Page 18 of Guess Again

Maple Bluff, Wisconsin Friday, July 11, 2025

LAKESIDE STORAGE WAS LOCATED IN MAPLE BLUFF, A SMALL SUBURB of Madison on the northwest side of Lake Mendota.

Early Friday morning, she walked into the doublewide trailer that acted as the storage facility’s rental office and smiled at the woman behind the desk.

“Hi,”

she said.

“I need to rent a single unit.”

“What size, sweetie?”

the woman asked.

“Oh, like, medium, I guess?”

“Our smallest units are ten by ten.

Those are pretty tight.

Then we’ve got two middle-sized units that are twenty by twenty and thirty by thirty.

Our biggest unit is—”

“The twenty foot one should be fine.”

The woman reached for paperwork and started scribbling.

“What’s the purpose of the storage unit?”

“Um, just clearing out my basement but not ready to part with all the junk just yet.”

The woman looked up from the paperwork.

“I need a name and credit card.”

“Eugenia Morgan,”

she said, handing over the card.

“Card gets auto charged every month.

If the card gets canceled or expires, we give you ninety days to submit a new form of payment.

After ninety days, we clear out the unit.

Everything goes in the dumpster, no auctioning off the items like on TV.”

“Understood.”

She knew the credit card would eventually fall past due, but that would take a couple of months.

By then, she’d be long gone and the people who Francis wanted to show the photos to would have discovered the storage unit.

“The twenty-by-twenty is eighty-nine dollars.

Due on the fifteenth of each month.

I need you to fill out the top with your personal information—name, address, phone number.

Then sign at the bottom.”

She did as she was told and scribbled a signature.

The woman tossed a small envelope onto the table.

“Unit 223.

The key is in the envelope and will open the side door to the unit.

The bay door in the front is controlled by a keypad.

Code is on the front of the envelope.

It’s all yours.”

“Thank you,”

she said, scooping up the envelope and hurrying out of the office.

A few minutes later she drove the Ford Focus along the gravel path that ran in front of the storage units until she found number 223.

She suspected that surveillance cameras were recording her movements, and that was just fine.

She climbed from her car and walked to the large bay door.

Each unit was a standalone set in a long cluster.

In the background, Lake Mendota was visible between the units. She tapped the 4-digit code onto the keypad and the bay door rattled open. A wall switch ignited a bank of overhead fluorescents. She climbed back into her car, twisted the steering wheel, and reversed until the back end was just inside the unit.

It took ten minutes to unload the contents of her trunk.

It was everything she had collected from the footlocker in the abandoned warehouse two nights before.

Touching the items—especially the photos of the dead women from 1993—sent a shiver through her body.

She arranged the photos as instructed, and knew Francis would be pleased with her work.

With the storage unit locked and secured, she pulled out of the lot and drove an hour and a half to Boscobel.

It killed her to be so close to Francis without seeing him.

But she was not there to visit the Wisconsin Secure Program Facility.

The drive to Boscobel served a different purpose today.

She found the post office, and pulled into the drive-thru lane, stopping at the mailbox. From the middle console she removed a pair of latex gloves and slipped her hands into them. Then she pulled an envelope from the glove box. It was addressed to Maddie Jacobson. She dropped it through the slot in the mailbox, assuring that the letter—like all the others—would have a Boscobel postmark, and pulled away.

So far, she’d accomplished every task Francis had asked of her.