The Dead Key Part 10

Ramone probably had the key to the mystery door. She also needed to ask about his dusting habits, but she had no idea how to find him. There was a phone out on Suzanne's desk. She lifted the receiver but wasn't surprised it was dead.

Iris picked up a chipped coffee mug and thought about her conversation with the woman who used to drink from it. A girl had called Suzanne in the middle of the night to ask about a safe deposit box. Her name was Beatrice Baker.

Iris sprang up from the chair and headed into the filing room. Inside the drawer marked "BaBr," Beatrice Baker's file was right there in black and white. Iris pulled the manila folder out and flipped it open. The first page was filled with hundreds of little handwritten ticks and swirls. It was some sort of writing but unlike any she'd ever seen before. There were pages and pages, and they all looked the same. "What the f.u.c.k?" Iris whispered. There was no 1970s headshot, no employment records, and no sign of Beatrice in the entire file.

"What are you doing in here?" a deep voice demanded.

Iris shrieked at the top of her lungs, and her arm crashed into the open drawer. She spun around to the voice, brandishing her Magnum flashlight, ready to throw it in self-defense. It was Ramone.

"Jesus, Ramone! You can't sneak up on me like that!" She tucked Beatrice's file under her arm. "What's the problem?"

"I said, what the h.e.l.l are you doing up here? It sounded like you were tearing the place apart. You're liable to wake the d.a.m.ned dead!"

She swallowed hard when he mentioned "the dead." Then she realized he was talking about the loud crash a few minutes earlier. "Oh, I had to move a bookcase." She waved her hand as if it were a trifle. Ramone grunted, and she hurried past him, eager to change the subject. She picked up her clipboard and stuffed Beatrice's file under her notepad as if it belonged there. "I'm actually glad you're here. I need some help with a door. It's over here."

He followed her past Suzanne's desk to Linda's office and the wreckage she'd created.

"Why didn't you come and ask me for help?" He glared at the toppled bookcase and back at her.

Iris grimaced and held up her hands. "Uh, I guess I didn't think anyone would mind."

Ramone shook his head. Iris plastered an apologetic smile on her face. The important thing was Ramone wasn't going to quiz her about her snooping in the file room or the folder she'd just stolen. The name Beatrice Baker was peeking out from under her notepad. She adjusted her drawings to hide it. Her heart was still racing as she eyed the spotless desk. She couldn't ask about it now. The question would sound nuts. He probably thought she was a wack job already. Instead, she motioned to the door. "I'm dying to know what's behind this."

"Why? It's just a bathroom." Ramone fumbled with his keys.

"A bathroom?"

"All the corner offices had bathrooms back then-'executive washrooms'-so the big shots wouldn't have to wash up with the regular folks." He shook out a key from his large key ring and tried it in the k.n.o.b. It wouldn't fit. He tried several more.

"But why would they put a bookcase in front of the door?"

"Who knows? Maybe it was busted and they just decided not to fix it." Ramone tried one more key and then backed away from the door. "The key doesn't match up. They must have changed the lock when they shut the bathroom down. Little things like that got lost in the shuffle, you know."

Iris reexamined the third-floor plan, frowning. She showed it to Ramone and asked, "How could all of this be a bathroom?"

"It's not," he said, pointing at the drawing. "This is the bathroom. This is the mechanical chase. This is the cold-air return." He traced the different s.p.a.ces out with his fingertip.

Iris nodded, feeling completely humbled. She hadn't thought of the mechanicals. Ramone knew more about how a building was put together than she did.

"Do you want to go look at the bathroom upstairs from this one? They're probably identical."

"No, that's all right. I'm heading that way next anyway. Thanks, Ramone." Iris silently vowed to stop trying to be an amateur detective and focus on being a mediocre engineer instead. Ramone began shuffling back to wherever it was he spent his days. "Hey, Ramone?"

He turned and raised his eyebrows.

"Did you . . ." The words "clean off the desk?" stuck in her throat. It would sound too stupid, and she already felt dumb enough. "Forget it."

He shook his head and headed back down the hall. She listened carefully, memorizing the sound of every footstep, until the door to the emergency stairs swung shut with a loud creak.

Iris spent the rest of the morning drafting the fourth-floor core plan. She carefully laid out the exterior walls, the hallway, the elevators, the restrooms, the monumental stairway, and the emergency egress stairs in the southwest corner. She was determined not to make any more mistakes. She counted the columns twice. Everything matched the third floor. When she'd satisfied herself that there were no missing parts of the building, Iris stopped and stretched.

The blueprints were coming together, but it all seemed pretty futile. According to Brad, the building was probably going to be torn down, along with all the riddles hidden inside. No one would ever know what had really happened. The little old lady who was missing Box 547 was probably dead and buried.

Iris wandered down the long hall to the northwest corner, where there was an office above Linda's. The door at the end of the hall was marked "Recorder's Office." Behind it was a preserved office s.p.a.ce similar to the Human Resources area downstairs. If it weren't for the thick layer of dust and a dead plant in the corner, it would have been just an ordinary workday before the staff arrived.

Iris paused at the receptionist's desk. There was a cup still full of pens and a family portrait all in plaid. The yellowed faces watched her from their faux-gold frame. Don't disturb the ghosts, Iris told herself as she opened a drawer. It was full of large rubber stamps. One read "FILE." One was an adjustable library stamp, on which the secretary would dial in the date-it was set to December 28, 1978. Iris picked up one. It was caked in dried red ink and read "RESTRICTED ACCESS" backward. She set it back down and fixed her gaze on the corner office.

A small plaque hung from the office door that read, "John Smith." Iris swung the door open and peeked inside. The shades were drawn, and the walls were dark. She tried the light switch, but the bulbs were burned out. Iris felt her way to a window and pulled open the blinds. Twenty years of debris rained down on her head. She sneezed and swatted at her clothes and found herself in a room full of filing cabinets. They lined the walls and were cl.u.s.tered in the center of the room. She blinked through the dust sparkling around her head at the maze of files.

"What the h.e.l.l is all this?" Iris whispered.

None of the drawers were marked. She pulled one open. It was bursting with manila folders, each one only labeled with bizarre symbols. She read a few tabs-"!!@%," "!!@^," "!!@&." She pulled out a folder marked "!!#%" and opened it. The papers inside were yellowed with age and covered with accounting figures. In the upper right corner, "KLWCYR" was typed on each page. In the lower right corner, she found "!!#%."

Iris forced the file back in its drawer and slammed it shut. She had a job to do, she reminded herself. She couldn't afford to waste any more time. Iris pulled out her tape measure and sketched the room. She made her way to the back corner and was relieved that there wasn't a huge filing cabinet blocking the door to the executive washroom. She'd broken enough furniture for one day. She grabbed the small bronze handle that matched the door in Linda's HR office, and it turned.

Inside, white marble floors gleamed in the sunlight streaming in from the north window. An enormous, gilded mirror hung above the porcelain sink. Flowers and little cherub faces framed the antique looking-gla.s.s. Iris turned the hot-water handle. Nothing came out. She looked in the toilet and saw it was dry. The floor of the shower stall was rusted from a faucet leak that had dried up years ago.

Iris made her measurements of the room. It was exactly ten feet wide as it was supposed to be, but it was only ten feet long. The wall adjacent to the mechanical ducts Ramone had described was tiled, but there was a large grated panel near the floor by the toilet. She crouched down next to it and shined her light into the grate. Between the louver slats she could just make out the smooth gleam of sheet metal. It must be the cold-air return, she decided, and made a note on the plans.

As Iris closed the door to John Smith's office, she couldn't get Suzanne's voice out of her head. "Those b.a.s.t.a.r.ds chained the doors up tight in the middle of the night."

Whoever he was, he was long gone.

CHAPTER 20.

Outside, East Ninth was hot and crowded as all the other worker bees filed out of the surrounding office buildings and into the scattered diners and restaurants for lunch. Iris lit a much-deserved cigarette and walked two steaming blocks to Panini's for an overstuffed pastrami sandwich. After elbowing through the crowd at the counter and fighting for paper napkins and condiments, she found a bench near a window and dug in.

"Hey, stranger!" a voice called from across the room. It was Nick.

Iris grabbed a napkin and wiped the mustard off her chin. Her stomach flipped with his easy smile. He'd driven her home four days earlier after a work happy hour. She had been sloppy drunk, and she'd given him a sloppy kiss. He didn't seem too impressed at the time. Her cheeks flushed as he pushed his way through the crowd toward her.

"Hey, Iris. Where've you been?"

"Hi, Nick." She felt flattered he had even noticed her absence. "Mr. Wheeler decided to let me out of the office. I've been working down the street at the old bank building."

He set his tray down next to hers. With his wavy hair and rumpled khakis, he was almost annoyingly handsome. "Wow. How'd you swing that?"

"Brad volunteered me. I think he was trying to help." Iris felt herself sitting up straighter and wishing she'd worn a cuter top. s.h.i.t. Is that a mustard stain? She crossed her arms to hide the blemish.

"Trying to help you do what?" he smirked.

"Hmm? Oh, keep me from going crazy, I guess."

"Is it helping?" He raised his eyebrows at her with a slow grin. She could still feel his warm lips on hers.

"Uh. Sort of." She kept her eyes on her sandwich. What was really driving her crazy was not knowing why he had just dumped her at her house after kissing her.

"h.e.l.lo there. Can I join you guys?" A beautiful blond walked up with a pet.i.te salad in her hand. Iris recognized her from the office.

"Hey, Amanda. Grab a seat." Nick patted the bench next to him. Amanda had on a silk blouse and white skirt that fit her perfect a.s.s like a glove. Iris could never wear white. Within minutes of pulling on anything pristinely white, she would sit in a pool of ketchup or fall into the greasy latch of a car door. Iris could never keep up with a white skirt.

"Do you know Iris?" Nick asked.

"Of course. You're over in engineering, right?"

"That's me." Iris was certain there was a piece of spinach in her teeth.

"I've been meaning to stop over and talk with you," she said with a saccharine smile.

"Really?" Iris was confused. Amanda was an architect and in charge of parading around like a model as far as she could tell. "About what?"

"Amanda's a staff liaison," Nick said with a mouth full of roast beef.

"Liaison to who?" Iris frowned.

"Exactly. You see, Nick? The entry-level staff doesn't even know who's running this firm."

"Well, that's not . . ." Iris began.

Amanda kept right on talking: "The younger staff is the future of this company, and it's up to us to set our goals. The partners really want to see more out of us."

"More," Iris repeated, trying not to show her irritation. She had just worked the entire weekend for free. What more could they possibly want?

The "partners" were the old men who sat in their offices all day, hogging the windows. The only one Iris had ever talked to was Mr. Wheeler. She pondered that fact for a moment and then realized it wasn't quite true. She had talked to another gray-haired guy in a suit a few weeks back. He'd caught her in the hallway skulking to her desk.

"Good morning, Iris," he'd said with a creepy smile.

"Oh . . . uh, hi!" she'd replied because she didn't know his name. It didn't help that she'd been hungover and fifteen minutes late that morning.

"So . . . How are you adjusting to life here at WRE?"

It had been a reasonable question, but she couldn't help but think that he'd seemed to enjoy watching her squirm.

"Um. It's great." She forced a smile. "We've got some really interesting projects going."

"Don't we though?" His twisted grin had hinted that he knew she was full of s.h.i.t. "Better get to it then, hmm?"

With that he just sauntered back behind some closed door on the other side of the office. She'd sort of blocked the whole exchange out, but on some subconscious level, she'd been avoiding any direct contact with the partners ever since.

Amanda continued yammering on about increasing work hours and opening stock options to the entire staff. Iris pretended to be interested while she tried to figure out how she was going to stuff the giant sandwich in her mouth with Nick sitting right there. There was no feminine way to do it. Besides, Iris couldn't see herself staying at WRE long enough to become fully vested in stock options anyway, so it was hardy an incentive. Nick and Amanda were talking like lifers. It was depressing. She was sure they'd be very happy together.

After lunch, the three of them headed back toward the office, Amanda chatting all the way. Iris found herself lagging behind to keep from pushing the blabbermouth into traffic. At the first opportunity, she waved her good-byes and trotted across East Ninth Street toward the bank. After listening to Amanda drone on for twenty minutes, she could really use a smoke.

"Iris, wait!" Nick called from behind her. He jogged up to her side. She shoved her cigarette pack back in her bag. No one at work knew she smoked. It was frowned upon.

"Yes?"

"I need to see inside the old bank. Can you give me a tour?" He c.o.c.ked his head at her funny, or maybe the sun was in his eyes. She couldn't tell.

"Really? Why?"

"Mr. Wheeler wants to get my opinion on whether any of the historical interiors can be salvaged. WRE might advise the county to restore some of it if the sale goes through." He held up a large camera bag she hadn't noticed before.

Iris nodded. "Sure. Come with me."

Wheeler seemed to be taking a real interest in the project. Maybe her hard work would actually get noticed. Oh s.h.i.t. He wanted to save the "interiors," and she'd just demolished a bookcase. At least she'd saved the chairs.

Iris led him into the alley behind the building. Ramone buzzed them in, and she escorted Nick past the loading dock to the main lobby. She filled the awkward silence with chatter.

"The First Bank of Cleveland closed in 1978. They chained the doors in the middle of the night, if you can believe that, and left all of this stuff behind. Furniture, coffee mugs, pictures, files. It's all perfectly preserved. I can't believe that in twenty years n.o.body came along sooner and stripped it clean. Somebody must really care about this place. I mean, what vacant building has an armed security guard? I guess they're worried about someone stealing it all. I don't know who would want to steal this stuff, though."

Besides me, Iris thought. She'd taken Beatrice's file that morning. Then there was Suzanne's key. It wasn't stealing, she protested. She was just trying to help some little old lady get her things back. The little steel doors in the safe deposit vault ran through her head, along with the flashlight up on the fifteenth floor.

Iris realized she'd fallen into a dead silence. "So. What specifically do you want to see?"

His warm brown eyes twinkled with amus.e.m.e.nt at her nervous stream of babble. "I need to see a typical office area to get a sense of the furnishings and the finishes."

She held his gaze a half second too long. Color rose in her cheeks. She turned away and pointed to a wall sconce. "Have you seen these fixtures?"

"They're beautiful," he said behind her.

She glanced over her shoulder, and he wasn't looking at the walls. He was looking at her. d.a.m.n it. Why does he have to be so attractive?

"I really need to see the upper floors."

"Okay. I haven't gotten past the fourth floor yet, but I've seen a few offices."

She led him up the monumental main stairwell instead of the emergency egress stairs. They weren't as direct but they were certainly prettier, with their marble and wrought iron. She felt herself swaying her hips more than usual as she climbed the steps in front of him.

They poked around the fourth floor for over an hour. Nick took pictures with his camera while Iris took more measurements and notes on her clipboard. The fourth floor contained mostly file rooms with doors marked "Deposits" and "Lending." She'd lost track of him for a while until she heard him yell, "What the h.e.l.l is up with this?"

She followed his voice into John Smith's office of abandoned filing cabinets. "I have no idea. I guess they needed more file storage."

"Huh. These are all still full?"

"Weird, right?" She began to worry that her tour was a flop and he wasn't getting enough photos of furnishings or whatever. "Here, come check this out."

Iris led him around the file cabinets and into the fancy bathroom. "This is the 'Executive Washroom.' Can you believe this stuff?" She motioned to the gilded mirror and the marble shower stall.

He shook his head, slowly surveying the room.