They were four elderly women, a baker with a head injury, and a purse full of emergency supplies, driving to a storage facility to retrieve a recipe card from a criminal’s duffel bag.
It was, by any reasonable measure, a terrible idea.
Nans had never let that stop her before.
The exit came up at four-forty-seven. Ruth took it without hesitation, and the highway gave way to surface roads — industrial parks, chain-link fences, the flat gray architecture of acity’s working edge. The storage facility was six minutes from the exit, according to Ruth’s iPad.
Six minutes.
Nans straightened her coat and said, “All right, ladies. Let’s go get that recipe.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
The storage facilitylooked 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.
A sign near the entrance read “EZ-Store Self Storage — 24-Hour Access — Climate Controlled Units Available.” Someone had spray-painted something unkind beneath it that had been half-heartedly scrubbed away.
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.
