Chapter 4 - STORAGE UNIT 214
“How do I know you’re telling the truth?”
Celeste flinched.
Not much.
Enough.
“You don’t.”
“That’s convenient.”
“I’m aware.”
“You dumped my mother’s ashes into the rain yesterday.”
Her mouth tightened.
“I know what I did.”
“No. You know what you did. I’m not convinced you understand it.”
Blake stood silently in the hallway now.
He had heard enough to lose the color in his face.
“Mom?”
Celeste turned.
“Go upstairs.”
“I’m not twelve.”
“No, Blake. You’re twenty-six, which means you should understand when I’m telling you that this has nothing to do with you.”
A bitter laugh left him.
“Everything in this family somehow has something to do with me.”
Grant’s footsteps sounded somewhere downstairs.
Celeste immediately lowered her voice.
“Red Oak Storage. North side of town. Unit 214.”
Marianne looked at her.
“What’s there?”
“I don’t know anymore.”
“What does that mean?”
Celeste reached into a kitchen drawer and removed a small white access card.
“I haven’t been back since the night Richard and your mother died.”
I stared at her.
“The night they died?”
Celeste’s fingers tightened around the card.
“Yes.”
Grant called from the living room.
“Celeste?”
She shoved the card into my hand.
“Go.”
“Why were you there?”
“Not here.”
“Celeste—”
“Go, Nora.”
For once, fear outweighed arrogance in her face.
Real fear.
Marianne saw it too.
We left.
Red Oak Storage sat beside an abandoned furniture warehouse fifteen minutes from my father’s office.
Unit 214 was located at the end of the second row.
The access card still worked.
Inside, dust floated through the beam of the overhead light.
There was no treasure.
No cash.
No dramatic wall covered with criminal evidence.
There were cardboard boxes.
An old dining chair.
Two filing cabinets.
And my mother’s tan winter coat.
I stopped in the doorway.
She had worn that coat for almost ten years.
I could still remember standing beside her at Christmas while she complained the pockets were too shallow.
“Why is that here?”
Marianne didn’t answer.
I walked toward it.
The coat smelled faintly of her perfume.
That nearly broke me.
I pressed my face against the shoulder for one second.
Then I forced myself to keep moving.
One pocket held a lipstick.
The other held a folded parking ticket.
HARRISON CENTER GARAGE.
Tuesday.
8:56 P.M.
The garage where my parents were killed.
Police believed the shooting happened shortly before ten.
My mother had arrived nearly an hour earlier.
“She was meeting someone.”
Marianne nodded.
“Possibly your father.”
We opened the boxes.
Bank statements.
Corporate filings.
Photocopies of canceled checks.
Red Oak appeared everywhere.
Payments moved from one company into another.
Then another.
Some ended in accounts I didn’t recognize.
One payment caught Marianne’s attention.
“Look.”
The recipient was a company called B.R. Consulting.
“Do you know it?”
“No.”
She pointed toward the initials.
“Blake’s middle name?”
“Ryan.”
B.R.
Blake Ryan.
“No.”
I shook my head.
“He’s stupid sometimes. Cruel yesterday. But he isn’t running a consulting company.”
“That doesn’t mean somebody didn’t use his name.”
The next box contained photographs.
My parents together.
My father and Celeste.
My mother alone.
Then one photograph that made me sit down.
All three of them were in it.
My father.
My mother.
Celeste.
They were sitting in a diner booth.
Coffee cups in front of them.
Celeste looked exhausted.
My mother had one hand wrapped around hers.
They did not look like enemies.
On the back, my father had written:
FRIDAY. SHE AGREED TO HELP.
I thought about every story I had told myself.
Celeste hated my mother.
My mother tolerated Celeste.
My father kept the two worlds separate.
Apparently none of that was entirely true.
“What did she agree to?”
Marianne held up a Red Oak statement.
“I think we’re looking at it.”
A metal filing cabinet stood against the back wall.
Drawer one was empty.
Drawer two held tax returns.
Drawer three was locked.
The brass key from my grandfather didn’t fit.
We found a smaller key taped beneath the bottom drawer.
Inside were three folders.
Green.
Black.
White.
No blue.
But there was an inventory sheet.
BLUE FILE — ORIGINAL TRANSACTIONS / DEED ATTEMPT / MEETING NOTES.
REMOVED: TUESDAY, 10:38 P.M.
Initials appeared beside it.
C.V.
Celeste.
I stared at the time.
My parents were killed before ten.
Celeste had entered the unit less than an hour later.
“She said she hadn’t been back since the night they died.”
Marianne’s expression changed.
“She didn’t say when that night.”
A camera hung above the aisle outside.
We went to the front office.
The manager still had access logs.
Celeste’s card had entered the property at 10:31.
Exited at 10:52.
I felt sick.
The police had not notified the family about the murders until after eleven.
I knew because I had been with Celeste when the call came.
Which meant Celeste came here before anyone had officially told us my parents were dead.
When we returned to the house, she was alone in the kitchen.
I placed the access log on the table.
Her face drained.
“You entered Unit 214 at ten-thirty-one.”
She looked at the paper.
“You removed the blue folder.”
Silence.
“The police didn’t tell us Dad was dead until eleven-fifteen.”
Celeste lowered herself into a chair.
Blake appeared in the doorway.
I leaned forward.
“How did you know to go there?”
Celeste looked first at Blake.
Then at me.
Her answer came barely above a whisper.
“Because Grant came home at ten-oh-seven.”
Blake froze.
Celeste’s eyes filled with something I had not seen from her before.
May you like
Shame.
“And there was blood on his shirt.”
