The Storage Unit

Gavin mentioned the storage unit on a Sunday.

It was casual — he was telling her about clearing out some things at Myrna's parents' house, downsizing, the kind of chore that中年人 did on weekends. He had rented a unit, he said. Years ago, after their mother died. He had put some things in it and then never gone back.

"Just old stuff," he said. "From the house. Mom's things, mostly. Some papers."

"Which unit?"

"Off Route 9. Near the old hardware store." He said it casually, which meant he did not know that the Route 9 address had been in the PI report, had been the thing she had circled in red and filed under interesting. She did not mention it. She filed it.

She called Diane the next day.

"The storage facility on Route 9," she said. "Can you find out who is leasing the units?"

Diane could. Diane did. The list came back with names and unit numbers and expiration dates, and one of the names on that list was not Drake — it was their mother's name, Ellen Marsh, from a unit that had been paid up for years.

Their mother, who had been dead for six years.

She did not call Gavin. Not yet. She sat with it and she thought about what it meant and she wrote it down in the evidence log without explaining what it meant, because she did not know yet, and what she did not know could not yet be written.