EMILY STUFFED THE cards and bookplates back into the hatbox, set it on a shelf, turned off the light, and pulled the door to the storage unit closed. It took several tries to force the padlock to snap shut. As she backed away, she stumbled over the document tube she’d been holding when Becca called. She picked it up and went to return it, but when she tried to unlock the padlock again, it wouldn’t give. She didn’t want to break the key, so she gave up and made a mental note to bring a can of WD-40 with her when she returned.

She put the key in her pants pocket and tossed the document tube on the passenger seat. Stuffed her face mask back into her gear bag in the trunk. Standing behind her car, hidden from the CCTV camera, she stripped off her top, bunched it up, and used it to wipe the sweat from her face and neck. At the bottom of her gear bag was a fresh blue Clutter Kickers polo shirt. She slipped it on.

On her way to Mandarin Cliffs, Emily mulled over what she’d found in the storage unit. Of one thing she was fairly certain: Mr. Murphy was not a hoarder. He was a serious collector, a connoisseur who kept track of his treasures. She fully expected to find a detailed inventory hidden somewhere in his office or maybe in the storage unit, assuming it hadn’t rotted away.

But the hatbox full of library slips raised the question. Had Mr. Murphy legitimately purchased his books or were they on “permanent loan”? And if the books were questionable, what about the documents in those tubes?

Stopped at a red light, Emily gave a furtive glance across to her passenger seat where she had one of Mr. Murphy’s document tubes right there in the car with her. What happened when a client’s clutter consisted of potentially stolen goods? It was an issue that Becca and Emily wouldn’t have chosen to touch with a ten-foot pole.

The car behind her beeped, a reminder that their new client was waiting. Emily pushed the tube to the floor and nudged it under the seat. Tonight, at home, she’d try to figure out what exactly they were dealing with.

The entrance to the not-quite-gated (surrounded by fancy iron fence with an open entryway) enclave of Mandarin Cliffs was marked by a gold-embossed sign mounted in a boulder in a small oriental-style garden with a miniature waterfall. The street, its houses set back on generous lots rife with blooming hydrangeas, curved and forked and forked again. Quinn Newell’s house was at the far end of a cul-de-sac. Prime property in a primo neighborhood.