The Dead Key Part 20

CHAPTER 40.

Thursday, December 7, 1978 "Ramone, what the h.e.l.l we doin' up here? The floor's empty."

A light snapped on in the hall. It leaked around the doorframe into the abandoned office where Beatrice slept. She sat up with a jolt. She had just settled into her makeshift bed for the night. Footsteps grew louder as they neared the door. It was locked, but the approaching security guards had keys. She could hear them jingling.

"Elevators have been acting real funny lately," a deep voice replied.

It sounded closer than the first. Cigarette smoke seeped under the door. Beatrice scrambled back from her bed away from the voices and into the dark bathroom. She could still hear them talking as she eased the door shut.

"What do you mean, 'funny'?"

"What do you think I mean? Cars been comin' up here the past few days all hours of the night."

"So? They probably just busted. Come on, man. Everything in this dump acts funny. Wasn't you just sayin' yesterday that those security cameras are constantly on the fritz? Let's get back to the poker game."

"What does my shirt say? Does it say 'Card Dealer'?" the rusty voice growled. "No, it don't. It says 'Security.' I'm here to do a job."

"You goin' for employee of the month or somethin'? n.o.body's here, Ramone."

The footsteps grew fainter. Beatrice heard several doors open and close on the other side of the office. She didn't start breathing again until she heard the elevator bell ring and the voices disappear.

Beatrice clicked on the bathroom light and splashed cold water on her face. She gripped the sink with white knuckles. They had noticed her using the elevators. She would have to be more careful. Scanning the bathroom in the light, she realized there would have been no hiding place to keep her from being discovered, especially not if the guards had found her things on the floor in the other room. As she turned out the light, she glanced at the large grate for the vent next to the toilet, then shivered as the room went dark.

From that moment on, the journey from the ladies' room on the ninth floor up the emergency stairs to her bed was a heart-stopping ordeal. At every turn she was certain Ramone or his friend would jump out at her from a dark corner. She didn't dare set foot outside her secret bedroom at night.

To make matters worse, she hadn't had any luck tracking down a Jim or Ted in the office. Their voices continued to haunt her after their midnight conference outside her door, but she hadn't heard them outside her own head since. Tony still needed her to find out their names somehow. Time was running out until their next meeting.

"The minute things get too scary, I want you out of there." She repeated the detective's words every time she thought she heard footsteps behind her in the dark. It was a nice idea, but there was nowhere else to go. She'd filled out the forms for the apartment down the street, but she couldn't submit them. She didn't have the proper doc.u.mentation. Besides, Tony needed her help finding Max and reopening his investigation into the bank. She would have to find a way, scary or not.

Early Sat.u.r.day morning the building felt still. Beatrice gazed down at Euclid Avenue through the dusty blinds. The road was deserted. The sun bounced brightly off of the high-rise windows across the street, making the abandoned room feel even gloomier. She hadn't seen the sun in days. Even during her lunch hours it was buried behind thick winter clouds.

She should have left the night before but couldn't face another weekend wandering the hospital halls. The name R. T. Halloran, written on the ICU register, still loomed in her mind.

One hundred feet below her, a man in a dark coat and hat crossed Euclid and walked to the front doors of the bank. She frowned as she watched him. Several minutes later the elevators whirred to life out in the hallway. The building wasn't empty, not even on a Sat.u.r.day.

The sky went dark before she finally worked up the nerve to creep down to the third-floor personnel office to look for files on Ted and Jim. The emergency stair tower was lit by weak flood lamps that hovered over the doors to each floor. An endless swirl of railings and steps led from the eleventh floor to the third. She stared down the dark chasm and almost turned back. The thought of Max stopped her. Max was missing, and Ted and Jim might know why. She grabbed the rail and began climbing down the steps in her stocking feet.

When she finally reached a beige door marked "3," she pressed her ear to the cold metal and listened for voices. After several minutes, she was satisfied that the hall was empty and gently pulled the door open. The squeak of the hinges was painful. She squeezed through and silently eased it closed.

Beatrice crouched and waited in a dark corner for several heartbeats just to be sure before inching her way down the hall. The personnel office was across the elevator lobby on the other side of the floor. She hadn't been there since her first day on the job but could still picture it. She kept her back to the wall all the way to the HR department. The door was locked.

Max's heavy key ring was in her pocket. Beatrice searched the keys, trying one after another, until she found a match. The door swung open. She slipped inside the office and clicked the door softly shut behind her. Three steps into the dark room, she banged her stocking foot against a trash can with a dull clank. Sparks of pain flew from her toes and she whispered, "Aaaaah! Ouch! Ow! Ow!"

As she hobbled past the chairs and coffee table to the reception desk, it dawned on her that she had no real direction. She was in the personnel office investigating two strangers-Teddy and Jim. Her stomach sank. She hadn't planned the burglary very well. It wasn't as though a personnel chart would be just lying on the receptionist's desk. She was too scared to even turn on the light.

The faint sound of footsteps came tapping down the hall. Beatrice froze. They grew louder, until she could make out voices.

"Bill, stop it! You're terrible!" a woman giggled.

Beatrice backed away from the sound. Her eyes flew around the dark office, searching for a place to hide.

"Not out here, someone might see," the woman said, short of breath.

A key slid into the lock Beatrice had just opened, and she could see a large shadow through the frosted gla.s.s. She ran to the nearest open door and closed it behind her just as the door to the personnel office was flung open.

More footsteps, a trash can being kicked, a door slamming, and the rumble of a desk being b.u.mped into drowned out Beatrice's shallow breathing in the next room. m.u.f.fled voices muddled together just outside her hiding place. She strained to hear them, until the sound of wet kisses and heavy breathing sent Beatrice reeling back to the farthest corner she could find.

Five steps backward, she b.u.mped against something hard and metal. It was a filing cabinet. Her hands blindly traced its edges until she found another and another. She was in a filing room. She tried to keep her mind off of the grunting and squeaking metal on the other side of the door by counting the file cabinets. There were ten.

She decided to risk opening one in the dark. It slid open with a faint click, and she ran her hands over the files. The drawer was packed full with papers. Beatrice itched to turn on the lights and read them, but the light would leak out from the seams of the door, and she'd be caught.

Beatrice let out a small sigh as the grunting and groaning in the next room continued. The pitch black of the filing room became suffocating as the man's grunting got louder and louder, until it sounded as though he might be in the room with her, panting in the dark. She shrank into a ball with her head buried in her knees and her hands over her ears. Finally, she heard him cry out and it stopped.

"Bill! You're an animal!" the woman gasped.

The man chuckled under his sweaty breath. Beatrice heard a faint smack. "I don't know what I'd do without you, Susie . . ."

"Oh, honey." The sound of sloppy kisses filled the air again. "And I can't believe this ring! You didn't have to get me anything!"

"I thought of you when I saw it. The sapphires match your eyes."

Beatrice heard the woman's voice coo faintly.

"Just don't show it to anybody, okay? It's got to be our little secret."

"Oh, I'm so tired of all of the secrets!" she grumbled.

"You think I'm not? I want to shout my love from the rooftops. I hate all this sneaking around."

They were the same words from her aunt's love letter. It was Aunt Doris's Bill talking. Beatrice strained to hear his voice. It sounded like her boss, Bill Thompson, but she didn't dare open the door to confirm it.

"I love you too." She sighed. "Well, it's absolutely beautiful! Is it real?"

"What do I look like, some kind of cheapskate? Of course it's real." There was a pause, and Bill cleared his throat. "Say, did you get that paperwork I sent down Friday?"

"Hmm? Oh, yeah. I think it's here somewhere." The sound of drawers being opened and shut filled the now-awkward silence. "I hate meeting here, you know. Why can't we ever go someplace nice? My desk is as hard as rock."

Beatrice heard Bill chuckle and the woman squeal, "Bill, you're insatiable! Stop it!"

"I can't!"

Papers rustled. "Here they are. I still don't understand what this is all about."

"Consider it our retirement plan. I'm putting together a deal, and I can't use my name. I need a beautiful partner like you. This is going to set us up for life, Susie. In a few years we're going to leave this G.o.dforsaken town. We'll get a little hideaway somewhere on the beach. Margaritas." More kisses. "No more hiding."

"What about your wife?" Susie asked softly.

"She and her daddy can kiss my a.s.s! All these years under his thumb. I swear, if it weren't for you, I would have blown my brains out months ago. But it's almost over. Trust me."

"Okay. But next time, can we go to a hotel like we used to?"

"Sure, baby. Whatever you want."

Another kiss, and then the fumbling sounds of clothes and feet worked their way across the floor. Wisps of cigarette smoke filtered through the door.

"Do you have to smoke that thing? You know how I hate those." Bill's voice was growing fainter, and the door closed.

The sound of footsteps faded away.

Beatrice stood up and shuddered in disgust. She waited for several minutes before daring to turn on the light in the filing room. There was nothing in there but the filing cabinets and a fluorescent light. She pulled open a drawer. It was filled with personnel files arranged alphabetically by last name. Beatrice smacked herself in the forehead. It would be impossible to find a Jim or Teddy in the drawers and drawers of paper. There were two Jameses in that one drawer alone. She didn't know their last names. That was the whole point. The entire trip was a failure, and worse, she'd had to witness Bill and Susie's office-desk romance. It was all she could do not to kick a filing cabinet.

Determined to accomplish something, she stomped over to the drawer marked "DaDr" to find Doris. It was a long shot but worth a try. Unfortunately, there was no trace of a Doris Davis to be found.

Then Beatrice went looking for Max's file. At this point, she figured she had a right to know everything. It was exactly where it was supposed to be. Beatrice pulled out the folder and flipped it open. Maxine Rae McDonnell, born on August 22, 1952, started working at the bank in 1971.

She turned to the second page and saw a handwritten note: "Dismissed for Cause, Arrest on sight for trespa.s.sing." A date was stamped next to it-November 28, 1978. That was the day after her friend had stolen Doris's key. Beatrice tucked the folder under her arm and closed the drawer.

Beatrice cracked open the door to the filing room with one eye shut. To her relief, the desk looked unmolested, despite what she'd just witnessed. She stared at it in the pool of light from the filing room. The nameplate on the corner of the desk read "Suzanne Peplinski." Bill had called her Susie.

Beatrice shut off the light.

CHAPTER 41.

Bill and Susie's conversation replayed itself all the way up eight flights of stairs and for the rest of the night. Beatrice no longer had any doubt that Bill was stealing money from the safe deposit boxes. What she couldn't understand was why he needed Susie's help.

Poor Susie, with her secret jewelry, had no idea the ring on her finger was probably stolen. Had Bill told her aunt the same story about margaritas on the beach? She wondered how many years in the smoky diner Doris had clung to Bill's empty promises.

Beatrice pulled out her aunt's key and looked at it again. Safe deposit box number 547 must hold the answers. There had to be a way to open it.

Beatrice tossed and turned on her growing pile of laundry but couldn't shake the sound of Bill's piggish grunts from her head. She finally gave up on sleeping altogether and slipped back down the hall to the stairs. Only two flights of steps down, the ninth floor was dark, except for a few scattered security lights. She darted from shadow to shadow past the elevator lobby and through the secretary pool to Mr. Thompson's office.

The door was open, and the room was black. She felt her way along the wood-paneled wall toward the desk in the center of the room. Her hands wandered over the leather blotter and pen set until she felt the small lamp in the corner. The room lit up in a yellow glow. The small crystal clock on the desk read 2:00 a.m. The blotter was scattered with papers, but nothing of interest.

The top drawer contained pens, a letter opener, a cigarette case, and a lighter. The large file drawer was locked. She tried it twice, but it wouldn't budge. Her finger circled the keyhole in the side of the desk by her knee. She pulled Max's key ring from her pocket and tried to find a match. No such luck. Max didn't have that key.

Beatrice sat back in Mr. Thompson's enormous chair. The books on the bookcase looked like they'd never been read. The photograph of Mr. Thompson's wife and two daughters was still on the shelf. Apparently, they made Bill want to blow his brains out. Beatrice smiled at them sadly.

There was a crystal ashtray on the shelf next to his wife. It didn't look used. It was covered in a thin layer of dust, and a silver label was still stuck to the side. Mr. Thompson didn't smoke. "Do you have to smoke that thing?" Bill had asked Susie earlier that night. As she stared at the ashtray, she remembered something she'd seen in the desk.

Beatrice pulled open the smaller drawer again. The silver cigarette case was still sitting there. She picked it up, and it rattled in her hand. She pried it open and found a silver key sitting inside. She grinned. It was the desk key. It slipped into the lock and the file drawer slid open easily. Beatrice trained the desk lamp to look inside.

It was filled with rows of hanging files, and each file listed a name-Marilyn Cunningham, Francine Carter, Beatrice Baker. She was startled to see her own name in the drawer and pulled out the folder. It was her performance review file. Her resume was inside, along with several forms that listed her salary and the date of her next review. There were a few comments scrawled in the margins such as "punctual" and "cooperative." She paused at a small note that read, "a.s.sisting Randy Halloran. A welcome distraction." She raised her eyebrows at "distraction." It was insulting but the only shred of impropriety in the lot.

She stuffed the file back in the drawer and flipped through the others with her fingertips. Then froze. A file labeled "Doris Davis" was stuffed in the back of the cabinet. She yanked it out and flipped it open. Instead of performance records, there was an application for a safe deposit box signed by Doris dated 1962. Box Number 547. Beatrice pulled her aunt's key from her pocket even though she knew the number matched. Behind the application there were several repossession notices. Beatrice recognized some of the letters from the copies in her aunt's apartment.

There were more names of women filed away in the back of Bill's drawer. She grabbed the file for Sheryl Murphy. There was another safe deposit box application behind her name. The file for Diana Brubaker had one too. There were eight women, all with safe deposit boxes. Including Max.

Beatrice swallowed hard before picking up the one that read "Maxine McDonnell." She cracked it open, hoping to find nothing but a performance review. Maxine's safe deposit box number was 544. The repossessions listed in the letters behind her name included a diamond necklace, an engagement ring, and over $100,000 in cash.

Blinking back tears, Beatrice stuffed Doris's and Max's files back in the drawer and slammed it shut as if doing so would erase what she'd learned. She returned the key to the cigarette case and snapped off Bill's light. Sitting there in the dark, she wished she hadn't seen any of it.

She rushed back to the stairwell, hugging herself. Max and Doris both had safe deposit boxes, presumably filled with all of the items listed in those folders. Doris had been in love with Bill. He had seduced her with promises of a life together. He'd just made those same promises to Suzanne.

Beatrice closed and locked the door behind her and curled into a tight ball on the floor. Thoughts of Bill and Doris, Bill and Susie, and Bill's heavy breathing tormented her for the rest of the night. She finally fell asleep with her hands over her ears.

CHAPTER 42.

Monday morning, Beatrice stared blankly at her desk. She'd spent the entire day Sunday penned up in her stolen room, pacing the floor. She had watched the street from her windows with one thought circling her head: Max was still missing.

Max had learned something at Aunt Doris's apartment while Beatrice was sleeping. Max had found something in her aunt's safe deposit box and then disappeared. It couldn't just be a coincidence. Beatrice felt the key in her pocket and wondered if Max had really managed to unlock the box.

If Max could open it, surely Beatrice had to try. She was Doris's next of kin after all. She had rights, or at least she would if Doris died. Thoughts of Doris's death filled her with guilt. She hadn't gone to see her aunt in days. She would go tonight, she decided. She'd sleep in the lobby of the hospital again if that's what it took.

Having finally come to a decision, she attempted to focus on the stack of papers on her desk. She scanned the memo in her hand, trying to remember what her instructions had been. The page was just another meaningless accounting summary in an endless pile, until she saw the signature. "R. Theodore Halloran" was typed at the bottom of the page, but the scribbled signature read "Teddy." She reread the name, and her heart jumped. Teddy was the vice president of Finance. She stared at the last name, "Halloran." Max had said Randy's father was a vice president at the bank. He was the reason Randy had a job for life.

The memo Teddy had signed advised the board of directors to reject the mayor's request to refinance the city's debt. It was a more formal version of the f.u.c.k-the-mayor comment she'd overheard in the middle of the night. There was no doubt she'd found her man. She searched the stack of papers for any other clues as to what Teddy and Jim were up to. All she found was a detailed accounting of the bank's investment practices over the last four weeks. She paused at the summary of the City of Cleveland bond holdings. Her eyes widened. First Bank of Cleveland held over $20 million of the city's debt.

At the bottom of the pile she found a piece of parchment with the official letterhead of the City of Cleveland. The letter read,

If financing cannot be renegotiated by December 15, 1978, the City of Cleveland may default. All unpaid debts will be turned over to the State of Ohio for settlement. As you know, gentlemen, recovering lost revenue may take years. Please reconsider the impact to your balance sheet.