“Ida—“ Ruth started.
“What? I have a stain.”
“Lower your voice,” Ruth hissed.
“I’m whispering.”
The man behind the newspaper did not react. He turned a page.
Ruth loaded two machines, fed them quarters, and sat in the plastic chair directly back-to-back with the newspaper man. She did not look at him. She looked at the washing machines.
The others settled in on either side of her, Nans at one end, Helen next, then Lexy, then Ida, who had somehow produced a package of crackers and was eating it with focused intent.
“You’re late.” The voice came from behind Ruth, flat, unhurried, not loud.
Nans studied her cuticles. Lexy looked at the spinning drum in front of her.
“Thank you for agreeing to speak with us,” Ruth said, in the same tone she used to open town committee meetings.
“I’m not speaking with you. I’m sitting behind you. There’s a difference.”
Ruth kept her eyes on the machines. “We’re looking for a particular piece. Porcelain cat, ornate bronze base, older piece. We want to know if it’s moving.”
The newspaper didn’t lower. “Cat.”
“Porcelain. About two feet tall, the base is distinctive — leaf-and-scroll casting, heavier than it looks.”
Mickey was quiet for a moment. A dryer buzzed across the room. The man in the corner with the hat shifted slightly and went back to sleep.
“Nothing,” Mickey said. “Nobody’s floated it. No whisper, no buyer, no back-room chatter. If someone’s trying to unload it, they’re not using any channel I know.”
Ruth absorbed that. “Which means?”
“Which means either they don’t know what they have, or they do know, and they’re sitting on it.”
“How long do people usually sit on something hot?”
“Depends how nervous they are.” Another page turned. “Smart play is a storage unit. Pull it off the market for a few months, let things cool, then sell it somewhere far enough away that nobody recognizes it. Half the stolen goods in this county spend three months in a climate-controlled box before they go anywhere.”
Nans leaned forward slightly, elbows on her knees, still facing the machines. “You own storage units.”
“I own a lot of things.”
“Do any of them have cameras?”
The newspaper lowered two inches. Lexy caught a slice of Mickey’s profile — sharp jaw, reading glasses, the expression of a man who was recalculating. The newspaper went back up.
“All of them,” he said. “If somebody hauls that cat through one of my gates, I’ll know about it. I’ll be in touch.”
“Appreciated,” Ruth said.
A beat of silence. The machines hummed. Then Mickey muttered, with the weary specificity of a man airing a genuine grievance, “You know what kills me? Half the town is storing junk in those units they couldn’t sell at a yard sale with a free-puppy sign. I got one woman in 14B — broken lamps, ceramic chickens, and six years of bad decisions. Unit looks like a therapy session fell over.”
Ruth kept her voice neutral. “Who?”
The newspaper dipped. Just once. Just enough. “Trash-to-Cash Tina. Two payments behind and one motivational post away from losing the whole unit at auction.”
The name hit the row like a stone dropped in standing water. Lexy pressed her lips together. Nans looked at the floor.