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Walt Brandt’s office is a trailer bolted to the side of his building, warm from a space heater and smelling of burnt coffee. There is a refrigeration supplier calendar on the wall and a framed photograph of a boy in a Little League uniform on the desk.

“Can I help you?” he says when I walk in and close the door behind me.

I sit down across from him without being asked. I put three photographs on his desk. His own loading bay with the trailer from Zorin’s yard, backing into it. Twenty-two pallets with a shipping mark he will recognize. The truck that collected from these bays last Monday.

“These belong to the people I work for,” I say, tapping the image of the pallets. “They were stolen from us.”

He looks at the photographs and sits back in his seat. “I rent space,” he says. “I don’t open the pallets.”

“I believe you.”

Surprise registers in his bushy eyebrows.

“I don’t want you, Mr. Brandt. Tell me who rents those three bays and whose truck comes for them on Monday mornings. Then do nothing. Take their cash. Be polite to their driver.”

“And if I don’t?”

“Then the next people who visit you about those pallets won’t believe you.”

He looks at the framed picture on his desk. Then he opens a drawer and takes out a green ledger, the kind nobody uses anymore.

“The bays are rented by the month in the name of Lakefront Equipment Finance.”

He shows me the outgoing quantities. Some stock still remains in the bays.

The Monday truck belongs to a carrier in Toledo. He has the dispatcher’s number on a sticky note, because the driver is always early and Brandt likes to call ahead and tell them to wait.

I copy both into my phone and return the ledger.

When I come in that evening, a small pot of rosemary is on the windowsill above my sink, on a saucer so that it won’t mark the paint. It came from the bakery. I know because it’s the one that lives by her register, the one she pinches when customers ask what smells so good.

She comes out of the bathroom with her hair wet and smiles when she catches me looking at it. “You said you’d never owned a houseplant. Now you have.”

“What do I do with it?”

“Water it on Thursdays. Don’t let it get cold.” She rubs her hair with a small towel. “Please don’t let it die. I’ve had it since I was twenty.”

“I won’t.”

She smiles, but it doesn’t go anywhere. “When you know more about Daniel, will you tell me?”

It would be so easy to say, “I will,” and then forget about it. I never wanted her to be involved in any of this, and that’s down to her ex-husband, but I’m starting to realize that lying, even with good intentions, isn’t going to help her.

I open a drawer beneath the counter, remove a folded sheet of paper, and hand it to her.

13

VERA

Notice of default. A company I’ve never heard of: Reed Hospitality LLC. The Low Hour. I heard he’d opened a bar, but I never asked any questions because I didn’t want to know. Not knowing was as good as convincing myself that he no longer existed, not in my world anyway. My eyes drop to the Personal guarantee, and a balance I read three times to be sure I have the zeros right.

I fold it back along its creases and look at Nikolai. Daniel came to the bakery to ask me for a loan, knowing I wouldn’t have the kind of money he needed. What was he thinking, that I would buy him some time? Then what? I struggle to believe that would’ve been the end of it.

My fingers tremble as I try to connect the dots between Daniel’s request for cash and the situation that led me to walk out of my apartment above the bakery and move in with Nikolai.

My brain feels shot to pieces. So, I start with the basics.

“How long have you had this?”