Carefully Emily rolled up the map and slipped it into the tube, anxious to put it back on the shelf where she’d found it. She got out of the car and approached the storage unit, feeling around in her gear bag for the key. When she didn’t find it, she sat on the ground and dumped out the contents of the bag. The can of WD-40 rolled away as she pawed through her supplies. Finally she found the key snagged in the lining. But when she went to use it, the padlock she distinctly remembered hanging on the door was gone. The padlock in its place was round, not square; brass, not silvery; and it had no nail-polish number painted on.

For a moment she wondered if she’d come to the wrong unit. She stepped back—216 to the left, 218 to the right. Someone had been here since yesterday and changed the lock.

As Emily stood considering what to do next, one of the security carts came toward her. She could flag down the guard and report a changed lock. She’d have to explain that she wasn’t the owner, that the owner was dead, and she was working for his wife who’d inherited the storage bills. She imagined his reaction. Eyebrows raised, he’d probably ask for some kind of proof that she had the right to be here, but she had no signed statement saying that she was acting on Mrs. Murphy’s behalf or, for that matter, anything in writing that said that Mrs. Murphy was the beneficiary of the property in this particular unit.

As the security cart crept by at a glacial pace, Emily shoveled her belongings back into her bag. She retrieved the can of WD-40 and put it in, too. A sideways glance confirmed that this was the same guard she’d seen before. He nodded at her and Emily nodded back. Her shoulders tightened as she waited for the cart to pass.

What in the hell was she supposed to do now? She couldn’t open the padlock and finish her inventory. Plus she was now stuck in possession of a possibly antique map that could be worth thousands of dollars.

Emily got back in her car, tossed her gear bag and the document tube in the backseat, banged the heel of her hand on the steering wheel, and called Becca.

“There you are!” Becca said. “I was just about to call you. What’s going on? What do you mean, it’s ‘complicated’?”

Emily said, “I mean it’s possible that the books in that storage unit are from libraries.”

“Libraries,” Becca said. “Borrowed from libraries?”

“Best-case.”

“Yikes.”

“Exactly. At least I took a ton of pictures, so when we get back in we should be able to tell if anything’s—”

“Wait a minute. I thought you were already in.”