To say I was bummed out was an understatement. I’d lost the last shred of credibility I had with Detective Heather. And what had happened to the locker’s contents?
Dinah tried to cheer me up and said we might as well fulfill our promise to CeeCee to stop at Commander’s Mail It Center and pick up the packing supplies he was donating to our booth.
“It looks so much nicer if you get a cute little shopping bag with your purchase, and with a Tarzana Hooker sticker, no less,” Dinah said trying to sound cheery as I pulled the greenmobile in front of the Mail It Center. It was in a strip mall off Ventura Boulevard between a cell phone store and a nail salon. As we approached the small storefront, Commander saw us from inside and waved. More than waved. The minute he saw Dinah, his face lit up like a kid on Christmas morning. I was so happy for my friend.
As we passed the post office boxes in the front part of the small storefront, I remembered that Commander had said Kelly had one, for her online business.
“What happens with Kelly’s box now that she’s gone?” I said.
“Interesting that you should bring that up. She was paid up through last week. I’m trying to decide what to do with the contents of her box. For now I just put it over there”—he gestured toward a small bin in the corner.
“Mind if I have a look?” I asked. He seemed uncomfortable with the idea, but finally agreed. There were some pieces of junk mail, several catalogs for yarn and a small box. I picked it up and examined it. Commander saw what I was doing and pointed out “Return to sender, No such address” was stamped on the front.
“Kelly dropped off packages for pick up all the time. She must have made some kind of mistake on this one.”
I held it up and shook it; something clunked inside. Yarn things didn’t clunk and I was suddenly curious about the contents of the box. Commander nixed the idea of opening it.
“But you said the rent on her post office box ran out,” I protested. He still seemed uneasy and said usually when someone stopped paying for a box, he just refused any packages, but he couldn’t refuse a box being returned. Dinah started to work on him, too.
Finally he put up his hands in capitulation. “I’m going to get the packet of shopping bags and tissue paper for your booth. You two watch the front while I’m in the back where I can’t see what’s going on up here,” he said in a knowing tone. “And make sure you put everything back the way it was.” He paused. “That is if anything were to just happen to open.”
As soon as he went to the back, Dinah pulled out a long letter opener and we used it to slide under the flap of the box and release the adhesive. “He must really love you,” I said. Commander wasn’t one to bend the rules and looking the other way was a big deal for him.
I don’t know why my heart rate had kicked up when it took some doing to get the box open. It wasn’t like he was trying to catch us. I suppose it was from the anticipation of finding out what was inside. Finally a small taped-up packet slid out. Dinah took what Commander had said seriously and used the knifelike letter opener to open the inner wrapping without tearing in. She handed it to me and I unfolded the bubble wrap, revealing two small green crocheted bags with drawstrings. I poked my finger into one of the bags to open it and emptied the contents on the counter. Two quarters fell out and pinged against the Formica.
“What’s that about?” I said, picking up one of them.
“Maybe she just wanted to put something in the crocheted bag to weigh it down,” Dinah said as I handed her the other one to look over.
“All the items she sold were pricey. How much could she make on a couple little bags? I quickly took a photo of the small bags and the coins with my BlackBerry before we put everything back. “That’s certainly not what I expected,” I said as I resealed the small cardboard box and dropped it back into the bin with Kelly’s other mail. Dinah called to Commander and let him know we were