Chapter 6 - The Empty Storage Unit|
The package contained no bomb, no weapon, and no message from a stranger.
It contained a photograph of Clara leaving her apartment that morning.
Someone had taken it from across the street.
On the back, written in neat block letters, were the words: STOP LOOKING.
Dante's security chief placed the photograph inside a clear evidence sleeve.
“Someone knows where she lives.”
“Then her apartment is no longer safe,” Dante said.
Clara stiffened.
“I'm not moving into your house.”
“I didn't ask you to.”
“You were about to.”
“I was about to offer you a hotel room with private security. You can refuse it if you prefer.”
Clara hated that he had anticipated her objection.
She hated even more that the photograph had made her afraid to return home.
Margaret Ellis sat in a chair near the reception desk, her hands trembling around a paper cup of water.
“I should never have come here,” she whispered.
Clara knelt beside her, ignoring the pain in her knee.
“You came because you wanted to help my mother. I'm not blaming you.”
Margaret looked at her.
“Evelyn used to say you had a stubborn heart.”
“She said that when I was twelve and tried to rescue a kitten from a storm drain.”
“She said it when you were twenty, too. You sent her money from your first paycheck, even though she had told you to save it.”
Clara blinked back tears.
“What else did she tell you?”
Margaret hesitated.
“That she was afraid the people involved would eventually find you. She didn't know how much evidence had survived. She only knew that some of the records were copied onto a small storage drive.”
“Where is it?”
“That's what the storage unit was supposed to tell us.”
Dante turned to his security chief.
“Get the rental history. Find out who accessed the unit last.”
The man nodded and stepped away.
Clara looked at Dante.
“If you already know so much about the Moretti family, why didn't you investigate this years ago?”
“I did.”
“And?”
“My uncle died before I could question him. The internal audit was incomplete. Two witnesses withdrew their statements, and one moved overseas. Every trail ended at a different locked door.”
“Did you give up?”
“No.”
He spoke without pride.
“I kept looking. But I never knew Evelyn Bennett had preserved a second set of records.”
Margaret suddenly looked toward the entrance.
A man in a charcoal suit stood outside the glass doors. He wasn't trying to enter. He simply watched the lobby.
When Clara noticed him, he turned away.
“Do you know him?” she asked.
Dante followed her gaze.
His security chief returned almost immediately.
“He's gone. Our camera caught him getting into a taxi, but the plate was obscured.”
“Find him,” Dante ordered.
Then he turned to Clara.
“We're going to Queens.”
“I thought the unit was empty.”
“It may be empty now. That doesn't mean it was always empty.”
The drive to Queens took forty minutes. Dante traveled in a black SUV with two security vehicles ahead and behind. Clara sat beside him, watching New York slide past the tinted windows.
She had never been inside a car like this. She had never been escorted anywhere by men who checked every intersection before turning.
“Is your life always like this?” she asked.
“Like what?”
“Everyone watching everyone else. Every conversation hiding another conversation.”
“Not always.”
“When is it different?”
“When I'm alone.”
She studied him.
“Are you ever alone?”
He didn't answer.
The storage facility was a row of steel doors behind a chain-link fence. The manager had already been contacted by Dante's office. He led them to unit 214, where the lock hung open.
Inside were cardboard boxes, a broken lamp, a stack of old newspapers, and an empty metal filing cabinet.
Clara walked through the dust slowly.
Someone had searched the place thoroughly. Scrape marks crossed the floor. The cabinet drawers had been removed and left against the wall.
Dante's security chief examined the door.
“The lock was replaced recently.”
“Can you tell who did it?” Clara asked.
“Not from this.”
Clara crouched beside a box marked WINTER CLOTHES. It was nearly empty, but one corner had been reinforced with fresh tape.
She peeled it back.
A thin envelope slid out.
Inside was a photograph of her mother standing beside the same man from the old picture—the man with the silver compass tie pin.
On the back, Evelyn had written:
If the records disappear, look for the person who has been paying for them to stay hidden.
Beneath the sentence was a bank reference number.
Dante stared at it.
“That's not a storage account.”
“What is it?”
“A charitable foundation.”
“Which one?”
He looked up at her.
“The Evelyn Bennett Children's Fund.”
Clara felt her heart stop.
“My mother never had a children's fund.”
“No,” Dante said quietly. “She didn't.”
He handed the photograph to his security chief.
“Someone created a foundation in her name after she died.”
Clara looked around the empty unit, suddenly understanding the real purpose of the search.
They hadn't come to retrieve her mother's evidence.
May you like
They had come to discover that someone had been using her mother's name for twenty years.
And if that was true, the person behind it might have been making money from a dead woman's reputation all along.
