So Many Questions

Shellie Halverson never knew her mom had belongings in a storage unit. Her mom had died nearly five years ago; the letter Shellie received from the U-Sav-It warehouse on Monday was a total surprise. Her mom had always lived a minimalist lifestyle. Why did she need a storage unit? Her mom had apparently prepaid five years’ worth of rent. A payment was due by the end of the month or the contents would be auctioned off to the highest bidder. Shellie thought about letting her mom’s stuff go, but curiosity overcame her common sense. She Googled directions to the warehouse and planned to go after work on Tuesday.

Shellie hated Tuesdays. A St. Louis native, she concluded years ago that drivers were complete assholes on Tuesdays. To prove the point, only blocks away from U-Sav-It, Shellie narrowly avoided getting T-boned by a soccer mom in a minivan full of children.

In addition to hating Tuesdays, Shellie was none too pleased with other people’s kids and other people’s problems. She was silently cursing her dead mom (whom she actually liked) for adding another task that she dreaded completing. She had come to terms with her relationship with her mom, and she wasn’t the sentimental type. There’s no way she wanted Mom’s gewgaws and knickknacks in her spartan condo. She was afraid that her innate curiosity was going to come back and bite her in the ass.

Shellie turned right into the U-Sav-It driveway and stopped in front of a gated entrance. From the call box, a tinny voice snarled, “Yeah, whaddayawant?”

“Hi, I’m here to examine the contents of Unit 516. I have the certified letter you sent right here. It’s my mom’s stuff. I want to look at it before I give you permission to auction it off and give me my share of the proceeds.”

“Hey, lady, you gotta prove that you have permission to enter the lot, as well as if you have a right to open a particular storage unit. What unit are you interested in?”

“I told you I have the certified letter that lets me look at the contents of Unit 516. The unit was rented in the name of Dorothy Caldwell, my deceased mother. What else do you need, a permission slip from the great beyond?” This chore was a real pain in the ass. Why wouldn’t this guy let me in already?

He buzzed her through. The gate opened. Following the numbered signs, she had no trouble locating the 500 building. She slowly cruised along the line of garage doors and stopped her car in front of unit 516.

Before she even turned off her engine and exited the car, a balding, overweight man wearing a U-Sav-It polo shirt came huffing and puffing behind Shellie’s Prius. “Hey, you should have stopped! You aren’t authorized to open the unit without showing me the letter and your ID.”

The guy, obviously not employee of the month material, gave her a death stare. ‘Matt’ (clearly embroidered on his green polyester shirt, above his pendulous left breast) waited impatiently, his eyerolls showing his displeasure that Shellie was making do some actual work. Shellie retrieved her purse and showed the proper documentation. After he viewed the paperwork and gave a cursory glance to her picture on her ID, Matt grudgingly gave Shellie authorization to be there.

“Besides, you don’t have a key, do you? Of course, you don’t. Nobody ever has a key. Good thing old Matt is here to bring the duplicate keys, isn’t it, uh, Miss Halverson?”

“You got me there, Matt. Unfortunately, I left my acetylene torch and wire cutters at home, so I suppose I’m at your mercy to get a look at my mom’s stuff.” You-Sav-It Matt smiled weakly. He was not blessed with an understanding of sarcasm.

He pulled out the large ring of keys and sighing a bit, he gazed at each key, one by one, until he found the one labeled 516. He struggled to insert the key in the padlock. It opened easily enough. He removed the lock and added, “Listen, we close at 7 pm sharp, so make sure you close the door and lock up before then so I can let you out of the gate. Handing the lock back to Shellie, he turned and shuffled back in the direction of the office.

When Shellie was sure he was gone, she stood a moment wondering what kind and volume of crap she was going to have to deal with inside the 10 ft. by 10 ft. unit. She bent down and pulled up the garage door, holding her breath momentarily.

“Damn it, Mom! You paid $97.95 a month for one box? What were you thinking?” Her heels echoed on the floor as she approached the box. From her first impression there was nothing special about it. It was a Medium moving box (at least that’s what was printed on the side of the carton). The top was closed with silver duct tape. Bending over, Shellie pried up a corner of the tape and heard it rip along the center flaps. Taking a deep breath, she slowly opened the flaps and looked inside.

For some reason, the box’s contents made Shellie tear up. Not because of the sentimentality of encountering her mom’s possessions after five years, but the meager contents of the box caused Shellie to be overcome with sadness. Is this all Mom had to show for her life?

Inside the box, a grey metal fireproof box without a lock. Shellie opened the box and gasped when she saw it was filled with cash. Packets of cash, all bound with bank bands. Her hands shaking, she lifted and thumbed through one of the packets of money. She picked up the other packets and examined them. Each bundle was made up of $20 bills. Stamped on each band securing the individual bundles was the date March 21, 2016. The total value of each packet was written on the band in her mom’s even handwriting. The only other item in the box was a little black book held closed by a purple elastic band. “What the hell did you do to end up with this, Mom?”, Shellie’s voice echoing in the otherwise empty unit.

Shellie hoped she’d find answers in the little black book. She removed the rubber band placed it back in the box. She opened the notebook to see a series of dates and names followed by a series of numbers. The names were not familiar to Shellie. And she had no idea what the numbers meant. Wait, were they phone numbers? And what was the significance of the dates? Suddenly frightened to be in possession of so much money, Shellie put the book back in the cash box and before closing the lid, noticed that Jefferson Federal CU was printed on the topmost money bundle. Oh my God, that’s the credit union Mom worked at before she died! How did Mom get this money? Who did it belong to now? Had Mom stolen it? Lifting the cardboard box, the cash box shifted. Shellie noticed there was more of her mom’s handwriting on a deposit slip that slid out of the money band. Hands shaking, Shellie picked up the slip and read, gasping at the content of her mother’s final message to her:

My death was not an accident. If you come into possession of this box, I hope they don’t come after you, too. Take the money. Get away and start a new life. The only thing that can save you is the information in the little black book. Show it to no one. It holds the secret to your life and freedom from the mistakes affecting you now.

Shellie saw a metal rectangle at the bottom of the box. She recognized it right away – it looked like play money. As she got a closer look at the detailed engraving, Shellie realized it was an exact duplicate of a $20 bill.

Was this a Jefferson CU work-related award? Thomas Jefferson’s face started back at Shellie. Why hadn’t her mom deposited that money in the bank when she received it? Shellie tightly held the cardboard box and practically ran back to her car with it. She had to put the box on her car roof as she struggled to get her keys out of her jeans pocket. She looked around nervously, wondering if anyone else knew what was in that box. Opening her trunk, she reached up for the box and placed it inside the trunk’s cargo net and shut the trunk softly, trying not to draw attention to the cargo she had retrieved. She walked back to the door of Unit 516, lowered the garage door and placed the padlock through the hasp.

Shellie returned to the gate and honked. Matt glanced at her through the sliding window and buzzed the gate open. Shellie was careful to follow all traffic rules as she drove home — the last thing she needed was to get pulled over by the police.

FBI Senior Investigator Steve Handley, no longer acting as doltish Matt in the fat suit, called his partner to report that the subject had retrieved the package. Shellie Halverson didn’t know it, but her life was about to get complicated.