and hide the individual pages in large books where their presence with be invisible.

Unless someone is willing to take every book off the shelf and flip the pages....

The replacement reporter finds it when a corner of the tape comes loose and the folder catches when he pulls out the drawer.

Should be enough room to hold a file folder. Monitor wouldn't work of course, which might be a clue to next reporter.

I did not think about taping it, very good. Love the addition that the tape is loose. It's coming up very soon, might get written tomorrow, so I do appreciate steering me in this direction so quickly.

Also liked the books suggestion--in fact, I had considered taking it out of the folder. But it would take her too long to find it all--documents and photos. Thanks.

Bind it, make it look like a boring book and put it on the bookshelf among 100 other books.

Or behind a photo in a frame.

Im only in it for maybe 45 min of my shift but if I had to hide something so that the next person using that office would find it it would be in one of these.

This is of course assuming there is a printer there that would get used a fair amount but you could always just keep a little bit of paper in the printer so when the next person went to print something they would look there. You could keep one of those on the desk, near the printer or in a drawer of the desk with nothing on top of it or other things on top.

from a retired office worker... how modern is the desk? Old wood or more modern?

gg

And I should have clarified but I didn't know I would get such wonderful and creative responses.

This is in a very small town in AZ. The office of the little local paper. Person taking over was the receptionist, but when the reporter died she was offered the job. This paper reports festival schedules, openings of new businesses, library board meetings, the new dog park, local road construction, greenway extensions, and the like. Nothing really happens there. I'm sure his/her desk is pretty old.

She lives with the person he had investigated and was on the verge of exposing when he died (guess who killed him?). She needs to find this file to move the story forward.

that would probably have a few desktop file holders. Put the documents in a clear file jacket and slip it in amongst the manila folders. A clear file jacket would be smaller than the folders and wouldn't be noticed, so put it in a file holder that is not being used for any current storyline.

My idea, hope it helps!

gg

The drawer bottoms are inset, so the sides extend past the bottom. Tape it to the outside of the drawer bottom.

or written in ink that is readable under UV light

It has a dowel on the left back corner which if pressed down will lock all the drawers, and it would be under the rolltop's edge. There would be a release mechanism in the rolltop which would allow the dowell to come up, thus unlocking all the drawers.

I have my grandfather's old wooden desk which once had a rolltop, and there is this square peg in the back which I have to keep weighted so I can open the drawers. It is hard to figure out how to get them open too. The peg is about 1 inch square and is in a round hole.

If modern, how about an SD card slipped under a mouse pad. ("A mouse pad? Who uses those any more?" )

For verisimilitude (and a cool in-joke), give it a picture of winged toasters.

I would tuck it in the pamphlet real tight and slide it in the bottom of a junk drawer... every desk has personal items and no one is going to open a church pamphlet in someone's desk.

I saw your AI question in one of my previous posts. I went with the suggestion to tape it under the desktop. The drawer kept catching when a character pulled it out, but was fine when it was pushed in. She got tired of that and investigated, and it was the folder with info about the murder in Kentucky. Super suggestion. As I mentioned before, book is (self)published and a done deal.