The Dead Key

by D. M. Pulley

  “Yeah. Thanks, Mom.” She knew her father would never call her. He hated talking on the phone, or at least that’s what he said the one time Iris had risked complaining about it. She tried not to take it personally, and to take the rejection like a man or someone her father might respect. “Well, I’ve got to go.”

  “Whatcha gonna do today?” Every phone call had to end on a positive note.

  “I have to go find a new apartment.”

  “Oh, that’s exciting! I can’t wait to see it. Let me know if you want me to come down and help you move in.”

  “Sounds good. Thanks, Mom.”

  “I love you!”

  “I love you too . . . Mom?”

  “Yes, honey?”

  Iris paused as a foreign emotion overwhelmed her—she was feeling protective of her parents. She didn’t know if they had any savings. She didn’t know if her father had a severance package. As a rule, her parents never discussed money. “Call me if you need anything, okay?”

  “Oh, don’t worry about us, honey. We’ll be fine.”

  CHAPTER 26

  Iris’s dad had spent the last twenty-five years of his life working more than fifty hours a week as a floor manager for the automotive supply company that had just laid him off. He was a good worker. He showed up early and stayed late. He’d missed every one of her soccer games working overtime shifts. And for what? He had lectured her for hours on the virtues of engineering and how it would lead to a secure and steady career. Now he was unemployed, and Iris couldn’t find her goddamned lighter. She eventually just lit a smoke off the stove.

  They’d chewed him up and spit him out, just like Ellie said. Five cigarettes later, she was tired of pacing. The apartment was a hotbox. She hated it. She’d lived there for three straight years with the curry smell, stray cockroaches, and Mrs. Capretta’s insanity. Iris stomped down the driveway with the apartment listings under her arm. Mrs. Capretta’s sink was running as Iris ducked under her window.

  The streets of Tremont were lined with run-down houses next to recent renovations. She did her best to sort through them, making a point of not wandering too close to Nick’s condo while she tracked down apartment listings. Every thirty minutes or so she rang a buzzer and got a tour.

  By 4:00 p.m. she had seen all of the ant traps and caked-on counter crud she could stomach in one day. There was one more place on her list, and that would be it. She turned down a one-way street and pulled up to a small house. It was newly renovated. The appliances were cheap but had never been used. Wall-to-wall Berber carpet had just been installed, and there wasn’t an ant trap in sight. Done. She signed the papers that afternoon.

  A celebration was in order. She walked a half block from her new front door and into the Lava Lounge at the corner. Glossy portraits of martinis hung on the purple walls. Green olives danced in the glasses, swinging from toothpick poles like little round strippers. Iris plopped herself down at the empty bar and ordered her first vodka martini. Here’s to new beginnings, she thought, holding up the delicate glass. The drink scorched her throat on the way down, and she resisted a shudder.

  “Drink okay?” The bartender was easily in his forties and gave Iris the creepy once-over.

  She pulled the newspaper out of her bag to send the guy packing to the other end of the bar. The classifieds were covered with her scribbling from the day of house hunting. She flipped back to the front page and reread the headline: “Dennis! And the Default of 1978.” She sipped the vodka and read the story again. The city defaulted on December 15, 1978. She stared at the date. It was just two weeks before the First Bank of Cleveland closed.

  Before she knew it, her vodka was gone and her head felt too loose on her neck. She had to get out of there or she wouldn’t be able to drive home. Stepping back out into the oppressive heat reminded her that her new apartment had central air-conditioning. Iris had never lived in the complete luxury of climate control. She was moving up in the world. The liquor buzz was still building as she sauntered over to her car. The urge to celebrate her good news with somebody besides her mother became overwhelming, and she couldn’t help but think of Nick. She had just leased an apartment three blocks away from his townhouse. They were practically neighbors. Even if they did just have casual sex in an abandoned building, they were still friends. Right?

  That settled it. The key found the ignition on the second try, and her car navigated itself through the narrow streets until she’d found the front door she’d seen in a framed photo on Nick’s desk. At least she was pretty sure it was the right one. She waltzed up the front steps ready to shout, “Hi, neighbor!” and throw her arms around him. That was the vodka-fueled plan.

  She was just about to knock when she heard peals of laughter coming from inside. It was a woman’s voice. Not just any woman; it was Miss Staff Liaison Amanda’s voice.

  “So, show me how this spackling stuff works. I’ve only read about these things, you know.”

  Iris could hear Nick saying something back, but she couldn’t quite hear what.

  “That son of a bitch!” she hissed under her breath as she stumbled back down the stairs to her car. Nick, the office Casanova with all of his easy smiles and arms around her shoulder, had moved on to the next girl. She smacked herself hard in the forehead. He didn’t care about her. She ripped the door open to her car. He just plucked some low-hanging fruit. He plucked the hell out of it. She slammed the door shut.

  Iris careened her way across town and back into her second-floor sauna. What had she expected? She slammed through the front door. He was a twenty-eight-year-old man who had no use for a dumb girl like her—at least not anymore.

  Iris lit a cigarette and flopped on the couch. The answering machine was blinking. It wasn’t Nick. She no longer harbored any hope it was Nick. It blinked at her for a solid minute before she stomped over and hit the button.

  “Hello? This is Suzanne Peplinski. You asked me to call if I could remember anything else. Well”—the hushed voice on the recording dropped down to almost a whisper—“maybe you should come by and see me.”

  Iris played the message again. She pulled the key to Box 547 out of her change purse and looked at it. Someone had left it in the secretary’s desk. Some girl named Beatrice had called Suzanne in the middle of the night to ask about a safe deposit box twenty years ago.

  “Who fucking cares? Enough already!” Iris muttered, and grabbed a beer from the fridge. That little old lady or whoever it was who lost Key 547 should have gone looking for it herself.

  Iris took a long shower and climbed into bed half-drunk. Echoes of Nick’s and Amanda’s laughter made her put a pillow over her head. They were perfect for each other, with their perfect bodies, perfect clothes, and perfect lives.

  All Iris had was her shitty job surveying a creepy building by herself. She wasn’t even that good at it, missing bays on the plans and getting sidetracked. Mr. Wheeler had only picked her for the field assignment because she was just dumb enough to do what she was told and not ask questions.

  The thought made her sit up in bed. The old building was filled to the rafters with questions that begged to be asked. Beatrice Baker’s personnel file was full of weird notes. The bank shut down fourteen days after the city of Cleveland went bankrupt. People didn’t even get a chance to clean out their desks. Keys were lost. Safe deposit boxes were abandoned, and the building had been kept under lock and key for twenty years. Maybe there was a reason Mr. Wheeler had chosen the youngest staff member to survey the building by herself. He didn’t want anyone asking questions.

  She shook her head, and the room sloshed back and forth from all the beer and vodka she’d drunk. It was a ridiculous notion. Mr. Wheeler was just trying to save a buck by sending her into the building alone. Still, the flashlight up on the fifteenth floor wandered back into her spinning head. Someone had been up there looking for something.

  The clock read
11:30 p.m. It was too late to call Suzanne back.

  CHAPTER 27

  Sunday morning Iris woke up on the couch with a vodka headache.

  “Ouch!” she groaned. Her hands wrapped around her skull in a futile effort to keep the invisible hammer from pounding it to bits. She lay there until the second wave of nausea passed.

  Suzanne’s key was missing. She’d passed out holding it. She could tell from the red mark on her hand. Iris forced herself up. It wasn’t on the coffee table or the couch. She searched under the couch, the rug, and the cushions.

  “Damn it.” Iris lit a cigarette and slumped back. A key doesn’t just disappear. She crossed her arms angrily and felt something poking at her chest. Darned underwire, she thought, and unhooked her slept-in bra. Something fell out and hit the floor. It was the key.

  “There you are.” Iris picked it up and looked hard at the number 547 etched into its face. “Who do you belong to?”

  The key didn’t answer, but she wished it could. She lay back down.

  When Iris had managed to keep an entire cup of coffee in her hungover stomach, she picked up the phone and dialed Suzanne’s number.

  “Hello,” a raspy voice answered.

  “Suzanne?”

  “Yes.”

  “This is Iris. You called me last night.”

  “Of course. Iris. You should come and see me this morning. My niece is at church until noon.”

  “Can you tell me what this is about?”

  “If you want to talk, come to 13321 Juniper Drive in Lakewood. I’ll be waiting.” The woman coughed, then hung up.

  “Okay, crazy lady. I’ll be right there,” Iris said into the dead line, and set the phone down. It was nuts, she told herself, but she had taken the key to find its rightful owner. Regardless of whatever drunken theories she’d conjured up the night before, it was her responsibility now. Iris rehooked her bra and slipped the key into her back pocket.

  Juniper Drive was a long, crowded street in Lakewood one hundred blocks west of Tremont. Iris navigated her way through the tight grid of bungalows until she found the right one. It was a small brick box with aluminum awnings and a screened-in front porch. An old woman was sitting in a rocker behind the rusted screen.

  Iris squinted into the porch. “Are you Suzanne?”

  “You must be Iris. Come in. Come in. We don’t have much time before my niece gets back from Mass.” Suzanne waved her through the splintered side door. The tiny porch was wall-to-wall green plastic carpeting, a wicker sofa, and Suzanne’s rocker.

  “Hi.” Iris eased herself down onto the creaky couch. “Um, thanks for inviting me over.”

  Suzanne’s face was so brown and shriveled she must have spent the last twenty years smoking in a tanning bed. The only thing that vaguely resembled her personnel portrait was her teeth.

  “Well, after you called I started thinking . . .” She pulled an extralong menthol out of a red leather cigarette purse and lit it with a shiny, gold fashion lighter. “About the bank. I didn’t mention it before on the phone, but you know there were investigations. Police investigations before the bank closed.”

  “Really? Why?”

  “I’m not sure. The police questioned all of us. They asked me all sorts of strange questions about the files. I didn’t know a damn thing of course. But I talked to one of my friends, Jean—you know, in private—to find out what the heck was going on. She said that strange things had been happening.”

  “What sorts of things?”

  “Files were disappearing from the Deposits Office. And keys . . .”

  “Keys for what?”

  “The safe deposit boxes, among others,” Suzanne said through a cloud of smoke. “You see, the story to the customers was the keys got lost when the bank was sold to Columbus Trust and they chained the doors, but they were lost a couple weeks before that. It was a witch hunt through all the departments right up until the day they chained the doors.”

  “Did your friend tell that to the police?” Iris leaned forward on the couch and stared into Suzanne’s leathery face. The woman’s pale blue eyes were trained on her cigarette.

  “Well, no. She didn’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “There were threats.” Suzanne said it flatly, as if it were common knowledge.

  Iris waited for more information, but Suzanne seemed lost in thought. She tapped a two-inch ash into the crystal tray balanced on her knee. Thick blue veins ran the length of her skinny calves. Iris couldn’t help but wonder if the old bat was just making it all up. She seemed to like the attention.

  Finally Iris had to ask, “What sort of threats?”

  “I got a call in the middle of the night the week before the bank closed.” Suzanne gazed out the ratty screen at the brown grass dotting the front lawn. “The man said I would do well not to mention any odd goings-on at the bank. Said I should cooperate with police but keep my mouth shut.”

  “Or what would happen?”

  “Didn’t say really, but I had a good idea. A few people disappeared around that time.”

  “Disappeared? Who?”

  “That girl, Beatrice, for one thing. I got that phone call from her late one night about some safe deposit box. I didn’t think much of it at the time. But you know it kinda got to me. I couldn’t stop thinking about it. So I went to see her. I went all the way up to the ninth floor to find her a few days later. She wasn’t there. No one knew where she was, and the way I heard it, she never came back.”

  “What do you think happened to her?”

  “I couldn’t say.” Suzanne stamped out her cigarette.

  “Why did you say she was a liar?”

  “Some girl I never met called me up thinking I had some deposit box at the bank. That was a lie! Lord knows who else she blabbed that nonsense to. You can’t be too careful. At least, I can’t.”

  Suzanne had been scared. Iris supposed she would be too if some man called in the middle of the night with threats. None of this had anything to do with why she’d driven all the way to Lakewood. She pulled the key out of her pocket and showed it to the old woman.

  “Is this yours?”

  Suzanne’s eyes narrowed. She lit another cigarette and blew out an angry stream of smoke. “I told you. I ain’t never had a safe deposit box.”

  “Do you know who it might belong to?” Iris pressed, not wanting to admit she’d taken it directly from Suzanne’s desk. “Maybe this Beatrice person.”

  “I really couldn’t say.”

  Damn it. Iris shoved the key back in her pocket. “So . . . whatever happened with the police investigation?”

  “Nothin’. That was the thing. One day they were calling everybody, and the next day nothin’.”

  “So, then, what did you mean when you said the other day that some people got what was coming?” Iris asked.

  “A couple rich families went bankrupt. It was all over the news. The Hallorans. The Wackerlys. Old Man Mercer died. They said it was a car crash.” Suzanne shrugged. “Maybe it was.”

  The name Halloran was familiar for some reason. Iris puzzled over it until she remembered Linda up on the third floor. Her last name was Halloran. Iris shook her head, trying to knock loose the connections between Linda, Suzanne, Beatrice, and the bank. Suzanne’s story didn’t add up. Then again, she probably had a screw loose.

  “You better be careful who you go asking about the First Bank of Cleveland,” Suzanne said, pointing a bony, brown finger at Iris. “There’s a reason that building hasn’t been bothered all these years.”

  “Is that why you called me? To tell me to be careful?”

  “Well, I wasn’t going to say nothin’, but you seemed like a nice enough girl on the phone. I didn’t want to have you on my conscience.” She lit another cigarette.

  “Thanks, I guess, but what do you think is going to
happen exactly? I mean, who really cares about the old bank at this point?” Iris eyed the smoke and debated lighting one herself.

  “You’d be surprised how many of those fat-cat bankers is still around.” Suzanne looked Iris dead in the eye. “The last person that called me at home asking about safe deposit boxes disappeared. I just thought you should know that.”

  Something on Suzanne’s wrist flashed in the sun. It sparkled like diamonds. Iris squinted at the hint of a bracelet. She opened her mouth to ask about it, but the roar of a station wagon pulling into the driveway stopped her. A pretty young woman got out of the car and retrieved a little girl from the backseat.

  “Sheryl!” Suzanne waved the young woman over. “Come meet Irma. She’s telling me all about these neat encyclopedias we could buy.”

  “What?” Iris glared at Suzanne in protest.

  “Christ.” Sheryl sighed under her breath. “Miss, don’t pay any attention to my aunt. She doesn’t really want what you’re selling. She just likes to talk. You should really be going now.” She set her daughter down inside the front door and motioned Iris to the driveway.

  “But . . .” Iris still had questions, but it seemed her time was up. She stood and played along. “Thank you for your time, Ms. Peplinski. You know how to reach me if you change your mind about the books.”

  Iris headed down the driveway to her car. She scanned the street, lined with rusted American cars, trying to make sense of what Suzanne had told her. The crazy old woman claimed she didn’t know the owner of the key. Beatrice Baker had called Suzanne about a safe deposit box, and then she disappeared. The old lady was worried it would happen again.

  “What a nutcase,” Iris whispered, but an uneasy feeling settled into her gut. Someone had hired Ramone to guard the building with its abandoned files and whatever was still locked in the vault.

  Back on the porch, Suzanne was still in her rocker, smoking. She waved as Iris pulled away.