I slid a twenty across the counter. Phyllis tapped the ash off her cigarette onto the floor, watching me with renewed interest. “It’s the unit with the extension cord,” I said, leaving the bill in front of her.
“Seventy-three, you say?” She turned her swivel chair toward the counter, her pink nails scraping over the cash. “I might remember something about her. But it’s been a while.”
“So it was a woman?” Relief flooded through me. At least it wasn’t Steven. “Do you remember the woman’s name?”
“Didn’t ask.”
“Do you remember what she looked like?”
Phyllis shrugged, her heavy-lidded eyes dipping back to my purse. “Memory’s a little foggy.”
I fished another bill from my wallet and slapped it down on the counter. As she reached for it, I slid it out of reach.
Phyllis’s lips pursed. “She was blond. Pretty girl.”
One hand planted firmly on the twenty, I Googled Bree’s name with the other. “Is this her?” I asked, showing Phyllis the social media profile photo I’d enlarged on Vero’s phone.
She lowered her chin, staring at the picture of Bree over the rims of her glasses. Her jowls swung as she shook her head. “Nah. That’s not her,” she said, tugging the edge of the bill.
I clamped down harder. “Are you sure?”
Phyllis pointed to a sign on the wall: CUSTOMERS MUST HAVE VALID DRIVER’S LICENSE AND BE 18 YEARS OLD TO RENT. “Girl in that photo looks too young to buy beer. I would have asked to see some ID. Woman who rented that unit was older.”
“How much older?”
Phyllis’s eyes raked over my face. “’Bout your age, I guess.”
“And you just let her rent a unit without asking her for any identification?”
“She rolled up in here in a fancy BMW, flashing a company credit card. Offered to pay double if we let her run an extension cord. Figured she was good for it.”
Phyllis dragged the bill out from under my hand as I stood there, breath catching on that small detail. Theresa was blond, my age, and drove a BMW. And she would have had access to Steven’s company credit card. I dragged up an image of Theresa on Vero’s phone. “Is this her?”
Phyllis studied it, risking another hopeful glance at my purse. I tucked it behind me.
With an aggrieved grunt, she said, “Yeah, that’s her.”
So the storage unit, and the dismembered man inside it, belonged to Theresa. But there was no way she could have gotten him, or that freezer, in there alone. Had she and Steven put him there together? Is that why he was still paying the bill? “Do you remember who was with her?”
“Never saw anyone. She paid and left. Next day, the unit started drawing some amps, so she must have come back to plug something in, but I ain’t seen her since.” Phyllis turned to an old PC beside her register. She drew her glasses down her nose, her press-on nails tapping on the keys as she squinted at the screen. She rotated it toward me, pointing at a billing record. “That credit card we have on file expired a week ago. If you talk to her, you let her know she needs to call in and update her card or else I gotta pull the plug and empty her unit.”
“The payments are automatically charged to the card?” A bill that small could easily go unnoticed in a business as large as Steven’s. He might not even have known he was paying for it.
“Every month,” Phyllis said. “Next payment’s due on the fifteenth. Unless you want to handle it for her.”
The only cash I had left in my purse was a twenty. And I sure as hell wasn’t giving Phyllis my credit card.
Steven had cut off Theresa’s access to his accounts a month ago. She probably had no idea the card had expired. Her trial would be held in a matter of weeks, and if she went to prison, who would pay the bill? I couldn’t confront Steven about the freezer; his only option would be to pay Phyllis or move the body, and both would make him an accessory to the crime, if he wasn’t one already. But if Phyllis pulled the plug and emptied that storage unit, Steven would be the first person the police would come looking for. And when the police came asking questions, Phyllis would surely remember me. The only way to make sure the police didn’t find this garage and cart Steven and I both off to jail was to make sure there was no body here to find.
“Do you have any garbage bags?”
Phyllis dug under a shelf and slapped a box of extra-large trash bags on the counter. As I reached for it, she tugged it back. With a begrudged “thanks,” I handed her the last twenty from my purse, snatching the entire box and tucking it under my arm before walking out the door. I carried the bags to the storage unit, checking over my shoulder to make sure the slats in the window blinds hadn’t moved. Vero waited inside the bay door, pacing and wringing her hands.