“Ah, well, then I suppose I may as well tell you the truth. My husband, before he died, was a wee bit of a naughty boy. I learned these things from him; he was an expert.”
“Ah,” I replied, but I had a feeling Mrs. Michaels was still hiding things from me. I had never been so suspicious about people before moving to London, but it seemed that everyone Violet knew had some sort of interesting past.
Maybe Aaron Stone wasn’t going to be the only person I’d be researching over the next few days.
Chapter 12
After having tea with Violet and Mrs. Michaels, Violet told me she had a bunch of research to do and that she would be in touch the next time she had anything substantial to share or for us to do. However, it turned out I didn’t have that long to wait. That night around ten pm I got a text from Violet asking me to come over, and to just walk in instead of knocking.
I did as requested and quickly discovered why going to the door was going to be such a hardship for Violet. Her entire study floor was covered in papers, save for a tiny spot in the middle where she was seated, her legs crossed and leaning so far over the sheet of paper directly in front of her that it would have made any yoga teacher proud. Her face had to be about an inch from the letters.
“Violet?” I asked cautiously. She was so dead still it was almost unbelievable.
“Ah, Cassie. Bien, come here,” she said. “Pay no mind to the papers,” she continued, waving a hand, noticing my trepidation. I carefully made my way toward her, trying to disturb her work as little as possible all the same.
“What have you found?” I asked. “This must have taken hours to go through.”
“I have not yet sorted through all of it, of course. There is too much for that, and I did not receive this pile until a couple of hours ago.”
“What is it?” I asked.
“It is a number of credit card statements that had belonged to Jenny Lin. Someone rang my doorbell and left them They were dropped on my doorstep and the bell rung, but the person who left them did not identify him or herself.”
“Wait, so you’re trying to tell me someone dropped all of Jenny Lin’s credit card records on your doorstep and you have no idea who it was?”
“I did not say I had no idea who it was,” Violet corrected, “I simply said they did not stay to identify themselves.”
“Well who was it then?”
“When you watch your American TV shows about crime, in which the police are the good guys, what happens when the FBI takes over a case?”
“The cops always resent them for taking it,” I answered.
“Well, it is the same in England. When MI5 took over this murder investigation, it would have ruffled quite a large number of feathers at the Metropolitan Police. Not only would they have wanted to keep the case themselves for reasons of pride, but also they would feel that MI5 have only involved themselves to get the glory when they finally solve the case.”
“So you think someone from the police left the box of files here for you to find so that you’ll solve the case before Tompkins does,” I finished, nodding slowly. “But I thought everyone at the police hated you.”
“It is only most people at the police who hate me,” Violet corrected, and I smiled at how easily she admitted it. “However, everyone at the police hate MI5, and even those that hate me, hate them more.”
“So this is an ‘enemy of my enemy is my friend’ kind of situation then,” I said, shaking my head slightly.
“Yes, it is,” Violet said.
“What did you find in Jenny’s financial records?” I asked.
“A lot of spending at luxury stores in the city. Let us simply say that your large insurance settlement for your injury would not have funded Jenny Lin’s lifestyle for very long.”
“Wow,” I muttered. I’d received a payout of a little over ten million dollars in lost future earnings, pain and suffering, and all that sort of thing after my mom immediately contacted a lawyer when I was hit by that car. Up until now, apart from spending around one hundred grand to pay off all of my student loans, I had spent just over two thousand dollars of it, and that included my plane tickets to Europe. I’d had the money for just over three months now. In fact, I was fairly certain I’d already earned more than two grand in interest. I knew the money had to last me the rest of my life; I wasn’t about to go around spending it willy-nilly.
“But,” Violet continued, handing me the sheet she had been poring over, “I believe I have found something else as well. Fourth line down.”
It was a credit card statement for a statement period that ended just five weeks earlier. The first few lines made the part of me that had been a starving student for so long cringe: Louis Vuitton—two thousand pounds. The Cuckoo club, one of London’s most exclusive nightclubs—nine hundred and seventy pounds. Harrods—twelve hundred pounds. But then, as Violet said, there was something interesting on the fourth line.
Jenny Lin had spent sixty pounds every month to rent a self-storage locker in Mitcham.
UK’s Best Self Storage—Mitcham, read the charge line.
“Where on earth is Mitcham?” I had to ask Violet. By now I had lived in London for long enough that I knew most of the major suburbs and neighborhoods around London, but I had never heard of this one.
“In the southwest, it’s about a forty minute drive from here. She’s kept that storage locker for at least the past year, as far as I can tell.”
“Forty minutes,” I muttered. “That’s incredibly far. I’ve seen ads on the tube for self-storage places that are barely outside of Central London, and it’s not like the money would be an object for someone who—I glanced at the rest of the statement—spent four hundred and seventy two pounds this month at Victoria’s Secret.”
“Exactement,” Violet said excitedly. “Ah, Cassie, you are getting better at deducing! It is strange! Why would someone like Jenny Lin keep a storage locker so far from the city? Plus, if you look at the address, you will find that the locker is right next to the station for the local trains. I suspect that Jenny Lin, when she wanted to visit the storage locker, did not dare to take her car service, or even a taxi. I venture that she would have actually taken the train to go there, which means that the storage locker likely contains information or documents which Jenny Lin would have wanted, above all, kept a secret.”
“So you want to go and have a look inside the storage locker, obviously.”
“Yes. It is possible that anything of value is gone, as Tompkins will have undoubtedly pulled Jenny Lin’s financial files as well. However, it is also possible that he has not gotten around to it yet. After all, he seems to have been pre-occupied with following us today.”
“Why did you have to tell me this tonight? Why don’t we go see what’s in the storage locker tomorrow?”
Violet gave me a look in response, and my heart sunk.
“With what authority?” she asked. “We are not the police, and while I perhaps have pretended to be the police in the past to get into things, I imagine Tompkins would be especially unhappy if we decided to pretend to be MI5 agents to illegally access a storage locker.”
“We’re going to break into something again, aren’t we?” I asked, dreading but already knowing the answer.
“Yes, we are,” Violet replied.
* * *
“For a detective, you certainly commit a lot of crimes,” I muttered as we snuck out of the back door of Violet’s place in case Tompkins had agents watching the front.
“I have told you before, the art of detection and the art of the crime are very similar in many ways.”
“Yeah, but did it have to be similar in the amount of time you can spend in jail for doing them?” I asked in reply.
We took the train; Violet thinking it would be far less conspicuous. We sat across from one another, Violet silent with her eyes closed, her mouth occasionally moving slowly. I knew she was talking her way through the case, so I simply looked out the window at the lights that rushed
by, where the normal people who weren’t headed to an outer suburb to break into a storage locker were now doing normal people things, like settling in front of the TV or putting their kids to bed.
I had always expected that this time of night I’d be on call for emergency surgery maybe, or looking over my patient files as I got ready to do a consult on a soccer player needing an ACL repair, that sort of thing. I had never envisioned myself breaking the law, let alone doing it in a foreign country to solve a crime that MI5 had explicitly threatened to arrest us for investigating.
Still, I knew that at any time I could turn around and go back home, and yet I chose to get off the train at the Mitcham Eastfields station with Violet. I was just too curious about what was in the storage locker and who killed Jenny and Kevin Lin to say no.
Violet made me wait at the train station for a few minutes while she scoped out the area for security cameras. I was totally fine with that; if one of us screwed up and got caught on film, I was totally ok with it being her and not me. About ten minutes after she left Violet came back, telling me to make sure to stay close behind her.
The storage center was on a side street just a block or so from the train station. A medium-sized, non-descript, concrete building, it looked exactly like a million other self-storage units around the world. Unfortunately, it was surrounded by a ten-foot-high chain link fence, and floodlights abounded. I looked nervously toward the street, but Violet motioned for me to follow her. We made our way further along the fence and toward the back quickly. Violet motioned for me to hide behind a bush with her, and I did so.
“What are we waiting for?” I dared ask in a whisper.
“There is another train coming past in three minutes,” Violet said. “We will wait for it to pass, then we will climb the fence. On the other side of the tracks is a grammar school; there will be no one on that property who will see us.”
Sure enough, a few minutes later a train rolled past us and into the station. As soon as it left, Violet crept toward the fence. My heart racing, I followed her. Violet climbed the chain link fence like a professional, hoisting herself over the other side of it and climbing down a few feet before jumping down and landing deftly on her feet. She was surprisingly cat-like. I imagined this must not have been the first time she’d climbed a chain link fence.
If Violet resembled a cat in her elegance, my own could probably generously be compared to the elegance of a hippo. I grunted and struggled to make my way up the fence, my lack of fitness skills all too evident. There was a reason I went into medicine, and it wasn’t because I’d gotten great grades in gym class back in high school.
As soon as I got to the top of the fence, I realized I was in trouble. More specifically, I had no idea how I was going to make it over to the other side. I managed to get one foot over the top, but the chain links dug in and were really painful, and I really didn’t know how to get the rest of my body over safely.
“How did you get over?” I finally called out to Violet, who I was sure was down there either laughing at me or asking herself why she brought a moron like me along with her.
“Swing your second leg over as well, then crawl down until your upper body goes over also,” she called back. “Also, I do not mean to rush you, but another train will be approaching in three minutes.”
“What? How long between trains?”
“Ten minutes.”
“How long have I taken to get up this far?”
“Five and a half minutes.”
“Great,” I mumbled to myself, panic beginning to rise. If I was still hanging on this fence in three minutes the slowing train would come by and someone would absolutely see us and call the cops. I didn’t want to be the reason we got arrested.
I gathered my courage and swung my second leg over the top of the fence. Unfortunately, the leg of my jeans got caught on the edge of the fence, and I lost my balance. I panicked and began to fall over the other side of the fence. I heard a rip from the part of my jeans that was caught on the fence, but if anything it was a godsend as it slowed me down as my body hurtled towardstoward the ground.
I landed with a thud, and as I groaned and looked up I saw Violet with her hand over her mouth, this time obviously trying to hide the fact that she was laughing at me.
“What? It’s not my fault, I have a bad knee,” I muttered, annoyed, as I struggled to get up. My knee hadn’t given me the least amount of trouble then, but I was willing to throw out any excuse that might save me a little bit of dignity at this point.
Violet held out a hand and helped me up, and we made our way behind a concrete column just before the next train went by. That was a lot closer than I’d hoped for.
“I really liked those jeans,” I whined as I looked at the tear that ran about six inches along the inside hem. So far, this night wasn’t going too well for me.
Chapter 13
“Which unit number is hers?” I asked Violet as we approached the front door of the building. I noticed a security camera facing the door, about ten feet up, and also noticed that the wire connecting it to the building inside had been pulled out. How on earth Violet had gotten up there to do that, I had no idea.
“I do not know,” Violet said. “I hacked their website when I found out the information, but they do not store their customer data online. It is too bad; online databases are not only easier for the business to manage, but also for me to access. We go first to the office, where we will find Jenny Lin’s locker number.”
At that point, I heard the lock Violet had been picking click open, and we carefully made our way into the building. I looked around, but couldn’t see the white box indicating an additional security system.
“Security here isn’t that great,” I muttered as Violet handed me a balaclava and I put it on, along with a pair of thin gloves that matched her own.
“Self-storage places are often notorious for spending as little as possible on security,” Violet told me as we made our way down the dark hallway, the light from her phone our only guide as we passed roller doors with coded keypads on the outside. “The high fence and the floodlights are designed to reduce the number of people attempting to break in, and once in they expect that the coded keypads will be enough to dissuade any potential thieves,” she continued, stopping in front of a regular door marked office. “Here we are.”
Thirty seconds later Violet had picked the lock and we were in the main office. We looked around to make sure there was no security setup here, then Violet strode toward a cabinet at the back. I held the light for her as she rustled through the documents.
“There is nothing here in Jenny Lin’s name,” she finally said, frustrated.
“She must be using a fake name,” I mused, and Violet nodded. “Yes. Get out your phone. We will sort this pile into two, and see who has the most likely folder.”
Two minutes later I found myself sitting on the floor of a self-storage space, trying to decide which name was most likely the alias used by the daughter of a UK ambassador in the storage space she possibly used to help hide evidence that she smuggled paintings for the Triads. This was definitely not the way I’d expected my life to go.
I had all the folders for people with last names from A to L.
“She definitely didn’t want anyone to know she had this place if she rented it under a fake name,” I said to Violet, who nodded.
We searched in silence for another minute or so, then I tried asking Violet a question.
“Hey, can I ask you something?”
“Of course.”
“What would you do if you were trying to find information about someone, and you weren’t getting any success looking at their social media?”
Violet looked up at me, a small smile on her face.
“Are you perhaps considering a new career in detection?” Violet asked, giving me a sly look.
“No, no, nothing like that,” I said quickly. “Just… kind of helping out a friend.”
“Oh yes?” Violet asked, h
er voice questioning. With that, I found myself telling her all about Linda and her fears that her new boyfriend wasn’t telling her the truth about having siblings.
“So you see,” I concluded, “I’m not really supposed to be looking into this for Linda. But I’m curious, and I thought I’d kind of give it a try. But I’ve pretty much stalled at the first hurdle.”
“And you are discouraged because of it,” Violet deduced correctly. “Do not be! You have done more than almost everyone else in the world simply by trying. And you are not me. You have to think that I have been doing this for nearly half my life. I ask you about many medical issues because you have been doing that for nearly as long. You have your expertise, I have mine. But you should continue! You should attempt to find the answer for your friend.”
“So what would you do next?” I asked.
“You have a name. I would go search birth records on the internet. Siblings are often born in the same area; see where Aaron Stone was born, and then see if anyone else with the same last name was born nearby. Alternatively, you could ask a friend by pretending to be a long-lost friend of his brother and sister’s. If the person says he has no brother, but he has a sister, or vice-versa, you have your answer.”
“I can’t believe I didn’t think of looking at the registry,” I muttered. “Thank you.”
“It is not a problem. And do not scold yourself too badly. You are doing well for your first case. And I must say, I am pleased that you are putting your brain to use.”
I blushed slightly, thanking Violet as I continued to scroll through the large pile of files in front of me. Suddenly, I stopped at the name Cecilia Chang.
“Hey, Violet?”
“Yes?”
“Do you know what the last name was of Jenny’s friend, Cee-Cee?”
“Ah oui. C’était quoi?” she muttered to herself, then two seconds later snapped her fingers. “Chang. It was Chang.”
“Well I think I found the locker then, under the name Cecilia Chang.”
Bombing in Belgravia (A Cozy Mystery) (Cassie Coburn Mysteries Book 2) Page 8