“Are you sure he hid it there? Maybe he just dropped it or it fell out of his pocket.”
“I’m sure. My aunt found it taped to the bottom of the diaper caddy.”
Daniel looked at me blankly.
“It’s the thing where you stack the clean diapers.”
Daniel shrugged. “I once lost a flash drive in the garbage. It must’ve fallen out of my pocket when I was closing the bag. Fishing it out of the dumpster was not fun.”
“But you found it in the dumpster not taped to the bottom.”
“True,” he said. “My point was things do go lost sometimes. Especially small things.” He pulled the flash drive out of his computer and handed it to me. “If I were you, I’d call the IT person at your husband’s firm and ask them if they have the recovery key.”
“What’s a recovery key?”
“Depending on which program your husband used to encrypt the drive, he would’ve received a recovery key to use in case he ever forgot the password.”
“And that’s something the IT person would have? Because a couple of weeks after Jonah died, they sent someone over to the house to pick up his laptop.”
“The recovery key isn’t something that would’ve been stored on his hard drive. The IT department keeps a master list of all the recovery keys in a secure file. Or at least that’s how we did it at my old company.”
“Okay, I’ll call tomorrow. Thanks for your help with this.”
“Anytime. And if you need help with anything else, say washing your hair…”
I laughed. “Actually, I do need to wash my hair.” I’d intended to shower after Richard left this morning, but then I’d gotten distracted with the flash drive.
“I can help with that too.”
Chapter 12
I called Jonah’s office the next morning as I drove from Daniel’s house back to my own. It was still so early I wasn’t surprised when no one picked up and my call went directly to a prerecorded message. I followed the phone tree prompts until I reached the voicemail for Jonah’s former assistant. I left her an anodyne message asking her to call me back. Then I waited. And waited. And waited some more. My heart raced every time the phone rang, but it was never Jonah’s assistant. It was a relief to go to my appointment with Dr. Rubenstein that afternoon. It meant I could silence my phone for an hour and not have to think about it.
“How was your vacation?” I asked Dr. Rubenstein as soon as we’d both settled into our usual spots in her office—her on her Eames chair and me on the corner of the green chenille couch. The skin on her chest and arms was tanner than usual and provided an even more striking contrast to her silver hair.
“Very relaxing,” she said. “How are you doing?”
“Good. You missed a lot.”
Then I proceeded to fill her in on meeting Maria, sleeping with Daniel, and giving away Amelia’s furniture. I also told her about Daniel’s suggestion to call Jonah’s office for the recovery key to the flash drive, but she wasn’t interested in that. All she wanted to talk about was Daniel and how giving away Amelia’s furniture made me feel.
I turned my phone on as I walked back to my car and saw I had a voicemail from Jonah’s office. I didn’t even listen to the message. I just hit the call back button and waited until a familiar voice came on the line.
“Hi, Kristie, it’s Grace Hughes.”
“Mrs. Hughes, it was so nice to hear from you again. How are you?”
“Well. And you?”
“Oh, you know me. Just trying to stay out of trouble.”
Kristie did have a knack for saying the wrong thing, to the wrong person, at the wrong time. When I’d called this morning, I wasn’t even sure she’d still be working at the firm. It would not have surprised me to learn she’d been fired.
“Funny you called today,” she continued. “I was just thinking about Jonah.”
“Really? Why?”
“We had a meeting this morning and the partners asked me to start planning this year’s holiday party. I was thinking of going with the movie theme again.”
I remembered the last movie-themed holiday party. Jonah had just joined the firm and felt uncomfortable dressing up as his favorite character—Batman—so we decided he should wear a tuxedo and tell everyone he was James Bond. For the record, Jonah did not look like any of the actors who played 007. I donned a blond wig and a pink suit and went as the lawyer from Legally Blonde. For the record, I don’t look like Reese Witherspoon either.
“And that made you think of Jonah?” I asked.
“Sure. Don’t you remember the belly dancer? I think she was Matt’s date.”
I remembered Matt’s date, even though I’d only met her that one time.
“I still have the video of her giving Jonah a lap dance!” Kristie continued.
I did not have the video, but I didn’t need it. I vividly remembered the lap dance. Or I vividly remembered the huge fight Jonah and I had about it when we’d gotten home that night. Jonah had claimed he was just playing along because he was the new guy. I’d told him his story would be more believable had his tongue not been hanging out of his mouth the entire time.
After a pause Kristie said, “Sorry. I probably shouldn’t have brought it up. But Jonah was never unfaithful, at least that I know about. And I can’t say the same for some of the other guys around here.”
I closed my eyes and breathed deeply then exhaled. “Thanks, Kristie, but that’s not why I called. Can you please give me the contact info for the firm’s IT person?”
“Sure.” I could hear her fingernails tapping on a keyboard. “Why do you want to talk to him? Computer problems? Because I don’t think he freelances.”
“No, I found a flash drive the other day, but I can’t open it because I don’t know the password. I’m hoping he has the recovery key.”
