I glanced at Darrell, who shook his head.

“What did you tell him?” I asked Penny.

“Well, I told him about a tape recording I’d heard. It seemed to upset him.”

“What was this tape?”

“Not long after Ms. Svitak arrived, she was going over archival records of our client relationship with the mine. I was there to take notes. She was listening to a cassette recording of a phone conversation between Gordon and the senior partner of the firm in Milwaukee.”

“What were they talking about?”

“Gordon said he’d tried to get Sandra Thoreau to quit the mine. He’d offered her a payout to leave, but she’d turned him down. After that, Ms. Svitak switched off the tape and told me to leave.”

“Did you ever hear more of the tape?”

“No. Later, Ms. Svitak told me to destroy my notes about it. That’s very unusual. I asked why, and she snapped at me and said not to ask any questions. My guess is, she didn’t want anything on paper that might accidentally show up in discovery. The firm doesn’t want the plaintiffs to hear what’s on that tape.”

“You told Ajax about it?”

“Yes, and he freaked out. I don’t know why.”

Darrell interjected. “Do you know when the call was taped?”

“Years ago.”

“How many years?”

Penny blinked as she tried to recall. “Seven, I think? I always label my notes with the date of the conversation, and I’ve got a good memory for that kind of thing. I’m pretty sure it was summer seven years ago.”

“Where was Gordon when he made the call?”

Penny shrugged. “Here.”

“Here in Black Wolf County?” Darrell asked.

“Yes. He said he’d met Sandra Thoreau that day, so he must have been here.”

Darrell eased back in his chair with a heavy sigh. Then he turned to me. “We need to pull the murder file again.”

“On Brink?” I asked.

He nodded. “Yes, but not just him. Summer seven years ago is when Kip and Racer were killed.”

*

We kept our files in the basement of the building. It was a dank, windowless room, not the best place to store documents, but we didn’t have a lot of extra space. Boxes of d-CON kept the mice from devouring our papers. The files were all in bankers boxes organized by date on a series of rusty metal shelves. The archives went back for decades, so if someone wanted to see their grandfather’s arrest record for skinny-dipping in the 1940s, it was probably still there.

Darrell didn’t say anything as we traversed the narrow aisles, with me squeezing sideways because of my belly, so I was the one who brought it up.

“What was Ajax doing?” I asked. “Trying to solve the murders?”

“Maybe. But that doesn’t explain the monthly payments.”