Free Sleep In Heavenly Peace (Pinnacle True Crime) by M. William Phelps

she was indeed responsible for leaving the children in the boxes, had delivered and wanted to hide the births for some reason? Maybe she had misjudged how long she was pregnant?
    “And you said,” Thomas asked, “the last time you were in your storage shed in Safford would be approximately April of ’93? Do you know what happened with the rest of the property there?”
    “No, I don’t have a clue.”
    “Well, let me tell you what we found—”
    Before Thomas could finish, Odell said, “Okay,” and looked at Thomas and Weddle with a confused, serious stare, as if to say, “What is going on here?”
    Thomas explained how the contents of Odell’s storage unit had been auctioned off about a week ago. “What was found,” she added, “is why we are here.”
    Odell sat up in her chair.
    “Do you have any idea what would be in that storage shed that would cause law enforcement to be involved?” Thomas paused for a moment. Then, “Any idea whatsoever, ma’am?”
    “None.”
    “Has anyone else ever had access to that storage shed?” Thomas still hadn’t come out with it. She was still giving Odell the benefit of the doubt to come up with some sort of explanation.
    “There was,” Odell started to say, then stumbled a bit with her words, “there was…another key, yeah.”
    “And who had that key?”
    “It wasn’t my neighbor across the street…I’m trying to think of her name.”
    “Do you recall what type of things you might have left behind?”
    “Mostly bed frames, fishing poles, crib stuff…I don’t think so.”
    Detective Weddle leaned toward Odell: “What’s your mother’s name?”
    “Good cop, bad cop,” Odell said later. Thomas acted sympathetic while Weddle presented himself as passive, but then changed his tone, projecting a more abrasive approach.
    “Mabel,” Odell said.
    “Do you remember having boxes,” Weddle asked, “I mean, boxes of photographs that were left in there?”
    “Some of them were left there, yeah.”
    “We found that strange,” Weddle said. “You know, Miss Odell, that somebody would go off and leave photographs, family photographs that had been collected for years, and especially photographs of your mother. Is your mother still alive?”
    “No,” Odell said, “she’s not….”
    Weddle, a large man in stature, Western all the way around the edges (cowboy boots, plaid shirt, big belt buckle), hardened by what he’d seen as a cop throughout the years, got up from his seat and walked around the room for a moment. After running his hand across his chin, sighing a bit, he looked at Odell. “I got another question for ya,” he said, raising his finger in the air as if he were thinking. “You said that you removed stuff one other time.” He paused. Turned around. “Was that after you had moved that you came back and removed some of the items, the last time you moved the items out of there? Had you moved at that point and came back and removed items?”
    By itself, the question alone seemed confusing. A mixed bag of winding words.
    “No, no,” Odell said immediately. She was getting a bit panicked now, as if she were being accused of something.
    “Or was that before you moved?”
    “That was before I had moved, yeah.”
    “So after you moved, you never returned and removed anything out of that storage shed?”
    “No, no. I had lost [ sic ] the key…umm…umm…with one of my daughters’ friends, just in case I had lost the keys when I came back I could get in and get stuff, you know if I had decided.”
    Thomas had been studying Odell as Weddle took control of the questioning, watching her mannerisms and movements. Although Odell was shifting a bit in her seat and answering questions with more enthusiasm, she still seemed confident. It was clear in the way she thought about her answers. Thomas and Weddle knew that a suspect who thought about what she said was a suspect hiding something. Nerves fray. Lies build on top of lies and become hard to keep