Chapter thirty-four
Unit Seventeen
CoastalFreightSolutionshada pickup order.
Margot made the call from the dock shed while Evan listened from the workbench, one shoulder against the wall, coffee forgotten in his hand.
The woman on the other end sounded cheerful and efficient. “Let me pull that up.”
Keys clicked.
A pause. “Okay, here we go. Six padded crates. Climate-controlled transport. Pickup at Evergreen Tide Resort service entrance, four a.m., July fourteenth.”
Margot glanced at Evan. His expression sharpened.
“Destination?” she asked.
“StoreSafe Climate Storage. Unit seventeen. Kill Devil Hills.”
Her pulse kicked. “Under what account?”
“Hartwell Imports LLC.”
The same shell company. The same paperwork. The same name that had been floating around the edges of everything for two weeks.
Four in the morning. While the resort slept. While police tape still hung around the pavilion. While everyone had been looking at the broken display case instead of the service entrance.
Margot thanked the woman, ended the call, and lowered the phone slowly. “The ornaments are in a storage unit.”
He pushed away from the wall. “Where?”
“Kill Devil Hills. Forty minutes away.”
He stared at her. Then a grin broke across his face. Not amusement. Relief, like when a puzzle finally gave up its last piece. “He didn’t move them out of the area.”
“He didn’t need to.” Margot dropped into the chair beside the workbench and rubbed her eyes. “Not yet. He just needed them out of the resort.”
“And somewhere climate-controlled.”
She nodded. “A hundred and seventy thousand dollars in antique glass can’t sit in a garage in July.”
“He was buying time.”
“Exactly.”
The theory settled into place so neatly it almost annoyed her. Weeks of interviews. Security footage. Shipping records. Vendor lists.
And in the end, the ornaments had been sitting in a storage unit less than an hour away.
Evan grabbed his jacket. “Harker. Right now.”
They assembled everything they’d collected. Photographs. Invoices. The shell-company records. The service entrance timeline. The Coastal Freight confirmation.
By the time they walked into Detective Harker’s office, Margot’s folder looked thick enough to stop a bullet.
Harker spent less than five minutes reading. Then he picked up the phone. “I’m calling the judge.”
Neither of them spoke until they were back outside.
