When she stopped at the corner across from the county courthouse, she reached into the back seat and handed me a damp cardboard box holding the rest of my clothes and my original ledger notes.

“Keep that box off the floor at the boarding house,” Chloe said.

“The plumbing in those basement rooms leaks when it rains.”

I stepped out into the steady downpour, pulled my coat collar up around my neck, and took the box from her hands.

I stood on the rainy curb on Market Street, holding a wet cardboard box with nothing in it but my clothes and my audit notes.

The damp heat of the basement laundry room at the Crestview Hotel smelled of industrial bleach, wet cotton, and hot irons.