I had no idea what those things could mean until a man named Victor Hale, Dana’s supervisor, called me.

“I heard about Owen,” he said.

“I’m sorry.

I should have checked sooner.”

Victor ran the accounting department at Riverside Landscape Supply.

Dana had worked there six years.

He told me she had missed two shifts without notice, something she never did, and that a pending internal audit had made the entire office unusually tense.

“She was reconciling equipment purchases,” he said.