In the dream my father's briefcase is still warm

I'm sorting his letters by smell instead of date — coal smoke, then lavender, then nothing at all. The briefcase is sitting on the kitchen counter and it's warm, the way a seat is warm after someone gets up. I open it and there are no papers, just cassettes of the 5am fridge hum, labelled in his handwriting. I keep thinking I should catalogue them before the recordings fade.