“How about because we’re up to our armpits in stolen goods, our clients are lying to us, and the security in this place isn’t bringing us any closer to inner peace?” Becca enlarged the photo on Emily’s phone. “And because sometimes a rug is just a rug.”

Emily looked across at the boxes that remained on the shelves. “We haven’t done anything with the boxes of hardware that Mr. Murphy collected, have we? Because it seems to me there’s not as many of them as there were when we first got in here.”

Becca stood stock-still and looked around. Emily swiped through the shots she’d taken of the storage unit. She showed Becca a picture. There was no question about it: boxes were missing.

“This is freaking me out,” Becca said. “Who would have taken those boxes? The person who changed the lock? Walter Newell’s killer?”

Emily didn’t dare look at Becca, who’d immediately have sussed out the evasion.

Becca added, “Too bad there’s no surveillance cameras inside these storage units.”

At least Emily could fix that. She marched out to her car and returned with the spare camera she carried in the gear bag. She took a series of pictures of the interior of the storage unit—the floor stacked with books and tubes; empty shelves; boxes that were still on shelves. Then she set the camera to low light, wide angle, and programmed it to automatically snap a picture every sixty seconds. She attached a power cord to the camera. Emptied the contents of one of the small storage boxes into another that was half-full. Tore a hole in the side of the empty box and set her camera inside, the lens looking through the hole and the cord snaking out the back. Then she set the box on a high shelf with the camera facing out and pointing down. She ran the power cord from the box to a wall outlet and plugged it in. Turned the camera on, and waited.

Click. Emily cringed. The sound of the shutter was loud enough to alert any burglar. She couldn’t mute the shutter—the camera was a DSLR and the mechanism was mechanical—but maybe she could mask the sound. There was already white noise in the unit—the hum of the ventilation system that was blowing cold air on the back of her neck. She checked the thermostat and switched the fan from low to high. The hum grew louder. She waited for the next camera click. She heard it, but she might not have noticed it if she hadn’t known it was coming. She hoped it would do.