Page 15 of Out of the Shadows (Angelhart Investigations)
Margo pulled into one of the four visitor slots in front of the Storage Spot and considered how she wanted to approach this.
She could go in straightforward, but they had no reason to tell her anything. The auction itself was public. She’d looked
evident because of a photo of the interior showing the boxes and furniture. Everything in the picture was in the O’Neills’
garage. She didn’t see a shoebox in the photo, but it could have been in one of the drawers.
Margo was not above lying to obtain information, but if she said she was with the law firm, that was easily disproved, and
they might have lawyers get involved because they sold the unit.
She decided to wing it.
She walked in and two young men in short-sleeved button-down shirts and khakis sat behind the counter. One was inputting files
into the computer, the other greeted her. He was tall with a used car salesman smile. “How may we help you?”
“I have some questions about your auction on Friday.”
“I’ll help if I can.”
“I went to your webpage that advertised the auction but couldn’t tell when it was posted.”
“Two weeks before the auction,” he said. “We take photos of the units in default and spread the word. Most of the people who
come to auctions are professionals—they know what they’re looking for, what they can resell. And a good chunk are antique
dealers who will bid on units with a lot of furniture. Sometimes we get amateurs who see an item and think they can get a
good deal on it. They don’t always know the rules.”
“Like?”
“You buy the whole unit. You can’t pick and choose, and you can’t leave anything behind.”
“Do they have to take the stuff right then?”
“No, we give them twenty-four hours.”
“They pay when they pick up?”
He shook his head. “They pay as soon as they win the auction, before we allow them to look through the items. Generally, the
winning bidders will pay, then enter and assess the goods, put their own lock on the unit, and return Saturday morning with
a truck.”
“Are these auctions weekly or monthly?”
“Quarterly. We don’t have many units in default, so the owner plans for quarterly auctions. Why all the questions? You planning
to get into the business?”
“No. A friend of mine was here on Friday—an amateur, he’d never done it before and was excited, told me all about it, but
it seemed weird.”
“How so?”
“He got all these boxes of files—nothing really of value. The furniture was nice, but not worth what he paid for it.”
“Aw, yeah, Unit 238. The unit from hell.”
Margo frowned and raised her eyebrows, silently urging the clerk to continue talking. When he didn’t, she prompted, “What
happened?”
“What didn’t happen? First, I have this guy practically bribing me to let him pay the fees on the unit and a thousand bucks
for my trouble. We can’t do that. Once the auction is posted, we are legally required to have the auction. I told him to come
on Friday and bid with everyone else. Sometimes we only have one or two bidders on a space, and I didn’t expect anyone to
want that unit—there wasn’t much in there, and the boxes were clearly file boxes. Didn’t look like they had much value to
me.”
“Odd,” Margo said and leaned slightly forward, as if hanging on his every word.
He nodded. “It’s happened before, but no one was ever thatpushy. And then Thursday night there was a break-in. Fortunately,
we have motion detectors that are separate from the alarm system. Whoever came disabled the alarm, so they had some skill,
but they didn’t know about the motion detectors inside the storage buildings because the office is on a separate system. The
alarm is loud, all these bright lights go off. The police came within seven minutes, but whoever broke in was gone.”
“How do you know they were after that unit?”
He shrugged. “I don’t, really, but we have three buildings, right? All climate controlled. They entered the building with
Unit 238. I actually didn’t think much about it until Friday during the auction.”
“What happened then?” Margo asked as if he was telling her the most fascinating story she’d ever heard. The more she seemed
interested, the chattier he got.
“So, like I said, usually we only have one or two people bidding on each unit. Sometimes a larger group comes if it’s really
good stuff—like last year, there was a unit that had a shit-ton of sports memorabilia. Signed baseballs, autographed pictures,
sporting equipment. Until Unit 238, that was the largest auction we had, went for over three thousand dollars. But the bidder
later sold most of the stuff and made many times more. But for a unit with boxes and a couple pieces of furniture? I expected
one, maybe two, and mostly wanting the office furniture.”
“Charlie said he was surprised. I can’t believe he paid that much,” Margo said, urging the guy to tell her what Charlie actually
paid, but asking would clue him in that she was making it all up and wasn’t privy to Charlie’s purchase.
“There were two other guys bidding,” the sales clerk said. “But they dropped out after it hit five thousand. Everything is
cash, so if you don’t have the cash on hand...” He shrugged. “Your friend Charlie came prepared, loaded everything right
then in a U-Haul he’d brought with him. One of the bidders left—he was really pissed—but the other guy, the one in a suit,
tried to get your friend to sell him the boxes. I thought he would, because literally the guy offered him five thousand cash
for three dozen boxes of what had to be worthless files—and he just smiled and said maybe he would after he went through everything.”
The second clerk piped up then, swiveling around on his stool. “You should have seen that guy flip out,” he said.
“Charlie doesn’t flip out,” Margo said. “He’s pretty even-tempered.” She had no idea, but from what Jack and Logan had said,
it was a good guess.
“No, the suit. He got all red in the face and then I heard him offer your friend five thousand cash now, and more later. When
I went over because it was getting testy, the guy walked away.”
“Do you have his name?” Margo said. “I mean, do you know why he was so interested in those things? Maybe they used to belong
to him?”
“Never saw him before,” the first clerk said, and the second nodded. “Never saw any of those three people bidding on Unit
238. Which is odd, because we get a lot of repeat bidders.”
The office phone started ringing, and Margo thanked him for his time.
Files from a law firm... what was the value? Why were they in the storage unit? Why in default? And why were people so
interested in them?
Her cell phone rang when she drove away. It was her mother.
“Hi, Mom.”
“Margo. Where did you find the files?”
“In a garage. They were auctioned off at a self-storage facility,” Margo said. She told her what she’d learned. “So who are
these lawyers? Why would they store their files instead of passing them to whoever took over their practice?”
“John Thornton and Vincent Hedge.”
“You know them?”
“I knew John, never met his partner. They handled family law. John died four, nearly five months ago. His partner, who was
already semi-retired, shut down the practice.”
“Charlie Barrett paid over five thousand for the contents of their storage unit.”
“That seems high.”
“Very high. Not only that, two others were bidding against him.”
“Something important must be in there.”
“There are thirty-seven boxes that Charlie left with a friend. I might be able to convince Jack to pick them up and we can
go through them, see what’s so valuable.”
“Family law reveals a lot of dark secrets. Some of the files won’t be public record. It’s highly unethical for Vincent Hedge
to store the documents in such a manner. They should have been destroyed, or sent to another law office.”
“Charlie was alive and well Saturday morning when he brought the items to his friend’s house. But that’s the last person I
can find who saw him.”
“Where are you now?”
“Heading to Laura’s to relieve Jack.”
“Be careful.”
Margo smiled. She was thirty-three and had been in the Army for six years, a private investigator for more than eight, and
was well-trained with all manner of weapons, and still her mom worried.
“I promise.”