Chapter 8
CHAPTER EIGHT
The storage facility looked exactly like the kind of place where criminals kept things they didn’t want found.
It sat on an industrial road between a tire warehouse and a vacant lot, surrounded by chain-link fence topped with barbed wire that sagged in places like it had given up trying.
The building itself was long and low, concrete block painted a gray that had once been white, with rows of orange roll-up doors stretching down both sides.
Fluorescent lights buzzed overhead, casting everything in a sickly yellow tone.
Ruth pulled into the lot and parked near the entrance.
The lot was mostly empty — a pickup truck near the far end, a sedan with a tarp over it that looked like it hadn’t moved in months, and nothing else.
The facility office was a small glass-fronted room attached to the main building, lit from within by the pale blue glow of a television screen.
They sat in the car for a moment, the engine ticking as it cooled.
“Unit forty-seven,” Nans said.
“How do we get in?” Helen asked.
“We ask,” Nans said.
“And if asking doesn’t work?” Ida patted her purse.
“Then we ask more creatively,” Nans said. “But let’s start with asking.”
The office was warm and smelled like microwave popcorn.
A young man sat behind the counter — early twenties, thin, wearing a hoodie with the EZ-Store logo and an expression that suggested he’d rather be anywhere else.
A small television on the counter was playing a rerun of something with a laugh track.
“Evening,” Nans said pleasantly. “I’m hoping you can help me.”
“Uh, sure. What do you need?”
“My son rented a unit here — number forty-seven — and he asked me to check on a delivery for him. He’s traveling and couldn’t get here himself.
” Nans smiled the smile — the warm, grandmotherly one that she deployed like a precision instrument.
“You know how boys are. They always need their mothers to sort things out.”
The young man’s expression softened. “I’d need to see some ID and check it against the rental agreement—”
Ida appeared at Nans’ elbow. She set the plate she’d made at the bakery on the counter. “We brought snacks. For working so late. It must be lonely out here.”
The young man looked at the plate. He looked at Ida. He looked at the plate again. His last meal had clearly been the microwave popcorn, and the scones were still giving off a faint, buttery warmth.
“I mean,” he said slowly, “I guess I could just walk you down there. I’m supposed to escort visitors to units that aren’t in their name.”
“That’s very responsible of you,” Helen said from the doorway.
“We just need to look,” Nans confirmed. “Five minutes.”
He grabbed a ring of keys from a hook behind the counter, tucked a scone into his hoodie pocket for later, and led them down the corridor.
Unit 47 was at the end of a corridor near the back of the building. The young man unlocked the padlock, rolled up the door with a metallic screech, and stepped aside.
The unit was packed with the kind of random accumulation that suggested Sal Baretti used it as a dumping ground for various jobs. Cardboard boxes stacked along the back wall, some sealed, some open. A broken floor lamp. Two garbage bags full of something soft, that Nans was afraid to peek into.
On the floor, near the front, sat the black duffel bag.
It sat slightly unzipped, its sides bulging, exactly where someone had dropped it without much thought. A fine dusting of flour coated the surrounding concrete in a pale half-circle.
Lexy knelt on the concrete floor and pulled the duffel open with both hands.
Inside the half empty flour bag slumped on one side.
They’d already collected the diamonds from it, apparently.
In the middle was a cracked bowl and a measuring cup.
The broken remains of the honey jar, amber liquid soaked into everything amidst eggshell fragments and a bent whisk.
Lexy dug deeper, her hands pushing aside the bowls, reaching into the flour-dusted bottom of the bag. Her fingers touched paper. She pulled it out carefully.
It was crumpled. It was stained. The faded floral border was barely visible beneath the grime. One edge was torn, a small triangular piece missing.
But the handwriting was there. Great-grandma Rose’s small, precise script, the ink faded from blue to soft gray.
Lexy pressed the card to her chest and closed her eyes.
“Got it,” Lexy whispered.
“Good,” Nans said softly. Then, briskly: “Let’s go.”
Ida was already moving toward the corridor. Ruth was thanking the young man, who was finishing the scone and looking pleased with the transaction.
They walked back through the maze of corridors, past the office, and out into the parking lot.
The air was cold, fully dark now, the fluorescent lights casting long shadows across the pavement. The blue Oldsmobile sat where they’d left it, twenty yards away. Safety. Escape.
Lexy clutched the recipe card inside her coat, protecting it from the cold with both hands.
They were halfway to the car when headlights swept across the lot.
A black SUV turned in from the road and rolled slowly toward them, its engine a low, deliberate rumble. It pulled across the lane between the ladies and Ruth’s sedan and stopped.
The engine idled. The headlights stayed on, pinning them in white light.
Three doors opened.
Sal Baretti stepped out of the driver’s side, his leather jacket open despite the cold, his expression flat and unsurprised, as though finding five women in his storage facility parking lot was exactly the kind of inconvenience his evening had been building toward.
Needles unfolded from the passenger side, thin and twitchy, his too-big overcoat flapping in the wind. His eyes darted from the ladies to the facility entrance and back.
And from the back seat, with the unhurried grace of a man who never rushed because the world arranged itself around his schedule, stepped a third figure.
He was tall, lean, wearing a cashmere overcoat the color of charcoal and leather gloves that fit like a second skin.
His hair was silver, cut short, and his face had the kind of angular precision that might have been handsome if it hadn’t been so entirely without warmth.
He looked at the five women in the parking lot the way a man looks at an unexpected line item on an otherwise clean spreadsheet.
Nans figured this had to be Victor Crane.
“Ladies,” His voice was quiet, cultured, and completely without hurry. “What a coincidence.”