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.”
CHAPTER NINE
Nobody moved.The headlights from the SUV held them in place like a spotlight.
Crane walked toward them. He didn’t hurry. Behind him, Sal fell into step on his right, heavy and solid, and Needles drifted to his left, his hands buried in his oversized coat, his eyes jumping from face to face.
Crane stopped about eight feet away. Close enough to talk. Close enough, Nans noted, for Sal to reach them in two strides.
“I’m going to assume,” Crane said, his voice carrying easily in the cold air, “that you’re not here renting a unit.”
Nans stepped forward just enough to put herself between Crane and the others.
“Mr. Crane,” she said calmly. “We haven’t been introduced, but I suspect you know why we’re here.”
Something moved behind Crane’s eyes — not surprise, exactly, but a recalculation. He hadn’t expected her to know his name. “You have me at a disadvantage.”
