“Dump it where? Here?”

“If they want to pay the fee. Soon as the auction’s over, they go through the stuff right out there in the driveway and bag up what they don’t want. We charge to let ‘em use our Dumpsters. Otherwise, they have to truck it to a landfill themselves. I had to tell him that nobody goes to flea markets to buy somebody else’s pictures, so stuff like that usually gets dumped right here.”

“I don’t suppose he went through the Dumpster?”

“Oh, honey, after nine days?”

“You didn’t happen to get his name, did you?”

“Wasn’t any reason to. Although, now that you mention it, I believe I did call him Mr. Hamden and he didn’t say that wasn’t his name.”

“But you told him who bought the contents of the locker?”

“Oh, yes. It’s a public sale. Brazos Hartley. Ames Amusement Corporation, Gibsonton, Florida. Don’t know how he found us from way down there. Anyhow, here’s his phone number and an e-mail address, and I gave Mr. Hamden the same information and wished him luck.”

“But all you have on Ms. Hamden herself is this mailing-service box number?”

“And this phone number. But she must have written it down wrong because I called it and the lady that answered said she’d had that number for sixteen years and nobody by that name had ever lived there.”

The gray-haired clerk looked at Mayleen Richards in sudden interest. “So how come you’re trying to find her? Was the stuff stolen?”

“All I can say right now is that it’s related to an investigation the sheriff’s department is conducting,” the deputy said. “Could you describe Ms. Hamden?”

“Sorry. That locker was rented six years ago, before I came. She was on our quarterly plan and payments always arrived by check every three months. Nothing on the checks except her name.”

“Do you remember what bank?”

The woman shook her head. “Her brother was real cute, though,” she added, trying to be helpful. “Curly black hair and gorgeous brown eyes.”

Richards thanked her for her time and checked her watch as she went back out to the car. Only a little past ten. Wouldn’t take but a few minutes to check out E-Z-Quik Mail.

The lone clerk there was cooperative but he’d only worked there a few months and could add nothing. “I’ve never seen her to know who I was looking at. Most people using the boxes out there in the vestibule don’t come on inside unless they’re mailing a package or buying stamps. According to our records, she pays cash for the box a year at the time and it’s due to expire the end of the month.”

“Is there anything in her box right now?”

“I’m not supposed to let anybody see a client’s mail without a court order,” the clerk said virtuously, but he went into the sorting room behind the bank of rental boxes and came back a minute later. “Nope. Empty as my girlfriend’s head.”