, and for some reason, hearing myself say those words made my throat tighten up. “My parents... downsized. A little too early.”
Mr. Henderson stared at me for a long, silent moment. He didn’t offer cheap sympathy or tell me everything happens for a reason. He just reached under the counter, pulled out a spare set of brass keys on a frayed lanyard, and slid them across the scarred wooden surface toward me.
“The attic flat above the annex,” he said quietly. “It’s drafty, the radiator clanks like a skeleton in a dryer, and the shower takes ten minutes to get warm. But the lock works, and the rent is eighty bucks a week, payable whenever you balance the register.”
I stared at the keys. “Mr. Henderson, I can’t live in the annex. That’s for store inventory overflow.”
“It’s got a cot, a hot plate, and a window that looks out over the maple trees,” he said, picking his pen back up. “Take it or leave it. But if you leave it, you’ve got to find somewhere else to put that blue suitcase currently sitting behind my breakroom microwave.”
My breath hitched. “You saw that?”
“I’ve been running this bookstore since 1984, Maya. Nothing gets past me except a stolen copy of Infinite Jest.” He pointed a finger at the register. “Go check the morning delivery. And Maya?”
“Yes?”
“Happy belated birthday. Welcome to the real world. It’s vastly overrated, but the coffee is free in the back.”
By noon, I had moved my two duffel bags and the blue suitcase up the narrow, creaking wooden stairs to the attic flat above the annex. It was small—little more than a converted storage room with slanted ceilings and a dormer window—but when I turned the deadbolt from the inside and heard that solid, heavy clack, my shoulders dropped an inch for the first time in forty-eight hours.
At 2:15 PM, the bell above the front door chimed.
I was behind the counter alphabetizing a fresh stack of paperback mysteries when a familiar voice drawled, “Well, well. Look at the literary entrepreneur.”
I looked up.
Grace was standing there holding two iced coffees from the cafe down the street, grinning like she had just won a lottery. And behind her, leaning against the biography shelf with his hands in his pockets, was Marcus Vance—my cousin from Cincinnati who worked as a junior forensic accountant and had a personal vendetta against every shady financial transaction in the state of Ohio.
“Marcus?” I blinked. “What are you doing here? I thought you were in court today.”
“Court got adjourned because the judge’s air conditioning blew up,” Marcus said, walking over to the counter and setting a thick manila folder right on top of a display of Agatha Christie novels. “Besides, Aunt Evelyn called me at seven this morning in full battle gear. Apparently, your father committed a paperwork felony.”
I froze. “What do you mean?”
Marcus tapped the manila folder. “When your dad rented your room to Mark Thompson last week, he didn’t just draft a casual sublet agreement. He used a standard residential template off the internet—and he forgot to remove your name from the primary household utility covenant because your phone bill and your car insurance are still tied to the house address as a dependent residency write-off for his small business taxes.”
May you like
Grace’s eyes went wide. “Wait. Are you saying what I think you’re saying?”
“I’m saying,” Marcus grinned, a sharp, predatory smile that looked entirely too much like our grandfather’s, “that James Reed committed tax fraud to maximize his write-off while illegally evicting a legal resident without a thirty-day notice.”
