“Excuse me, but does anyone besides Mr. and Mrs. Nickens have permission to access their space?” I asked.
“Not a single person. Mr. and Mrs. Nickens are the only ones for now, but”—Sue Ellen turned to Dolores—“you can add another person at any time you’ve a mind to. Also, I wanted to say that you’re a lucky lady, ma’am. Lots of men come and go through here and the wives are none the wiser about what all is stored in the lockers and rooms. In my years I’ve seen everything from motorcycles to porn collections. But Mr. Nickens is a straight-up man. No secrets. I remember he came within a day or two of your wedding to add you to the account. Gave me a big tip and all. That’s how I remember.”
Sue Ellen reverted to business. “Now, you go straight down this hall and make a left. Toward the end of the corridor you will see room 124. When you want to go in, tap the three-digit code on the door; a yellow light will come on, which will send me a signal to click the master lock. Then the green light will come on, and you’re in.”
Dolores looked perplexed, and I could see she had a question or two, so I took her arm and hurried her down the hall.
“But, Jess,” Dolores said, “we don’t know the code.”
“Oh, I am sure we do.” I was confident. “Willis was not the type of man to waste his time devising a secret code. He would unquestionably follow a safe and simple route. I promise you he chose a code you could come up with in no more than two or three tries. Here we are.”
We stopped in front of the door and I indicated the keypad. “Try the first three digits of your birthday.”
Nothing.
“Now the first three digits of your wedding date,” I instructed.
Dolores raised an eyebrow but didn’t voice her skepticism; instead she hit the numbers, and the yellow light glowed.
In a few seconds the green light came on and, filled with excitement, we opened the door, only to be instantly deflated.
Willis’s storage area was a room that looked about ten feet by twelve feet. An old metal desk and a chair filled one corner. The rest of the room was packed with four-drawer file cabinets, some with two or three cardboard boxes piled on top.
“What on earth?” Dolores walked over and leaned on the edge of the desk. “What could all this mess possibly be? It looks like Willis held on to every piece of paper he ever touched.”
“It certainly does. I suspect at least some of these cabinets hold files for Quartermaster Industries.” I looked at the cabinets. None of them had identification tabs on the outside. Clearly this was not going to be as simple as I thought.
Dolores began opening the desk drawers, which were loaded with pads, pens, clips, staples—all the usual office paraphernalia. The center drawer had a telephone book. I picked it up and opened to the letter “L” and there was Marcus Holmes under “L” for “lawyer.” This book was likely an exact replica of the one in his home office.
Dolores opened the bottom drawer and didn’t seem to be surprised when she found a couple of cigars and an ashtray. “At least Willis ran true to form.”
I held up the phone book. “He certainly did.”
“What am I going to do with all this?” Dolores was clearly overwhelmed.
“Unless we want to sit here day after day for the next several months, I suggest you arrange to have it moved to the house, where you can go through it at your leisure.”
“To Manning Hall? You want me to bring these dirty, dusty cabinets and decrepit boxes into my home?”
I ran the tip of my finger along the top of a cabinet and acknowledged she had a point. “Well, for now perhaps I will take only a few files from the cabinet nearest Willis’s desk. They’re probably the most current.”
When I went to open the top drawer, I saw the handle was thick with dust. Wrong assumption on my part. But it did give me an idea. I scanned the cabinets one by one. Right in the middle of the room was a cabinet with no dust whatsoever on its drawer handles. It was either brand-new or frequently used. The bottom three drawers were empty, but the top drawer held about a dozen file folders; all had papers inside. None of them labeled.
I grabbed a handful of files and said, “Okay, here is the plan. Am I correct in assuming you trust Marla Mae?”
“Very much so. She and Lucinda both.”
“What about Elton?”
“I have no reason not to. He has been so good to us.”
“Well, with your permission I will call Elton and have him meet us at the front desk. You can have Sue Ellen put him on the access list and he can bring Marla Mae over to give this place a thorough cleaning. Then we can decide what to do with all this.”
It took about three minutes to persuade Elton that it was perfectly legal for him to be on Dolores’s storage facility account and under a minute for Sue Ellen to swipe his license through the recording gizmo and say, “You are good to go, Mr. Anderson.”
So in less than five minutes we were in the car and on our way back to Manning Hall. Dolores and I toasted each other with bottles of water we’d taken from the cooler.
“Well, that was exhilarating.” Dolores began to giggle. “Just like the good old days at Harrison College. Remember the time, as part of our sorority pledge, we had to pick a professor who didn’t know us, had never taught us? Then we had to go into his office and convince the secretary that we were
