Slow Dollar

Richards had tried sitting at a desk after finishing a two-year computer course out at Colleton Community College, but she was farm bred, used to hard physical work outdoors. Another two years of trying to fit her awkward square personality into a comfortable round hole was all she could take before she quit her job in the Research Triangle and asked Sheriff Bo Poole for a job. He knew her parents, knew her, and was always glad to have another officer in the department who wasn’t afraid of computers. He’d been disappointed that she preferred patrol duty over an indoor job, but agreed to let her pull a normal rotation. Lately, Major Bryant had been giving her more detective chores, and with the county growing in population, she was hoping to get switched over permanently.

As she entered the office building, a gray-haired woman smiled at her from behind the counter.

“Good morning, Officer. How can I help you?”

Richards introduced herself and explained that she was there in connection with a Brazos Hartley, who had bought the contents of a storage locker from Six Pines. “A couple of racks of negligees.”

“How do you spell that name?”

As Richards spelled it out, the clerk swiveled around and began tapping computer keys to bring up the record. “Oh, yes. The Lee Hamden account. Negligees? Is that all it was?”

“Nightgowns and robes. And rather expensive looking. Didn’t you know?”

“Honey, all I know’s what’s on this contract. They don’t have to get specific about what they’re storing, and we can’t go through their things.”

“Even when you’re auctioning it off?” asked Richards.

“Nope. Even the buyers don’t know what they’re getting till they’ve paid over their money. Talk about a pig in a poke. All they can do is look. They can shine a flashlight in, but they can’t touch anything and they can’t go inside till they’ve made the winning bid and paid for it. Is Ms. Hamden suing him? Her brother said she’d be furious, but you know, we did everything by the book—certified letter, advertisement in the paper, everything the law requires.”

“You remember Hartley, then?”

“Hartley? The man who bought the locker?” She shook her head. “Wouldn’t know him from Adam’s house cat if he walked in behind you,” she said cheerfully. “Doubt if I ever saw him. My boss is the one who helps with the auctions. I stay in here and do the paperwork. I meant the owner’s brother. Him I remember. He was here last week trying to pay his sister’s back rent and her stuff already auctioned off nine days before. He was awful upset for her, but what could I do? She only left us an accommodation box number at one of those mailing stores here in town. We ask folks to leave us the name or telephone number of a friend or relative, somebody we can get in touch with. The way people move around these days, though...”

She shrugged helplessly. “We wind up auctioning off three or four of our lockers every month.”

“Did he say why his sister didn’t respond to the certified letter?”

“She never got it. It went to the mail store and bounced back here when it couldn’t be delivered. He said she’s been called out of state to nurse her husband’s mother and didn’t realize she’d be gone so long. Soon as she remembered, she called him and told him to come over and pay me the back rent, late fees. I had the hardest time making him understand we really didn’t have her clothes. Clothes. That’s what he said it was. Didn’t say nothing about fancy nightgowns. Mostly, he said, she was worried about some pictures—maybe an album?—stored in her locker, too.”

“Oh?” Deputy Richards encouraged.

“I had to tell her brother that most people, when they buy one of these lockers? They just keep the stuff they think they can sell at flea markets and dump all the personal stuff.”

“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.”