The locksmith read me the name of the person who picked them up, and it wasn’t Wesley, it wasn’t me, and it wasn’t anyone on the list of people who worked at the shop. I asked when the keys had been collected. He said three days after the locks were changed in 2020. I asked whether the person had shown ID. He said yes, and that the name on the ID matched the order exactly. Then he told me something that made my stomach turn. The sixth key hadn’t been picked up with the other five. It had been collected two weeks later. I asked who came for it. He read me the name again, and I knew it immediately — it belonged to a woman who had stopped coming into the shop after my husband died.
I called Wesley and asked him why there were six keys when he remembered ordering five. He said he’d forgotten about the extra one. I asked who the woman was. He said she was an old customer who’d needed access to the back room once, years ago, and that he’d probably given her the spare because he trusted her. I asked why she’d needed a key in 2020. He didn’t answer. I reminded him that the police had just asked for every person with access, and he finally said, “Don’t make this bigger than it is.” I told him it was already bigger than I understood. Then I asked him whether my husband’s name appeared anywhere in the 2020 paperwork. There was a long silence. He said my husband had asked him to change the locks before he died.
I went back through the ledger and found the entry I’d missed: “Lock change — six copies — requested by R.” My husband’s initial. But the date was three months before his death, and nobody had ever told me he’d changed the locks. I called the locksmith again and asked whether there had been any special instructions on the order. He said there was one note in the margin. “One key to be held for later collection.” I asked who had written it. He said it was in Wesley’s handwriting. Then he checked the pickup record and told me the woman had collected that final key two days after my husband’s funeral. I asked where she was supposed to use it. He read the address on the original order — and it wasn’t my brother-in-law’s shop.
It was my house.
