Page 62 of Mace

Chapter Nineteen

Mace

“Oh my god,” Imogen cried. “This is going to take us days to go through.”

I kicked the ratty box at my foot. “Well, you’re probably right, but maybe we’ll get lucky and find what we are looking for right away.” That was a long shot, but I had to try to be optimistic.

Imogen rolled her eyes and crouched in front of a gray storage bin. “If I ever start hoarding things, please stop me. Tie up my arms or something. I can’t believe all of this belongs to one person.”

It was half past nine, and Imogen and I were finally in Janet’s storage unit in the basement of the assisted living.

It was a ten-by-ten space that was filled to its absolute limit. There was a small walkway into the middle of the unit and only a few feet to stand without bumping into all the crap.

“Just think, babe; she said a lot of her things were burned in the fire. This could be a lot worse.”

Imogen took off the lid of the bin and cringed. “Oh, god, Mace. This is a bin full of dolls” She pulled one out of the bin and held it out to me. “Creepy dolls with eyes that follow you.”

“Hell no, babe. If I gotta dig through a bunch of creepy dolls, maybe I’ll try my luck with prison.”

“Stop,” she laughed and dropped the doll back in the bin and sifted through it. “I was thinking we would have a couple of boxes of papers to go through, but I think we are going to have to look in every one of these bins or boxes just to make sure we don’t miss what we need.” She snapped the lid back on the bin and looked up at me. “And where am I supposed to put this now that I’m done with it?”

I ran my fingers through my hair. “Well, I’ll put it outside the door until we can get through one side of the unit and then start shifting everything to the other side.”

“My god,” she moaned. “This is insanity.”

I grabbed the tote from her and set it outside the door. The worker who had let us in the unit said no one else was scheduled to come down today so we would have the basement pretty much to ourselves.

“More dolls,” Imogen groaned. “What did I do to deserve this torture?”

“Positive thinking, babe.” I opened the box I had kicked earlier and gagged. “Oh god.”

Imogen leaned toward the box. “What is it?”

“Fucking dead birds.”

“What?” Imogen gasped and jumped back. She crashed into a stack of boxes that fell over. “Who keeps dead birds?”

I grabbed one of the carcasses by its foot and held it up. “I’m pretty sure these are stuffed.”

“Like she meant to keep them.”

She sure as hell did. Taxidermy wasn’t cheap, either. “You didn’t see these when you lived with her?”

“I was only allowed in my bedroom and kitchen, Mace. She didn’t want to see me.”

I dropped the bird into the box and kicked it to the door.

“You’re going to have to go through that. She might have stuck the papers in there.”

“Imogen,” I moaned. “Maybe we should just accept my fate that I’m going to jail, and we can look forward to conjugal visits.”

She rolled her eyes and opened another bin. “Those are only for married people, Mace.”

“We’re engaged, remember?” I crouched down by the bird box and tipped it on its side. The birds crashed onto the floor, and there wasn’t anything else in the box.

“I would like to know why you said you were my fiancée when you should have just said boyfriend.”

I grabbed an old magazine hanging out of a box and used it to scoop the birds back into the box. “I’m over thirty, babe. Boyfriend and girlfriend are terms high schoolers use.”

---