Gina Cresse - Devonie Lace 01 - A Deadly Change of Course--Plan B (3 page)

“Good morning, Miss Lace.  Early day for you, isn’t it?” He seemed surprised to see me out and about at this hour.

“Auction today.
  Wish me luck.  I could use the extra money for those sailing lessons you suggested,” I said, grinning.  I watched his expression for a reaction.  Yes, there was a smile.  I
thought
I
might
finally
be getting to him.

I walked quickly past some of my neighbors’ slips.  Most of the boats in the marina were
week
end toys.  Only a few of us actually lived on our boats.  I could hear Mr.
Rowden
banging some pots and pans inside his ill-kept fishing boat,
Voluntary Solitary
. He spent most of his time out fishing.  He must have been having some mechanical problems
lately
.  I hadn’t seen him spend that many days in a row tied up to the dock since he had to have his engines rebuilt last season.  I swear I had nothing to do with the bent
thingamabob
connected to the
doohickey
t
hat turned
the propeller.

Chapter Three

J
ason, already at A-1 Mini Storage when I arrived, waved as I pulled into the
p
arking lot.  The manager was just unlocking the office as I parked my Jeep in the small lot ou
tside the chain-link fence.  The
complex seemed to have many more security features than others I’d seen.  The rates were higher too
—
I guess
ed
to cover the extra costs for 24-hour security guards and surveillance cameras.

“Morning, Dev.  I see you dragged yourself out of bed in time to get here before the auction ends,” Jason said with a smile on his face.

“Oh come on, Jason.  You know I used to get up at five every morning when I was part of the rat race.  I can get up with the rest of the early birds
—
if I have to,” I said.

“Come on in folks,” said the man with the keys.  “You’re an eager bunch.  Aren’t you?”

There were about a dozen anxious people waiting with us outside the doors.  We filed in and followed the manager into the office.

“Okay, folks.
  We’re
gonna
get started on time this morning,” the manager announced as he pulled a clipboard from the wall and began flipping through pages.  “I’m
gonna
open up the units so you can look inside, but you need to stay behind the lines.” 

He handed us maps of the complex.  They each had twenty yellow X’s marked on them.  I kept looking for the
You Are Here
X, so I could put the thing in pe
rspective.  I forgot to mention that I was
directionally challenged.  I
didn’t
have an internal compass like a lot of people
did.  I was
so glad I live
d
at the oc
ean
so at least I
could
almost always tell which way
was
west.

I followed Jason out the door. 
“Hey, Jason.
  How do you read this thing?” I asked as I hurried to keep pace with him.

“You’re kidding. 
Right?”

“No.  Where are we, say, in relation to this yellow X here?” I asked as I arbitrarily pointed to a mark on the map.

“Jeez, Dev.
  How’
d you ever manage to program a computer?” Jason asked as he stopped and pointed out where we were on the map.

“Easy, Jason.
  You don’t need to know the difference between east and west when you’re writing an application to
pay bills or track inventory
,” I replied indignantly.

“S
orry, Dev.
  I didn’t mean that the way it sounded.”

“That’s okay, Jason.  Little comments like that reconfirm my belief that I’m making the right decision to stay single the rest of my life.”

“Come on
.  You know you don’t want to be alone the rest of your life.  Don’t you ever wish for a little romance?  Everyone’s got to have someone.  Where would Romeo be without Juliet?”

“Alive,” I answered.

“Very funny.
  If you’d just give some poor guy a chance, you’d see that all men aren’t jerks.”

“Like who?”

“Like me,
Devonie
Lace.” 

Oh, great.  This was not the direction I wanted to go.  We
’d
had
that
conversation a dozen times and he still
didn’t get it.  I’d
come to cherish my freedom and independence and
was
not anxious to mess it up by introducing a
significant other
into my life.  Marty, the goldfish,
was
as much commitment as I care
d
to make at
that
point.  Years ago, I
’d
made the foolish mistake of letting someone get too close.  I
’d
put all my faith and trust i
n him, and he let me down. 
Since then,
I
found
it much safer to keep everyone at arm’s length, at least emotionally.  That way, I
couldn’t
get hurt, although it
did
get a little lonely sometimes.  “Jason, we’ve been over this.  Just tell me where these little units are.”

“Fine Dev.  Have it your way.   You just head down this row and around the corner to the right.  All the small units are on the far end down there,” he said as he pointed down the long row of steel roll-up doors.  “Want
me to walk you over there so you don’t get lost?” he asked. 

“No, thanks.
  I can handle it,” I said as I started to walk off.  “Oh, and by the way
,
Jason, lookup ‘jerk’ in the dictionary.  It’s a picture of you.”

The man with the keys opened the six small units being auctioned off.  Four of them were combined into two separate lots, and the other two were being sold as individual units.  I peered into the first one on the end
—
nothing but cardboard boxes with no labels or markings at all.  They could be full of old clothes and a bunch of worthless junk.  On the other hand, they could be full of priceless treasures.  You just couldn’t tell.  About seven months ago, I passed up bidding on a unit that looked worthless.  As it turned out, the unit contained a rare coin collection that proved to be worth thousands of dollars.  The delinquent tenants of the unit didn’t realize the value of what they had.

The next pair of open doors revealed a little more information.  Again,
it was
full of cardboard boxes, but at least these were labeled.  Some were marked TAXES with the year designated.  Some were marked OLD COLLEGE TEXTBOOKS, and another was marked DIVORCE PAPERS.  It was easy to see why someone would let
that
storage unit go, especially if finances were bad enough to quit paying some bills.  I decided not to bid on that one.

The last unit held the most promise.  There were two small safes, three brief cases, a small file cabinet, and what looked like a laptop computer in a black carrying
case.  There was a second case
—
probably a printer
—
but my view was partially blocked and I couldn’t see the whole thing.  The rest of the crowd headed down the row toward my claim.  I wished I could quickly shut the door until they passed.  It was obvious this unit contained at least something of value.

“Look Beth, I think tha
t’s a computer in that case
,” a man said to his wife as he pointed at
my
find.

“No way,
Mel
.
  You’ve already got two of those da
r
n things.  We’re bidding on that unit with the nice Kenmore washer and dryer set.  Now, come on.”

“Yep.
 
Mel is
whipped,” I whispered to myself as Beth pulled the reluctant
Mel
by the arm away from the unit.

Another man, in a light green shirt and pastel colored plaid shorts, was coveting my unit.  He appeared to be in his mid-forties, with a bit of a beer belly and a receding hair line that just started to show gray at the temples.  His mustache was grayer than the hair on his head, and it was trimmed sort of crooked on
one side.  He wore a red fanny
pack that was adjusted too loosely.  From the back, he reminded me of one of those monkeys with the bright red bottoms during mating season.  He turned to me and said, “Looks like one of those laptop computers in there.  Huh?”

“It’s probably just the case,” I said.
 
“
Why would anyone store a computer?  If it was any good, they’d be using it, don’t you think?”

He smiled and scratched his head.  “You’re probably right.  I wonder what’s in those safes?” he said as he leaned over to get a better look.

I could tell
he
was going to be a problem.  I decided the best action to take would be to seem disinterested.  I walked over to the first unit and studied the boxes
—
like a sports fan
standing
in front of the rows and rows of television sets in a department store
—
watching the same game on twelve TVs.  Four more people were drooling over
my
unit, and I didn’t like it at all.  I checked my watch.  The bidding would be starting in about fifteen minutes.  They probably wouldn’t get to
my
unit for about thirty minutes after that.  I started calculating exactly how much I could afford to bid
,
then
  I
decided to take a look at the rest of the lots before the bidding started.

Jason was camped out at the Kenmore washer and dryer unit.  Little did
Mel
and Beth know that Jason would
be their toughest
opponent.
  I’d
seen that look in Jason’s eyes before.  He wanted that pair of appliances and nothing would keep him from hav
ing them—except maybe an overly-competitive husband trying to make his wife happy.

By the time the auctioneer got to my unit, there were at least twenty people gathered around the door.  I set myself up as close to the center front as possible.

“Okay.  This looks like a pretty promising lot here.  Let’s start the bidding at five hundred,” the auctioneer said.

Five hundred dollars?
  Was he kidding?  I looked around at the rest of the faces.  No one was jumping.

“Fifty dollars!”
I called out, bravely.

“You
gotta
be kidding, lady.  Just one of those safes is worth five times that amount,” he answered back.

“Do you have a hold on this lot
?” I asked him
.

“No, ma’am.”

“The combination to those safes?
 
Because if I have to bust them open, they’ll be worthless.”

He shook his head.

“Then fifty dollars is my bid.”

He gave me a distressed look,
then
returned to the business at hand.

“I have fifty!  Do I hear seventy-five?” he yelled out to the crowd.

“Fifty-five!”
I heard from somewhere behind me.  It was
Mel
.  Then I saw Beth punch him in the arm.

“Ouch!  What’d you do that fo
r?” he cried out
.

“You know dar
n well what for,”
she said, angrily
.

“Sixty!” I countered.

“One hundred!” came from the man in the green shirt. I could see trouble on the way.  I could not afford to spend more than two hundred and fifty dollars today, or I would be fishing for my dinner for the rest of the month.  I wondered what Marty would taste like with tartar sauce and French fries.

“One hundred and one!”
I called out.

The small, vertical crease in the auctioneer’s forehead deepened as he glared at me through two squinting eyes.  His irritation with me was hard to hide. 
“Lady.
  Just so we’re not here all day, why don’t we try to keep this to
—
”

“Is there a rule that says I have to bid
in certain increments?” I asked
.

He gave me a look that would make a junkyard dog turn tail and run.  “I have one hundred and one.  Do I hear one hundred and ten?”

“One hundred and fifty!”

Oh, great. 
It
was a third bidder I had never seen before.  I was beginning to sweat.

“One hundred and fifty-one!”
I called out.

There was that look again.  I smiled and batted my big, blue eyes at the auctioneer, but he didn’t seem to be amused.

There was a slight pause.  For a moment, I thought I had done it.  Then, from the man in the green came a loud and
defiant
, “Two hundred dollars!”

Before I could get my two hundred and one out, the third bidder spoke up.  “Two fifty!”

I looked at him with an injured expression and raised my hand. 
“Two hundred and fifty-one!”
  Oh my God, what was I doing?  I
’d
stepped over my limit.  I couldn’t lose control
.  N
ot now.  It was time to back out and let the other two bidders duke it out.

The green shirt bid two seventy-five and it looked like he was going to get it.  There was silence for a moment.