Flash

had happened between him and Dixon and Todd had ratcheted up the stakes.
    She still had a lot of questions about what had taken place out there on the upper veranda at the Enfield Mansion. The answers she had pried out of both Todd and Jasper had been extremely vague. All she really knew was that when she had outlined her plan to search Silas's office, Jasper had accepted it without much argument.
    Her scheme was the essence of simplicity. Jasper's job was to distract Silas by inventing a problem on the fourth level. While both men went upstairs to contemplate the magical appearance of water on the floor near Rollie's locker, she would go through the files. It was Jasper who had suggested pouring a quart of real water on the floor so that Silas would have something to look at once he was conveniently out of the way.
    Simple. Except that there was no card for Melwood Gill in the rotary file.
    Her hand hovered in midair above the cards.
    She had been so sure she would discover that Melwood Gill had rented that last locker on the fourth floor.
    Frantic, she went through the
G's
a second time. Gamberling, Geyser, Gonerly. No Gill.
    Damn
. Despair swept through her. Jasper's logical deduction, so obvious on the surface, had been wrong. Maybe Melwood had managed to remove all of Rollie's files from Pri-Con Self-Storage without Silas seeing him, after all.
    But how had he gotten inside the facility in the first place if he had not had the excuse of having rented one of the lockers?
    She glanced toward the elevator. Jasper could not keep Silas occupied up there on the fourth floor forever. She whirled to look at the file cabinet in the corner. She forced herself to think.
    If she had been in Melwood's place, what would she have done? For starters, she would probably try to muddy the waters a bit, just in case someone else came looking for the files.
    She would have rented the locker under a fictitious name.
    She groaned. If Melwood had used an alias, she would never find him in the rotary file. It did not contain any billing addresses, just names and locker numbers.
    But if Gill had rented a locker here at Pri-Con, the transaction would have taken place during the past few weeks. What kind of records got filed according to date?
    Invoices.
    She scanned the labels on the file drawers and saw the one she wanted immediately.
    She jerked open the drawer, half afraid that Silas's filing system would be exotic or indecipherable.
    But it was not. It was very straightforward and extremely neat. The numbered, dated invoices were arrayed before her in an orderly fashion.
    Maybe there was something to be said for good filing habits, after all, she thought as she started through the most recent invoices.
    Her automatic reflex was to look for a name that Melwood might have used. She remembered reading somewhere that people who changed their names tended to choose new ones that began with the same initials as the old ones. Martin Gore or Melvin Gantry, perhaps.
    But she could not count on that logic, she decided. Better to look for a familiar address.
    It was suddenly there, right in front of her, an invoice in the name of Mr. John Jones at Melwood's Queen Anne address. Locker four-sixty-three, rented three days after news of Rollie's death had reached Seattle.
    So much for the quaint theory that people selecting aliases went with identical initials.
    A squeak followed by a sighing groan warned her that the elevator was in motion.
    She slammed the file cabinet drawer shut and rushed out of the office.
    She was lounging against a brick wall, trying to look bored, when the elevator doors opened a few seconds later. She hoped she did not look as flushed and excited as she felt.
    "I tell you there's no way that water could be from a plumbing pipe," Silas grumbled as he stalked out of the elevator. "I know every pipe in this place, and there ain't any up there in that corner."
    "Must have been from the last rain." Jasper's shuttered gaze went straight to Olivia.
    She gave him her best business-as-usual smile. "Find the source of the leak?"
    Silas bristled. "Ain't never had any rain leaks up there in that corner. But hell, this is Seattle. Just about every building in town leaks. If you think I'm gonna refund Mr. Chantry's rent just because of a little water that didn't do any damage, forget it."
    "Take it easy," Jasper shot Olivia another quick glance. "We'll keep the locker until Ms. Chantry winds up the estate. Isn't that right,