The vendor packet came back thinner than it had left.
Ann noticed that first. Pages missing their twins with a staple in a new place. Someone had handled the file since Friday and wanted the handling to look like an order.
Mikel dropped it on her desk himself. “You do not take this downstairs and ask records for a history lesson, follow the payment path I marked and you stop where I stop.”
Ann looked at the tabs…three yellow, one unmarked near the back that had not been there Monday.“And if the path does not stop?”
“Then you bring it to me and you forget how to be curious.”
He went into his office. The door stayed open the width of a habit neither of them trusted.
Ann followed the money because that was the job. Invoice to approval, approval to bank line, bank line to a company that
