Raleigh’s jaw flexed. “What do you expect to find in Moseley’s locker?”
“Gee, I don’t know,” Winter said. “Maybe some proof that Kendall Moseley really was an obsessive stalker.”
“You think he’d keep that kind of evidence in his spa locker?” Raleigh asked.
“He was a crazy, obsessive stalker,” Jack said. “There’s no telling what he might have stashed in his locker.”
Raleigh glowered at Winter. “Moseley’s locker is in the men’s dressing room. You can’t go in there. We’re busy this morning. Guys will be in there.”
“No problem,” Winter said. “Jack will go with you.”
Raleigh leveled his gaze at Jack.
“You’re not a member of the spa,” he said.
“Don’t worry about me,” Jack said. “I think I can fake it.”
“Members only in the locker rooms.”
“Pretend I’m a prospective member and you’re giving me a tour,” Jack said.
Raleigh gave up.
“Follow me,” he said.
Approximately two minutes later Jack stood beside Raleigh in the men’s locker room. Together they examined the narrow metal cabinet that Raleigh had just opened.
“Shit,” Raleigh said. He sounded genuinely shaken. “Winter was right. Moseley really was crazy.”
In addition to the usual paraphernalia associated with a man’s locker—deodorant, a shaver, a pair of shower flip-flops—there were photos. Dozens of them. Almost all of them were of Winter. They had clearly been taken from a distance and without her knowledge.
There were enlarged photos of her walking into an apartment building. Photos of her getting into her car. Photos of her coming out of a grocery store. Photos of her in the spa’s parking lot.
There was also a single photo of Winter walking alone on the beach at Eclipse Bay. Jack saw one photo of himself, too. It showed him leaving Winter’s cottage one afternoon.
“What the fuck?” Raleigh said. “Looks like there are little rips in all those pictures.”
“Yes,” Jack said. “It does look like that.”
In every picture of Winter a sharp blade had been used to make a small, precision cut—right across her throat.
Jack pulled on a pair of plastic gloves and reached into the locker to pick up the two Eclipse Bay photos. Neither picture had been taken with the same camera that had been used for the photos of Winter in Cassidy Springs. The Eclipse Bay images had been captured by a high-powered telephoto lens.
Raleigh was clearly panic-stricken. “If word gets out that there was a crazy killer using my spa, it will be the last straw for this place. I’ll be ruined.”
“Yeah, could be a real promotion nightmare, all right,” Jack said.
He shuffled through the photos but there was nothing else of interest. No helpful notes scrawled on the back. No names. No references to a mysterious friend.
He slipped the two photos that had been taken with a long-range lens inside his jacket and turned to leave.
“Hey, what do you think you’re doing?” Raleigh called after him.
“Salvaging some evidence. Call me psychic but I’m getting a vibe that tells me that as soon as Winter and I leave the building today, you’re going to clean out this locker and make all this evidence disappear.”
Raleigh hurried after him. “I’ve got every right to empty this locker.”
“Yes, you do,” Jack said. “Good luck trying to keep this quiet.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Gail Bloom waited until Winter and Jack Lancaster left and got into a van parked in front of the lobby entrance. Then she looked at Nina.
“I’m amazed that Winter got that paycheck out of Raleigh,” she said.
“So am I,” Nina said. “It probably helped that she had Lancaster for backup.”
“Yes. Lancaster was very helpful, wasn’t he? I’m going to get some coffee. I’ll be back in a few.”
“No rush,” Nina said. “I’ll watch the front desk until you get back. Not like we’re swamped with business.”
“No.”
Gail walked outside into the warm California sun but she did not go into the café next door. Instead, she kept walking until she reached the corner. She stepped into the shady side street. When she was sure she could not be overheard, she took out her phone and called the number the good-looking undercover detective had given her. He answered immediately.
“This is Knight. What do you have for me?”
“Winter showed up here today, just as you predicted,” Gail said. “And she wasn’t alone. A man named Jack Lancaster was with her. They got the boss to open Moseley’s locker. I think they found some photos.”
“Did Lancaster and the woman give any indication of where they were headed?”
“Winter said they were going to have some lunch and run some errands. After that, they are going to Cassidy Springs Self-Storage to get the stuff Winter left in a locker there.”
“What are they driving?”
“A rental van. Guess they need it for Winter’s things. Look, are you really sure she’s in trouble?”
“Yes,” Knight said. “Your friend is in a lot of trouble. But we’ll take care of her. Don’t worry, we’re good at this kind of thing.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
An hour and a half later Winter stood in the center of Kendall Moseley’s apartment and watched Jack conclude his search. He had gone through each room of the place in typical Jack style—methodically and with attention to detail.
The good news was that, after Jack slipped the manager a crisp hundred-dollar bill, the manager had not objected to letting them look around. He had warned them that they probably wouldn’t find much because the local police had paid a visit earlier that morning. He had only seen one evidence bag.
Jack emerged from the kitchen.
“Nothing,” he said.
“If there was anything interesting in here the cops probably bagged it this morning,” Winter said.
“No. They wouldn’t have found anything, either, except what whoever cleaned up the place wanted them to find. Probably more photos and maybe the camera Moseley used to take them.”
A chill raised the small hairs on the back of Winter’s neck.
“You think someone got in here last night to make sure there was no evidence of the chat room buddy?”
“I think it’s more likely that this place was staged shortly after Moseley left town to head to Eclipse Bay. Whoever was running him knew he wasn’t going to come back alive.”
“Where does that leave us?”
“It leaves us hoping that Xavier can pull up some online leads to Moseley’s chat room buddy,” Jack said. “Let’s grab a bite to eat, pick up your mail and then get your stuff out of the self-storage facility.”
“We’re going back to Eclipse Bay?”
“I doubt it,” Jack said. “But if Zane is watching, I want him to continue to believe that we are focused on Moseley and your sofa.”
She cleared her throat. “Just so you know, I am focused on that sofa.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
“I really appreciate this,” Winter said. “I hated leaving so much of my stuff behind. I had to put a lot of things into storage because I couldn’t fit all of them in my car.”
Jack glanced back into the shadowed interior of the van. It was, he reflected, a small space.
“You’re sure everything in your locker will fit into the back of this vehicle?” he asked.
“Yes,” she said. She unclipped her seat belt. “When you move around as much as I do, you don’t accumulate a lot of things.”
He thought about his own history of moving around. Currently he only traveled with what he could carry in his SUV.
“I know what you mean,” he said.
“I’ll get out and open the gate.” Winter took a slip of paper out of the pocket of her jacket. “I’ve got the code.”
She opened her door, jumped down to the ground and went quickly to the security box beside the big gate.
Jack waited, one hand resting on the wheel, and studied the sign that advertised safe, secure, climate-controlled storage lockers. There was an impressive-looking chain-link fence crowned with some coiled barbed wire around the facility but aside from that, the rest of the security appeared somewhat iffy. But he had been raised by a cop and his family was in the security business. He was inclined to be picky when it came to such matters.
The storage locker facility was located on the outskirts of town in a largely rural area. There were only two other vehicles in the parking lot. Both were parked close to the small office.
Winter got the gate open. She hurried back to the van and climbed inside.
“Looks like a prison, doesn’t it?” she said.
“No,” Jack said. “Prisons have better security.”
He got the feeling Winter might have rolled her eyes at that remark but he couldn’t be sure. He suspected she was focused on her precious sofa.
He glanced at the small office as he drove through the gate and into the yard. On the other side of the window he could see a woman sitting at a battered desk. She had her back to the view of the front gate, so he could not see her face, but something about her posture told him that she was probably in her early thirties, trim and athletic.
She wore a gray hoodie. Her dark hair was anchored in a ponytail. She appeared to be engrossed in whatever was on her phone. She was not paying any attention to the two security camera monitors mounted on the wall beside the desk.
“Don’t you need to check in at the office?” he asked.
“No,” Winter said. “When I rented the place they gave me the code. That’s all I need to come and go. The place is open twenty-four-seven but the office is only staffed during the day.”
Jack brought the van to a halt and waited until the automatic gate closed behind him.
He studied the large lockers that lined the exterior of the main building. They were designed for vehicles and boats.
“I assume your locker is inside?” he asked.
“Yes, it’s in the climate-controlled part of the building,” Winter said. “It can get cold here during the winter and hot in the summers. I didn’t want to take any chances with my sofa. You have to be careful with upholstery.”
“I’m looking forward to seeing this sofa.”
“It’s beautiful. I fell in love with it the first time I saw it. Had to max out my credit card to get it. I’m still making payments.”
He wondered if she had ever fallen in love at first sight with a man but then he decided he probably did not want to know the answer.
“You do realize that credit card debt is the worst kind of debt because the interest rates are so high?” he said instead. “You could probably have gotten a better deal from the mob.”
“Trust me, this sofa was worth it,” Winter said. “Besides, it will be paid off next month.”
So much for the financial lecture, he thought.
“The loading dock entrance is on the left side,” Winter continued. “I’ve got the code for it, too. There will be some equipment inside that we can use to load my stuff into the van. It won’t take more than a couple of trips to empty the locker.”
“Does it occur to you that by this time in our lives we should probably have more stuff?” he said.
“They say a lot of stuff just weighs you down,” Winter said.
But he thought she sounded wistful.
“Maybe that depends,” he said.
“On what?”
“On whether you want to move on or put down roots.”
“I’d like to put down roots, but things keep happening, so I keep moving on.”
“I know the feeling,” he said.
He drove around to the side of the building and stopped in front of the loading dock entrance. It was sealed by a wide metal garage door that could be rolled up when needed. A regular-sized door was located to the left of the dock.
He shut down the van’s engine and climbed out of the vehicle. Winter was already at the regular-sized door, punching in another security code.
She got the door open, went up three concrete steps and disappeared inside. He followed her. A row of motion-activated fluorescent fixtures winked on, illuminating the interior space immediately around the loading dock in a cold, bluish light. The rest of the cavernous two-story facility was steeped in a gray gloom that filtered in through small, grimy windows set high up on the walls.
As was the case with the overhead fixtures, the service door at the top of the steps was on an automatic timer. Jack heard it close behind him. The muffled clang reverberated through the space, echoing off the concrete floor and the metal doors of the lockers.
There were two floors of storage lockers arranged in orderly rows of intersecting aisles. Signs marked the route to an elevator and a flight of stairs at the rear of the building that could be used to access the upper floor.
A couple of sturdy-looking motorized pallet jacks resembling small forklifts and an array of hand trucks stood near the loading dock.
“It’s a real maze in here,” Winter said. “The lights come on whenever you enter a new section. They shut off as soon as you move on. The place is sort of creepy when you’re here on your own. At least it creeps me out.”
I don’t like it, either, Jack thought. But he did not voice his visceral response. His intuitive dislike of enclosed, tightly packed spaces with limited exits was one of his many quirks. He knew Max and Cabot shared that particular quirk. A history of having been trapped in a locked barn that was burning down around you left an impression on a person.
Winter glanced at the nearest pallet. “We’ll need one of those for my sofa. Do you want to drive or shall I?”
He looked at the pallet. For the first time he started to take some real interest in the project.
“I’ll handle the pallet,” he said.
He stepped up onto the rear of the forklift-like device, where the accelerator and steering bars were located. Experimentally he squeezed the trigger accelerator. The hefty battery-powered motor hummed and whined. The pallet started to roll forward. He released the accelerator. The pallet stopped.
“This thing could carry a refrigerator,” he said.
Belatedly he noticed that Winter was smiling.
“If you’re going to make a joke about men and their toys, I should warn you that I will be hurt,” he said.
“I won’t say anything about men and their toys if you promise not to lecture me about the perils of credit card debt.”
“I guess I had that coming.”
Winter beckoned with one finger. “Follow me. My locker is at the back. The rent is cheaper there because it’s an inconvenient location.”
She set off down one of the aisles formed by two rows of storage lockers. Another bank of overhead lights came on, illuminating the path that led to the next intersection.
Jack revved the motor a little. The pallet rolled forward at a sedate pace.
Winter glanced at one side of the aisle. “Evidently not everyone gets the hang of driving that thing. Look at all the black marks on the bumpers.”
Jack glanced at the bumpers that lined both sides of the locker canyon beneath the metal doors. A number of black smudge marks had been left by the pallet’s thick tires. The bumpers were designed to deflect the wheels and keep the vehicle going in a relatively straight line so that it didn’t crash into a locker. The pallet, with its heavy motor and steel carrying arms, was large enough to be a serious hazard. Given a little momentum it could easily punch a good-sized hole through the metal siding of a storage locker door.
“Don’t worry,” he said. He gunned the engine a little. “I’m a professional.”
Winter glanced back over her shoulder. “But I probably shouldn’t try driving that thing at home, right?”
“Right.”
Winter laughed. Inexplicably, the atmosphere seemed a little brighter. Her voice and her laughter had the power to charm him. He could have sworn she had cast a sparkling little spell on him just now.
He should probably be very worried, he thought, but somehow he couldn’t work up the energy. Too many other things going on, more dangerous things. A man had to have priorities.
“How did you get your sofa into the locker all by yourself?” he asked.
“The gardener at my apartment complex offered to bring it here on the back of his truck,” Winter said.
At the next intersection she vanished around a corner. Jack followed on the pallet. The lights in the canyon behind him winked off.
They made their way to the back of the big building. Winter finally came to a halt in front of one of the smaller lockers, number C-115.
He coasted to a stop and watched her work the combination on the padlock. When she got it open he helped her roll the door up into the top of the locker. Metal squeaked and clanked.
He surveyed the contents of the locker. There were a handful of packing boxes, a small desk, a lamp and one bulky object heavily swathed in sturdy plastic. There was enough light to make out the crimson upholstery under the layers of protective covering. The sofa.
It was not a very big sofa.
As if she knew what he was thinking Winter touched the outer wrapping with a protective hand and looked at him.
“It was designed for an apartment or a small condo,” she said. “Technically, I suppose you could call it a love seat.”
Love seat. That brought up some interesting mental visuals.
“Right,” he said, keeping his tone very neutral. “It should fit into your cottage in Eclipse Bay.”