Page 42 of The Woman in the Garage

Luckily, this unit was closer to the exit, so there wasn’t a whole lot of time to work myself up into a panic as I squatted down, trying to figure out which of the eleven keys I didn’t know opened this particular unit.

Adrenaline surged through my system as the right key finally turned, freeing the padlock, and allowing me to push the door up.

These units had no interior light.

But I didn’t need it to see the same setup as the other unit.

Black wire shelving.

Black totes with yellow lids.

Only this unit had twice the number of them as the last one.

Paranoia had me glancing both ways before stepping into the unit, my hand clutching my golf club, but my grip was crummy as sweat soaked my palm.

Taking a deep breath, I made my way toward the center row of shelves, going to the first tote, and reaching to pull it down.

“Jeez,” I grumbled, surprised by the weight of it.

I ended up half dropping it rather than lowering it to the ground.

There was a sick feeling working its way up my throat as I reached to unclip the top.

But there was no going back now.

I pulled off the lid.

And nearly freaking fainted.

“What… the hell?” I gasped, sure I wasn’t seeing what I thought I was seeing.

Perfectly stacked little plastic bags full of white powder.

I mean, I was no expert or anything, but I was reasonably sure my uncle wasn’t storing baby powder or powdered sugar in super secret, crazily organized, storage units all over New Jersey.

“Oh, no, no, no, no, no,” I yelped, using my skirt to grab the lid of the tote to clip it back into place, then using the same skirt to wipe the hell out of the handle and tote, making sure there was no way my fingerprints could have survived the friction.

“Okay. It’s alright,” I murmured to myself as I grabbed my golf club and quickly made my way back into the hall.

I dragged down the door, wiped the spot I’d touched, clipped the padlock into place, then wiped that down as well.

Then, forcing myself not to run, I got myself the hell out of there, worrying the whole way back to Navesink Bank that there was surveillance footage of me laying claim to that unit, that I could be seen going in and rushing right back out again.

It wasfine, I assured myself. There was no reason for anyone to assume there were illicit substances in the storage units. And so long as no one went into them—including myself—I had plausible deniability.

So I had to, what? Make sure the units stayed paid. That way, no one had to go into them to clear them out, find the drugs, and call the cops.

If, eventually, I did personally go to the cops about what I found in that one unit, I could always say I had no idea what was in the units, that I was simply paying for them as I sorted out my uncle’s affairs, that the drugs were clearly, well, his.

Even if the idea of that had my stomach twisting.

First, because it felt just so… wrong. Sure, Uncle Phil clearly liked to have beers after work—judging by his fridge half full of bottles when I’d arrived. But there was no evidence in the house that he did anything harder than that.

Second, well, weren’t drug dealers, you know… wealthy? Uncle Phil owned a home and business, but nothing about either building implied he had a spare two nickels to rub together, let alone was sitting on top of some giant drug empire.

Could he maybe have some sort of gambling addiction? Some other real estate somewhere?

No.

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