The Return Of Jonah Gray. Heather Cochran

research and then asked me to lunch? Or was it the other way around?”

      “Does it matter?”

      That wasn’t what I was expecting to hear. “I hardly know you,” I said.

      “I realize that.”

      “This Jonah Gray person, I don’t know him at all.”

      “So I’m ahead on that score,” Jeff said. He smiled for the first time since I’d met him. It was a nice smile, actually. It lit up his face and helped to balance out those solemn eyes.

      I held up the printout. “Can I keep this?” I asked.

      “Be my guest.”

      “About the other stuff,” I said. “I’m flattered. I am.”

      “You don’t have to say anything. I’m not asking you out.”

      “You’re not?” I found myself vaguely disappointed. I wasn’t sure whether it was because I found Jeff Hill oddly appealing or because I had expected him to ask for something more. I mean, you don’t usually tell someone that you like them and then just go about your business, la-di-dah.

      “You want me to?” he asked. “I don’t know,” I said. “I’ll take that as a maybe,” he said, smiling again.

      Chapter Five

      GRAY’S GARDEN—THE WEB SITE—FOCUSED ON PLANT cultivation in California’s various flora zones. There were fertilizer reviews, discussions about the weather and complaints about garden pests, both common and unusual. People wrote in for advice, something the owner of the site, Jonah Gray, dispensed generously, when he wasn’t musing about various garden topics. In a cursory review of the site, I gathered that Jonah Gray resented nonnative species that required heavy watering, lamented the loss of indigenous oaks throughout California, and felt that Stockton’s insistence on pruning trees between April and October was actually helping the dreaded “eucalyptusborer” decimate entire groves. Otherwise, he tended to keep things upbeat.

      As I had admitted to Jeff, I wasn’t much of a gardener, so I wasn’t particularly interested in the plight of oaks or eucalypti. I was bent on finding the references to the IRS, the audit and, in particular, me. I found what I was looking for in the discussion area. That’s where Jonah Gray had pasted the audit notification letter that had been generated by an IRS database around the same time I’d been assigned to his case. Had I been more focused that August—or rather, focused on my job instead of cubicle cleaning and legal-pad history—I would already have begun my initial analysis of Jonah Gray’s return, and his name would have rung familiar when Jeff had mentioned it.

      A number of people had replied to his first post about the audit, adding details from their own experiences with the IRS and whipping up the man’s anxiety with (mostly) unfounded rumors.

      JasperDad wrote: I have heard tales. You be strong, Mr. Gray, sir. Don’t let them take an extra red cent.

      Skua87 wrote: This is exactly why I hide my money in my mattress.

      MaxiMoss wrote: I never understood how good people could become auditors.

      JasperDad replied: Good people don’t.

      Two days into the discussion, Hydrangeas01 had informed everybody that S stood for Sasha and that I was female. I wondered whether Hydrangeas01 was Gordon, my first caller.

      I felt as if I were eavesdropping. Here they were, talking about me, wondering about me, with no idea that I was watching. I felt like a celebrity might, albeit one of those celebrities that people find a perverse pleasure in hating.

      “You didn’t call me back.” It was Ricardo, poking his head into my cubicle.

      I glanced at my phone and only then noticed that the voice mail light was blinking. “You’re right,” I said, turning back to my computer screen.

      “Does this mean that you’ve found your focus?” Ricardo asked. “Sorry I missed lunch.”

      I looked up at him. “When are you going to stop trying to set me up?”

      “As soon as I find the right guy for you. Or your mother does. But I’m determined to win this one.”

      “And when are you going to stop betting on me? I’m not a horse,” I pointed out. “You really think Jeff Hill might be the right guy for me?” He was certainly bright and seemed refreshingly straightforward. I had found that I liked how he’d wasted no time in asking me to lunch. Gene had been so indecisive.

      “How’d it go?” Ricardo asked. “Any sparks? He said he was going to ask you to lunch as soon as I mentioned it. He’s got great follow-through. And he’s very detail-oriented.”

      “He’s also obsessive-compulsive,” I said.

      “Even better.”

      “He ran a background check on me.”

      “He’s thorough,” Ricardo said. He sniffed. “Do you smell lemon?”

      I shrugged and pointed at my computer screen. “His research pulled up the site of some guy I’ve been assigned to audit. The man’s been writing about how he dreads meeting me, and imagining what I’m going to be like. In this part here, he pictures me at my desk, counting beans. And then he goes on this tangent about beans and other legumes and how they’re often maligned in speech but incredibly nutritious and easy to grow.”

      Ricardo frowned. “Is that supposed to be an insult?”

      “I don’t know,” I said. “But all these people on his site are up in arms on his behalf. They’re telling him that I’m awful. That I’m a monster. That I’m wicked and bound to bleed him dry. This guy Jonah, he never actually says anything bad about me, not that I’ve found, at least. He wonders and he worries, but he’s mostly just self-deprecating. I don’t know what to think.”

      “Give the guy a break. He’s being audited. He can’t know how charming you are, my little bean counter.”

      “You’re just trying to get back on my good side.”

      “How am I doing?”

      “What should I do about Jeff Hill?” I asked him.

      “Did he ask you to do anything?”

      “No,” I admitted.

      “Then there’s no decision to be made, is there?”

      When Ricardo left, I turned to my worktable, to the tall stack of audits ahead of me. Somewhere in that pile, I would find him. Somewhere in there, Jonah Gray was waiting.

      “Gray, Gray, Gray,” I muttered as I rifled through the stack, and then, “gotcha!”

      “You okay over there?”

      “I’m fine, Cliff,” I called back. I took the file folder labeled Jonah Gray back to my desk. “So, Mr. Gray,” I murmured. “What do you have to say for yourself?”

      I already knew that Jonah Gray lived in Stockton, and I wasn’t surprised. Many of my audits that year had been from Stockton, the same city my older brother Kurt had recently moved to, about an hour east of Oakland. Since we were a district office, I was often assigned returns from places I’d never been, and Stockton was one such place.

      I took note of Jonah Gray’s street address: 530 Horsehair Road. Sometimes you could tell something about a person by the street address—whether it was a small or large apartment building or something that sounded like a town-house development or even a post office box. But 530 Horsehair Road was an address that didn’t give much away. I made a mental note to ask Kurt whether he knew the street.

      I glanced at Mr. Gray’s personal information. Jonah F. Gray. Social Security number: 229—

      I stopped. Now that was a number that told me something. Told me quite a bit, actually, and got my pulse going a