Chapter 5 - Storage Unit Seventeen
Elaine was waiting outside the storage facility at eight the next morning.
She wore jeans, a navy rain jacket, and the expression of someone who hadn't slept much either.
David stood beside her holding two cups of coffee.
I got out of my rental car.
"Where's Clare?"
"At the hotel," David said.
"She wanted to come, but I convinced her to get some rest."
"Good."
Elaine accepted that without comment.
Then she pointed toward the security cameras mounted above the facility entrance.
"The manager knows we're here."
"Do you have the lease?"
"Yes."
"And documentation authorizing access?"
She held up a folder.
"Your mother was meticulous."
I looked at the faded brick buildings.
"About everything except choosing husbands."
Elaine's mouth tightened.
"She would have laughed at that."
For a moment, I pictured my mother laughing.
Really laughing.
Not the polite sound she made when my father told a joke in company.
The uncontrolled laugh she used to have while watching bad television with us.
I hadn't heard it in years before she died.
We walked toward unit seventeen.
The brass key slid into the lock.
It turned on the first try.
Inside were metal shelves, sealed boxes, an old cedar chest, and a narrow filing cabinet covered by a white sheet.
The air smelled of cardboard and dust.
David switched on the overhead light.
Elaine stood motionless.
"I haven't opened this unit since Eleanor died."
I glanced at her.
"You kept paying for it."
"Yes."
"Why?"
"Because she asked me to."
"Without knowing what was inside?"
Elaine met my eyes.
"I knew some of it."
I waited.
"But not everything."
That was becoming a familiar phrase.
I stepped toward the filing cabinet.
A small envelope had been taped to the front.
My name was written on it.
Not Evelyn.
Not Major General.
Just the name my mother used when I was young.
Evie.
I stared at it.
My father had never called me that.
He considered nicknames undignified.
My mother used it when she wanted me to come into the kitchen for cookies.
Or when I was sick.
Or when she caught me reading after midnight with a flashlight.
I peeled the envelope loose.
Inside was a short note.
Evie,
Before you look at anything else, open the cedar chest.
I need you to remember who you were before they made you question yourself.
I read the sentence twice.
Then I crossed the unit.
The cedar chest had a simple brass latch.
Inside were photographs.
My childhood.
Clare's childhood.
Birthday parties.
Camping trips.
A snow-covered backyard.
The first bike I'd learned to ride without training wheels.
My mother had saved everything my father removed from the house.
I picked up a photograph of myself at seventeen.
I was standing beside a homemade wooden airplane.
Its wings were uneven.
Its paint was terrible.
But I'd built the model with my mother's help, and I was smiling as though I'd invented flight itself.
On the back, she'd written:
She was always going to find her own sky.
I lowered myself onto the concrete floor.
For fifteen years, I had believed my father erased me.
He had certainly tried.
But my mother had kept the evidence that I existed.
Every report card.
Every birthday card.
Every photograph he ordered taken down.
And there, beneath a folded blue blanket, lay the small silver bracelet she'd given me when I graduated high school.
I had searched for it the night I packed.
It had disappeared from my dresser.
My father told me I must have lost it.
I fastened it around my wrist.
Elaine turned away discreetly.
David pretended to inspect the shelves.
I was grateful to both of them.
After a few minutes, I stood.
"All right."
My voice sounded steadier than I felt.
"Let's find the ledger."
We began with the filing cabinet.
Elaine photographed the shelves and box labels before moving anything.
David kept a handwritten inventory.
I was glad they were being careful.
If there was anything here that could become evidence, the last thing I wanted was a careless argument about who found it or how it was handled.
The first drawer contained tax returns.
The second held company correspondence.
The third contained bank records and a thick blue binder.
I opened it.
Northbridge Consulting appeared on the first page.
My pulse quickened.
Payments.
Dates.
Bank routing references.
A collection of handwritten notes.
Some entries bore my mother's initials.
Others had question marks beside them.
I turned to a page dated fifteen years earlier.
There it was.
The same code.
NC-417.
I checked the photocopy of the transfer agreement.
NC-417 appeared beside a transaction reference at the bottom.
My mother had noticed it, too.
"What is it?" Elaine asked.
I showed her.
She put on her glasses.
"That's interesting."
"Interesting how?"
"It could connect the two records."
"Or it could be an internal accounting reference."
"Exactly."
I looked at her.
"You're going to make me prove every inch of this, aren't you?"
"Yes."
For the first time that morning, I smiled.
"Good."
We spent nearly two hours reviewing the contents.
The more we found, the less I liked what I saw.
Northbridge wasn't simply an outside consultant.
It appeared to have received payments from several related companies.
Some were described as risk assessments.
Others as administrative services.
But the supporting documents were inconsistent.
Several invoices carried identical descriptions across different years.
A few were dated before the company supposedly performed the work.
And one memorandum suggested that an insurance reserve account had been used to finance an unrelated property transaction.
I stopped.
Read the paragraph again.
Then looked at Elaine.
"Was Mom concerned about the insurance reserves?"
"Yes."
"Did she report it?"
"She started asking questions internally."
"To whom?"
"Your father."
Of course.
"And Richard?"
"Yes."
I closed the binder.
"Did she ever take the records to an outside auditor?"
Elaine hesitated.
"She tried."
"Who?"
"Martin Keller."
The name sounded familiar.
I searched my memory.
A man with thick glasses.
A quiet voice.
A tendency to remove his tie before dessert at our family Christmas dinners.
"He was Dad's accountant."
"He was an outside auditor for the company before Gerald replaced him."
"When?"
Elaine looked at me.
"Two weeks after you left home."
My stomach tightened.
"Where is he now?"
"Retired."
"Alive?"
"Yes."
"Would he talk to us?"
"I don't know."
I pulled out my phone.
"Let's find out."
Elaine raised a hand.
"Not yet."
I stopped.
"Why?"
"Because before you contact anybody, we need to decide how to protect what we've found."
She looked around the unit.
"Your mother spent years preserving these records."
David nodded.
"And Gerald already knows Elaine brought documents to the wedding."
I looked at the open binder.
The photographs.
The boxes.
The history of my mother's fear.
"Then we document everything and take the originals to secure storage."
Elaine nodded.
"I can arrange that through my office."
We worked for another hour.
Near the bottom of the filing cabinet, I found an unlabeled manila envelope.
Inside was a photograph.
My father and Richard stood beside a younger man in front of a small office building.
A blue-and-white sign hung above the entrance.
Northbridge Consulting.
On the back, my mother had written a date.
Then three words.
Ask about Daniel.
I showed it to Elaine.
Her face changed immediately.
"Who is Daniel?" I asked.
She didn't answer.
"Elaine?"
She sat slowly on a cardboard box.
"Daniel Price."
"Who was he?"
She looked at the photograph again.
"He worked for Northbridge."
"What happened to him?"
Her voice became quiet.
"He disappeared from the company records after a serious car accident."
I frowned.
"When?"
"Fifteen years ago."
My pulse quickened.
"Before or after Dad threw me out?"
Elaine met my eyes.
"Three days before."
I looked back at the photograph.
The younger man was smiling.
Richard's hand rested on his shoulder.
My father stood beside them, looking directly into the camera.
"What kind of accident?"
Elaine swallowed.
"That's the part I think you need to hear from Daniel himself."
I stared at her.
"You said he disappeared."
"From the records."
"Not from the world?"
"No."
"Then where is he?"
Elaine hesitated.
"According to the last address I have, he's in Ohio."
I slipped the photograph back into its envelope.
"Then we go to Ohio."
David's phone rang.
He glanced at the screen.
His expression tightened.
"It's Clare."
He answered.
"Hey, sweetheart."
He listened.
Then his face went pale.
"What do you mean they're at the hotel?"
I stepped closer.
David put the call on speaker.
Clare's frightened voice filled the storage unit.
"Dad sent two lawyers to our room."
"Don't sign anything," Elaine said immediately.
"I haven't."
Clare's breath caught.
"They say I have until noon to sign a statement."
"What statement?" I asked.
May you like
My sister began to cry.
"One saying Evelyn lied about everything last night."
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