Chapter 4 - The Storage Unit
The storage receipt had been tucked inside Ethan’s briefcase.
Clara had almost ignored it.
They did not rent a storage unit.
At least, she did not.
The receipt listed a facility fifteen minutes from the house and showed monthly payments dating back nearly two years.
Officer Daniels asked whether Clara had entered the unit.
“No.”
“Do you have access?”
“Not legally. The account is in Ethan’s name.”
She had called the facility after finding the receipt.
The manager would not release information, but he confirmed one detail.
Ethan had listed Clara’s address as his permanent residence.
Rebecca was named as the emergency contact.
Not Clara.
The payments came from an account Clara did not recognize.
Officer Reed asked why that mattered.
“Because Ethan told me Rebecca started working with him eight months ago.”
Daniels understood first.
“If she was his emergency contact two years ago, they knew each other much longer.”
Clara nodded.
The wedding was not sudden.
The affair was not recent.
The demand that she leave the house was not impulsive.
It had been planned.
Reed glanced at the forged loan application.
“What do you think is inside the unit?”
“I don’t know.”
That was true.
But Clara suspected documents.
Furniture.
Maybe boxes Rebecca had purchased for a future she believed already belonged to her.
Then Clara remembered something else.
“The storage receipt included an insurance policy number.”
Daniels raised his eyebrows.
“What kind of policy?”
“I searched the provider.”
She turned another page.
“It insures household contents valued at more than eighty thousand dollars.”
The officers looked past her into the modest entryway.
Clara’s home did not contain eighty thousand dollars in stored valuables.
May you like
Not unless Ethan was insuring things that were never his.
👉 A photograph attached to the storage insurance policy showed Clara’s furniture already labeled for removal.
