Page 85 of Death of a Grill Master

“It’s not breaking in if we’re just … checking on a friend,” Hayley offered, badly.

Mona didn’t even pause as she weighed a sack of steamers. “She’s buying me dinner. Baked haddock. Blueberry ale. And not from the tourist menu.”

Earl groaned. “You two are like gasoline and an open flame.”

“You’re coming, then?” Hayley asked.

“Someone has to keep you from getting arrested,” he muttered. “But I’m driving. And when we get there, I’m staying in the truck. I want zero part in whatever borderline felony you’re about to commit.”

The storage facility on Crooked Road was bleak and boxy, hemmed in by cracked asphalt and a few dying maples. The desk was manned by a bored teenager with a phone in one hand and a bag of Flamin’ Hot Cheetos in the other. Hayley leaned over the counter, peppering the teenage manager with inane questions about pest control, flood insurance, and whether any of the units had wonky padlocks she should avoid. His eyes glazed over—half-listening, half-scrolling on his phone.

Out of the corner of her eye, she spotted Mona slip around the far row of units, tool kit in hand.

Hayley gave the manager a final smile, muttered something about comparing rates, then casually drifted away, circling the row and joining Mona just as she knelt beside Zane’s unit.

Three false starts.

The lock stuck.

Footsteps crunched past—Mona and Hayley ducked behind a row of lockers as the manager paused, squinted, then kept walking.

The lock was stubborn.

Hayley coughed loudly to cover the click as the boy wandered past again from a suspicious bathroom break.

A minute later, Mona clicked the bolt open and tugged Hayley inside.

The storage unit was cool and dry. Too clean. Too curated.

On a crate in the middle sat a pink dive fin. Folded beside it, one of Hank’s monogrammed towels. Inside a mesh dive bag—folded gloves, snorkel, wet suit.

Mona whistled low. “That’s a hell of a coincidence.”

Hayley stared at it, stomach sinking. “It’s not a coincidence.”

Mona tilted her head. “What do you mean?”

“This isn’t a storage unit. It’s a set piece.”

“‘Set piece’?”

“Someone planted this,” Hayley said. “On purpose. This isn’t evidence left behind. It’s a display. A message. Like someone’s building a case against Zane from scratch—one prop at a time.”

Mona frowned. “Framing him?”

Hayley nodded. “Someone who knows him. Knows how to make it look real. But it’s too perfect. No way he’d leave a pink fin that likely belonged to Tina and Hank’s towel just sitting out like this.”

Just then, a voice barked: “You can’t be in there!”

The teenage manager stood at the doorway, filming them on his phone. “Smile! You’re going on TikTok.”

Chief Caleb Maddox arrived five minutes later, lights flashing and boots crunching across the gravel. Earl was right on Maddox’s heels, hands raised like he was surrendering at a roadblock.

“It’s not what it looks like,” Earl wailed, trying for a calmer tone.

“It looks like trespassing, tampering with evidence, and dragging Mona into it, as well” Maddox snapped.

“They just wanted to check on Zane’s things,” he offered quickly. “That’s all. I told them it was probably a bad idea, but—”