Lilith: a novel

by Edward Trimnell

  “Anytime,” Jessica replied. “I’m here everyday from Monday through Friday, ten until six. Whenever you want to come. And I’m so glad to hear that your daughter is going to be okay.”

  That was all. There were no repercussions, and nothing unusual happened.

  Until the following afternoon.

  20.

  Seth walked up to her desk at approximately 2 p.m.—almost twenty-four hours to the minute, more or less, after she had completed her heist.

  “We need to talk,” Seth said. “In my office.”

  Seth did occasionally pull her aside for private, work-related meetings. And these meetings were kept to a strictly professional basis, even though they still slept together once or twice per month. It might be nothing more than a routine matter.

  But Jessica didn't think so. She sensed immediately that something was wrong. And there was only one possibility, really. This couldn't be a coincidence.

  “I—I was going to go to lunch now,” she said.

  “You can go to lunch later. Right now, we need to talk.”

  Seth turned and walked toward his office, without waiting for her, or turning to see that she followed him. This was quite out-of-character. Even though Seth avoided outright flirtation with her at work, he had always addressed her with a certain deference. That had been the case ever since her job interview, now almost three years ago.

  Inside Seth’s office, Seth sat behind his desk. Jessica remained standing.

  “It has come to my attention,” Seth began, “that you were in possession of Ellen Frazier’s safety deposit box key for several hours yesterday.”

  “That’s true,” Jessica said. Seth knew about the key, then. That much, in itself, was mildly suspicious; but it could be explained away. “Ellen Frazier left the key on my desk when she had to leave suddenly, after her daughter’s school called. She came back for it at the end of the day. So what?”

  “I have also been informed that you made several trips to the safety deposit box room with the key in your possession,” Seth said. “And then you made several trips out to the parking lot.”

  “Who told you that? Tina, probably.”

  “It doesn't matter who told me that.”

  “You should know that Tina hates me, Seth. She—she also seems to know about you and me, and she clearly resents it. This was just her way of trying to get back at me.”

  She thought she saw Seth flinch when she raised the issue of their “arrangement”. But he quickly recovered.

  “Let’s not bring in a lot of unrelated issues, Jessica. I know that you and Tina don't get along. And I didn't miss your rather unsubtle reference to our—relationship. But what we’re talking about here is you stealing from the bank.”

  “Can you prove that?”

  “Not entirely,” he admitted. “I’ve reviewed the security camera footage from the east exit, and it does indeed show you making two trips to your car yesterday afternoon, between two o’clock and two-twenty-one.”

  “That doesn't prove anything.”

  “Except that you were seen going back in the safety deposit box room—with your purse.”

  For a brief instant, Jessica searched for a plausible excuse for her going back into the safety deposit box room with her purse, and then out to her car—less than an hour after taking possession of a customer’s access key. There was no uncontrived scenario that she could imagine, at least on such short notice. If she acknowledged going back into the room, she would effectively admit to her crime.

  “You’re basing this all on what Tina Hartley told you.” Jessica recalled how yesterday afternoon, Tina had been marked “in”, even though she was nowhere to be seen. Obviously, Tina had been spying on her.

  “Jessica,” Seth said, almost gently. “Tina wasn't the only one who witnessed what you did. Bear in mind, there were two tellers on duty yesterday afternoon, as well.”

  Jessica now realized that she had neglected to take full consideration of the two tellers. The walls of Seth’s office seemed suddenly to close in on her. She had been caught.

  “Now here is what I need for you to do: There is absolutely no way that you can salvage your job after a breach of confidence like this. However, if you return whatever you took, you will be let go without any criminal prosecution. Technically speaking, I really have an obligation to report this to the police. But I can’t pretend that I’m not—fond of you. I’ll do what I can to protect you from the legal consequences, if you return whatever you took from Mrs. Crabtree’s safety deposit box.”

  What an option Seth was offering her: She could admit to the theft, and she would have to return the cash, gold, and coins—money that she was already thinking of as her “nest egg”. Then she would lose her job, too.

  There was no way she was going to do that. There was nothing for her to do now but go for broke. It was all or nothing.

  “Seth, I didn't take anything from Mrs. Crabtree’s safety deposit box. Tina—and whoever else told you that—are lying.”

  Seth gave Jessica a long, cold stare. “Frankly,” he said, “I think that you’re the one who is lying. Just like you’ve been lying to me. Oh, don’t play innocent with me. I know all about you and that construction worker. I’ve known it for quite some time.”

  Jessica gasped. She thought back to that rainy night the previous year: It had been Seth’s car she had seen in the darkness, after all. He had been following her.

  “I could call the police right now,” Seth said. “There would be probable cause for a search of your apartment.” He leaned back in his chair. “And maybe you would welcome that. It would be a chance to clear this up. Tell you what: You agree to the police search. If they come up empty-handed, then we’ll drop the matter. How about we handle it that way?”

  Jessica paused before answering. The money and other valuables were still in her kitchen pantry. For the time being, she had no other storage options, though she had planned to get serious about at least selling the gold over the upcoming weekend.

  Jessica sensed that Seth was bluffing about the search. He didn't think that either Seth or the bank could send the police to search her apartment based on the evidence they had—which was fairly described as circumstantial and hearsay. But she wasn't sure of that, either. If she called Seth’s bluff incorrectly, the result would be her total ruination.

  Then another idea came to her: Perhaps she had to turn the tables, and present a bluff of her own.

  “I’ll tell,” Jessica said. “I’ll tell them that you put me up to it.”

  Seth was taken aback. “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “I’m talking about ‘us’, Seth, dear. Our ‘relationship’ as you call it.”

  “What?” Seth sputtered. “You can’t prove—”

  “Phone records,” Jessica said. “How many times have you called me in the last two years, Seth? How many times have you called my personal phone from your personal phone?”

  Although Seth blustered a bit more, she could see that she had struck a real blow. As the manager of the branch office, he had indeed slept with a subordinate. And he had indeed promoted her. This was a genuine skeleton in Seth’s closet—and Seth had put it there.

  Eventually they arrived at an “arrangement”—their final one. Jessica would resign her position at the bank, effective immediately. There would be no police inquiry, no search of her apartment.

  The entire matter, in effect, would be swept under the rug.

  Except for the fact that she would forfeit her job.

  “Don’t ever put this job down as a reference,” Seth said, as she was signing a hastily composed resignation letter. “If I have any say in the matter, you’ll never work at a bank again.”

  So she went directly from Seth’s office to the east exit—the same exit she had used to pilfer an as yet unappraised portion of the late Mrs. Crabtree’s assets. One of Seth’s conditions was that she not even stop at her desk on the way out.

  “We’ll mail a
ny of your personal possessions to you,” Seth said, “at the same address to which we’ll mail your final paycheck.”

  There was no mystery regarding Seth’s eagerness to rush her out the side door, before she could interact with anyone, or present her own version of the situation. Seth knew, she had no doubt, that she was guilty of theft of some magnitude. And that theft was now tied, albeit indirectly, to his own indiscretions.

  Later she would reflect that if Seth had called her bluff, she would have had little chance of convincing anyone in authority that she and her boss had somehow been in cahoots. There was no way that either of them could have known that Ellen Frazier was going to leave her key behind, and Seth had been away that day, at a meeting at the bank’s regional headquarters. As a story, the scenario of her and Seth collaborating on the theft simply didn't work.

  But her relationship with Seth would have come to light during the investigation. There was, in fact, an electronic trail that could easily be used to verify it. Perhaps Seth was simply afraid of losing his job—the likely outcome of his sleeping with a subordinate over an extended period, and then concealing the relationship.

  So her decision to go to bed with Seth—and to keep going to bed with him—had saved her after all.

  21.

  Now unemployed, Jessica used her time to launder the cache of riches that was hidden in her kitchen pantry.

  The money in the cash bundles consisted of hundred dollar bills. During the three years she had worked at the bank, Jessica had handled similar bundles many times; she was not entirely surprised at how much money was there.

  She opened two separate savings accounts at two banks. Neither bank, of course, was the bank she had worked at. As an additional element of subterfuge, she chose branch offices that were on opposite sides of Cincinnati.

  Converting the gold bars to cash was a bit more problematic. Each of the gold bars she had taken was stamped with a unique serial number. A bit of online research told her that these serial numbers could be used to track down the owner of record—whose surname would almost certainly be Crabtree.

  It took her awhile, going from gold buyer to gold buyer, to find an underground dealer who was willing to buy the bars, no questions asked. He was a Russian man in his early forties, whom Jessica suspected of being a member of the Russian mafia. The underground gold buyer charged a commission of twenty percent. But the envelope that she carried out of that meeting nevertheless contained enough cash for her to live frugally on for several years.

  As she had suspected, the coins comprised the least lucrative portion of her nest egg. She took them to several different coin shops around the city, so that she wouldn't arouse the suspicions of any particular one of them. Before negotiating each transaction, she did some perfunctory Internet research so she would know the ballpark range for each coin. She found, however, that there was a lot of latitude in the amounts that coin dealerships actually paid for rare and historic coins. By the time she disposed of them all, the coins netted her a little more than six thousand dollars.

  When all of the money was totaled up, there wasn't nearly enough for her to retire on—as in never working or earning another hour’s wages again. There was, however, more than enough for her to take it easy—to live without significant financial anxiety or struggle.

  She could not use her work at the bank as a reference, so her brief and tentative entry into the professional workplace now appeared to be permanently stymied. She worked a series of low-paying jobs, always refusing overtime, and endeavoring, when possible, to hold her weekly hours to thirty or thirty-five hours per week. She did not make much money this way, but the spending money enabled her to avoid tapping too deeply into the principal of her “nest egg”.

  When a job became too boring or a boss too demanding, she simply resigned—or occasionally stopped reporting to work without further notice. It was no problem to go a few weeks or a few months without work—she had plenty in the bank. Jessica was in one such period of casual unemployment when she met Travis Hall.

  Jessica didn't go to bars that often. She had no trouble meeting men, and during the post-bank years she went through a handful of professional office types, another construction worker like Bryan, and even one cop. A few of them tried to get too close to her, and this became the point where she inevitably pushed them away. She still recalled her mother’s sad experiences with her father, and then Floyd. A life of dependency on a man was no sort of a life plan.

  So the night she met Travis Hall, she had gone to the bar for amusement more than anything. It was a Friday, and she could not bear the thought of an evening alone in her apartment with cable TV.

  Travis was, she thought immediately, the most beautiful man she had ever seen. The first time she saw him, he was leaning against the wall in a far corner of the bar. He was sipping beer from a brown longneck bottle and watching the dance floor. He was clad in blue jeans and a blue oxford work shirt.

  Not much was required for them to come together. He might have been the most attractive man in the bar, but Jessica knew that she was at or near the top of the hierarchy of the ladies. She made eye contact with him a few times, and he eventually sauntered over to her side of the bar and struck up a conversation with her. She went to bed with him that same night. It was one of those things.

  The problems began shortly thereafter. Travis turned out to be not simply a one-night stand, but a virtual addiction for her. Unfortunately, Travis also turned out to be an expensive habit.

  Jessica realized that she was “lazy”—at least according to the standards by which the fast-trackers evaluated things. But this laziness was offset by a fundamental frugality.

  Sometimes people who grow up with nothing are infused with an insatiable ambition. Jessica, on the other hand, saw her minimum-wage existence as an improvement from what her mother had known. And most importantly, there was the nest egg.

  It was enough to know that the nest egg was safely in the bank, that it was her protection from excessive reliance on others, or slavery to hard-driving, tyrannical bosses. Although she worked, she did so on her own terms, and at her own pace.

  Travis, on the other hand, had a taste for the good life. When he saw something that struck his fancy, he purchased it on impulse. This wouldn't have been a huge problem—if he’d had any money. But once they moved in together, it was almost inevitable that Jessica’s money became Travis’s money.

  He did not come from a privileged background; his roots were as blue-collar as hers were. Travis was what Jessica’s mother always liked to describe as someone with “champagne tastes and a beer budget.”

  “Jeez, Jessica? Generic canned goods?” Travis decried one day, early in their relationship, as he was perusing the contents of her pantry. “Who the heck buys generic canned vegetables?”

  My mother always did, she had wanted to say, but held her tongue.

  For all his presence and physical beauty, a tendency toward being a spendthrift wasn't Travis’s only drawback. The night they’d met, Travis had avoided any discussion about himself. Jessica knew this to be a sign of trouble. Men—especially the more egotistical ones—always liked to talk about themselves.

  That first night, she accepted his evasions about his past, knowing that he was lying and prevaricating, but not really caring. By the end of his first week in her apartment, she pressed him to come clean.

  “Let’s just say I’ve recently spent some time in an ‘institutional setting’,” he said.

  “You mean prison.”

  “Yes, I mean prison.”

  Travis wasn't a violent criminal—he wasn't a rapist or a murderer. He would later tell her that before going to prison, he had fired a gun on only one or two occasions. (That would change, of course, after the two of them invented Lilith.)

  Travis was sentenced to two years in Ohio’s Lebanon Correctional Institution after a bungled burglary and theft. He shimmied open the side door of a neighbor’s garage and removed two thousand dollars wo
rth of power tools.

  Not that Travis had any ambitions toward carpentry. He tried to sell the power tools in order to fund another of his expensive habits: gourmet marijuana. But he hadn’t even bothered to sand off the serial numbers on the tools. Travis might as well have saved everyone a lot of trouble, and simply presented himself to the state for incarceration in the first place.

  During his two years in stir, Travis spent time with some far more competent thieves. These were men who had heisted tens of thousands at a time—or so they had claimed.

  “I listened while I was in Lebanon,” Travis told her once, tapping his earlobe symbolically with an index finger. “I learned how to score some easy money. And I’m not talking about the peanuts that I was planning to score from those tools, either. Jeez, what a simple one I was.” He smiled, as if recalling some foolish, but fundamentally wholesome mistake from his childhood. “Now I know better.”

  But what Travis mostly demonstrated was a capacity to spend Jessica’s money. After much browbeating, cajoling, and threats to move out, Jessica had reluctantly agreed to give him two bankcards, so that he could withdraw money from her accounts at will.

  One day he confronted her with a receipt for his most recent withdraw of one thousand dollars. Whereas Jessica had customarily withdrawn money in increments of one or two hundred dollars, Travis seemed to consider $1,000 the minimum amount. That was also the maximum amount that either of her banks permitted to be withdrawn in a single day, without corroborating signatures and other formalities.

  “Have you been keeping an eye on the balances in our accounts?” he asked. His use of the first-person possessive hadn’t gone unnoticed by her. But his presumptuousness was overshadowed by the frighteningly low balance shown on the receipt.