Hm. Would it be plausible that they kept documents for all the legal employees and they're only missing for the illegal ones?
I would think P would have documentation for the illegal ones (the ones she officially hired, not the ones paid under the table), but T could maybe notice the age of say, Billy Bob, doesn't look quite right. Maybe T knows he's in his 30's, but according to his fake driver's lic he's 45?
Or that several different illegals are working under the same social security number and there's some record of who got paid how much under that number? Not sure how that would work. Wages get tied to a SSN, so if you had several people all with the same SSN, you'd risk raising red flags in the IRS etc.
One of the illegals -- the real killer, as a matter of fact, although no one else knows that yet -- also works at the side business, so it could just be something about his records that would look fishy. But probably not fishy enough to make a big deal about moving the record.
What I'd like is for my heroine T to learn enough from the records or the fact that they're being moved to figure out that P has something to hide and that that something might be strong enough to be a motive for murder. Having to pay some fines probably isn't strong enough, but if P's father is unaware of the illegal hiring, if the victim apparently found out about it, and if the father is running for public office and his campaign would be destroyed if the illegal hiring were discovered, that might seem like a strong enough motive.
Yeah, if they're paying people under the table, the dad's probably going to know, unless he's the head of the co. in name only and not really involved. But P and the illegal employees could also face criminal charges (as well as the possibility of being held personally responsible for fines) for falsifying the I-9 documents. P could also be held criminally responsible for paying the employees under the table (tax evasion).
The other thing T might learn from looking through the records is that the killer is not in fact American, as she had believed, which would be a big clue toward the real solution to the mystery. But I want P to look guiltier to begin with.
The victim had broken into the personnel files earlier. If the police know that and P knows that, but not the real reason she broke into them, it could look like she would threaten to reveal P's hiring crimes.
Ah, got it.
Yeah, that's pretty much what I'm going with.
I can get T alone with the files in their new hiding place and give her time to examine them. I'm just trying to figure out what she can learn from them.