The Dead Key

by D. M. Pulley

  “Suzanne? Is this Suzanne Peplinski?” Iris shouted into the phone.

  Iris heard a high-pitched squeal on the other end of the line. “Damn hearing aid,” the woman muttered, her voice far from the receiver. Then she said, “Yes, this is Suzanne. What is this all about? You know you’re calling awfully late!”

  “Sorry, ma’am. I know it’s late, but I think I found something of yours.” She paused, searching for the words, and finally settled on, “Did you by chance used to work at the First Bank of Cleveland?”

  There was a pause. “Yes . . . but how do you know that?”

  “I’m sorry. I know it’s none of my business, but I’ve been working in the old building—you know, the one at 1010 Euclid Avenue—and I found something odd.” Iris stopped herself before saying, “in your desk.” She guessed the woman wouldn’t take too kindly to a perfect stranger going through her things.

  “Something odd?” the woman said, and coughed a little. “What are you talking about?”

  “I found a key, and I think it might belong to you. Did you ever rent a safe deposit box at the bank?”

  “A safe deposit box? Are you kidding? I didn’t even have a bank account back then. What in the world would I do with a safe deposit box?” There was a long pause, and then she muttered, “Listen, I don’t know what that girl told you, but I’ve never had a deposit box.”

  Iris’s eyes bulged. “Excuse me? What girl?”

  “I’ll tell you the same thing I told her. I would never trust my money to those crooks!” The sound of smoke blew into the phone. “And I was right, you know. Those bastards chained the doors up tight in the middle of the night. People had to petition the feds just to get their personal things out of their desks! I say that Alistair and those crooks got what was coming to ’em!”

  Iris grabbed a pen from the junk drawer and started scribbling on an expired pizza coupon: “What girl? / Alistair got what was coming / Petition feds.”

  “Did you go back for your things too?” Iris asked, chewing on her pen.

  “What for? I told you, I didn’t keep anything at the bank.”

  So maybe the key wasn’t Suzanne’s after all.

  “I’m sorry. Did you say you were telling someone else about this?”

  “I’m not saying anything. That girl was crazy. Calling me in the middle of the night like that.”

  A voice was talking impatiently in the background. Iris didn’t have much more time.

  “Who called you in the middle of the night? Do you remember?”

  “Of course I remember. I’m not crazy, you know.” More smoke blew against the receiver.

  “Of course not. Who was she? Did she work at the bank too?” Iris pressed.

  “It was that itty-bitty thing up in the Auditing Department. Beatrice. Beatrice Baker. Don’t believe a thing she says, by the way. She’s a liar.”

  CHAPTER 19

  Suzanne’s voice rasped in the back of her ears all night. Maybe Suzanne didn’t know anything about the key. Then again, she sounded like a paranoid nutcase the minute Iris had asked about it. Iris tossed and turned in her bed, mulling it all over in her head, until only one thought was left—who was Beatrice Baker?

  Iris arrived at the back door of 1010 Euclid Avenue almost on time the next day. She pressed the button and rested her sleep-deprived head against the stone wall. In the morning light, all of the midnight drama over flashlights, keys, and lockboxes seemed ridiculous. The door, the sidewalk, the street—everything looked completely ordinary.

  As usual, Ramone opened the door without showing his face. Iris parked and sat with her cigarette, debating what to do first. She wanted to run up to the fifteenth floor and see where the flashlight had been darting around the night before, but she wasn’t sure she had the guts. Then there was the missing bay on the third floor. She tried to focus on that, but Ramone’s comment about the basement tunnels was more intriguing. Ramone was more intriguing for that matter. She still didn’t know where the security guard spent his days and nights in the empty building.

  It was the voice of her father in her head that made the decision for her. No matter how interesting Ramone and the building might be, she still had a job to do. With a defeated sigh, she fished out the third-floor plan from the old gym bag she’d been using for her pathetic collection of tools and set it on her clipboard. Brad needed the schematics for the first seven floors by Monday. She marched up the loading dock stairs and down the service corridor.

  Iris yanked open the door to the third floor and retraced her steps. She slowly counted the columns, starting at the east wall and working her way west. The columns matched. The window count matched.

  Everything fell apart in the library. The long and narrow library that ran the length of the third floor on the west side of the building was only twenty-five feet wide. She measured the room again. To match the floor below, it should really be thirty-five feet wide. The library didn’t have any windows, because the bank tower abutted the old Cleveland rotunda building to the west; it was a party wall. Iris rifled through her purse to find the second-floor plan. According to her sketch, the exterior wall for the floor below was ten feet farther west than the wall she was leaning on.

  She tapped the wall with her pencil as she read the drawings; it sounded hollow. She pounded it hard with her fist. It was definitely not old lath and plaster. It sounded like drywall on studs. Her eyes traced the wall up and down the room. It was seamless. The wall was painted tan and lined with large portraits of old white men. Mr. Wackerly, Mr. Brodinger, Mr. Mathias—every ten feet there was a portrait with a name on a little gold plaque. Their eyes followed her as she went up and down the west wall. Aisle after aisle of books, and she still could not find a door, a window, or an access panel.

  Iris gave up on the library and headed to the northwest corner office at the front of the building, where Linda Halloran’s desk sat empty. She counted the windows and checked her plans. One window was missing. She counted again to be sure. She walked to the west wall of the office and pounded it. It sounded just like the wall in the library. It was covered in ugly wood panels, but there were no seams. There was a large bookcase in the corner. It was eight feet tall and four feet wide.

  Iris walked over to it and nudged it with her foot. It barely shuddered. Solid oak, she thought. She peeked into the tiny gap between the bookcase and the wall panel and saw nothing but a shadow. Iris looked down at the green shag carpeting and then back up at the bookshelf. There was no way she’d be able to slide it. She inspected the empty wood shelves and did some quick mental calculations. There was the heavy wood desk and a couple leather chairs in front of the bookcase. They all looked pretty expensive. She hesitated, then walked around the desk and slid the chairs out of the way.

  The huge bookcase stood bare and defenseless against the wall. No one will miss you, she thought. With her eyes squinted nearly shut, she reached up as high as she could reach, put one foot on the wall, and pulled. The hulking wood creaked off its bearings and began to tip. It teetered on its edge, then the monstrous piece of furniture came crashing down. Wood splintered and cracked. Iris felt the floor vibrate as the bookcase crashed into the corner of the desk and careened to the floor. She stayed crouched with her arms up in front of her face to block shrapnel. She half expected Ramone to burst in with his gun drawn. When nothing happened, she let out a nervous giggle and brushed the dust off her clothes.

  She turned and saw exactly what she had hoped to find behind the bookcase. It was a door. Its dark wood matched the surrounding paneling. She tried the small bronze handle, but it was locked. She fished the skeleton key Brad had given her a few days earlier out of her pocket and slid it into the lock. It wouldn’t budge. She tried again to be sure.

  There had to be a key somewhere. She decided to try Linda’s drawers one more time. She felt inside each drawer, corner to corner, for the key. All she f
ound were two paper clips and a thumbtack. She slammed the drawers closed and sat back in Linda’s chair, dejected. She glared at the broken shelves, then back at the desk. The wood top was scarred where the bookcase had crashed, but something else about it bothered her. It looked just like it did the day before—big, heavy, and empty. She ran her hand across the writing surface and froze as she realized what was wrong. There wasn’t a speck of dust. She stared at the spot where she had written “Wash me.” Her words had been completely erased. The wood was pristine. Her eyes darted around the room. The desk was the only thing in the room not caked with grime.

  She jumped out of the chair. Someone else had been there. Someone had seen her words in the dust. She ran out of the office into the hallway as if the perpetrator might still be standing there with a dust rag. She stood still and listened carefully to the quiet. The wandering flashlight up on fifteen taunted her.

  It was probably just Ramone, she told herself. She forced herself to inhale and exhale slowly three times. It was his job to wander around the building, and if he wanted to clean random things, it was his prerogative. Maybe he was obsessive-compulsive. Maybe he was crazy.

  “Hello?” she called out into the hall. “Ramone?”

  There was no response. She listened hard again for footsteps or the panting of a madman. If anyone was on the floor with her, she would hear them. The thick silence blanketed everything.

  Iris turned back toward Linda’s office and the hidden door. At least she’d found the missing space. She drew a blank room ten feet wide and fifty feet long on the third-floor plan and marked the location of the door and missing window behind Linda’s bookcase. The room ran the length of the library and backed up to the emergency stairs. She stared at the plan. The bookcase hiding the door made no sense. It weighed a ton even empty. She wondered if Linda had even known the door was there at all. Iris narrowed her eyes and focused on the place the secret room met up with the stairs. Maybe she’d missed something.

  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 “Ba–Br,” 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 fuck?” 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 hell are you doing up here? It sounded like you were tearing the place apart. You’re liable to wake the damned 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 knob. 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 spaces 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 space 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 fram
e. 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 clustered in the center of the room. She blinked through the dust sparkling around her head at the maze of files.

  “What the hell 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-glass. 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.