The Dead Key

by D. M. Pulley

  After the shower, Beatrice felt like a semblance of herself again. She put on her pajamas and laid her winter coat out on the thick carpet like a tiny sleeping bag. She rolled up a sweater for a pillow and curled up on the floor. Within minutes she was out.

  CHAPTER 35

  The wail of a police siren out on the street below woke Beatrice at dawn. She quickly got dressed and made up for work. The night of sleep had done her some good, but she was starving. She cleaned every trace of her night in the office from the room and returned her suitcase to the broom closet just in case some security person came looking.

  As she rode the elevator down to the cafeteria for breakfast, she wondered how long she’d be able to get away with sleeping in the building. She wouldn’t be able to visit her Aunt Doris if she spent her evenings in the ladies’ room waiting for everyone to go home. She wouldn’t be able to get back into the building late at night. They locked the front doors at 7:00 p.m. and didn’t reopen them until 7:00 a.m. the next day.

  She thought about her predicament all morning. She grabbed extra food from the corner deli during her lunch break and hid a ham sandwich and fruit cup in her purse.

  The Westerly Arms apartment tower caught her eye as she walked back up East Twelfth Street, and she stopped. The lobby of the apartment building was small but clean. She rang the bell at the desk and waited until a short old man appeared. He had thick tortoiseshell glasses perched at the end of his long hooked nose. “Can I help you, miss?”

  “Um. I’d like to rent an apartment.”

  The man looked at her skeptically over the enormous frames of his glasses as he grabbed some forms from behind the counter. “Are you planning to live alone?”

  “Yes.”

  “This is downtown Cleveland, you know. It’s not very safe for a young lady . . . You sure you can afford it?”

  “I think so. What are the rates?”

  “Three hundred per month for a studio,” he said flatly. “Bedrooms are more.”

  She nodded. It was only a third of her monthly salary, so she should be able to afford it just fine.

  “You’ll need to fill these out. I’m going to need two references verifying your employment. We’ll need a copy of a driver’s license or birth certificate. It will take two weeks to process.” He handed her the forms.

  Her heart plummeted as he spoke. Social security number, former address, work information . . . She skimmed through the lines, realizing how many blanks she’d struggle to fill in. She thanked the man and walked out of the lobby and back to her office. Her aunt had helped her fake a job application, but Doris couldn’t help her now. Worse still, Beatrice didn’t have a driver’s license or a copy of the birth certificate Doris had forged for the bank. Beatrice had no proof of who she was pretending to be. She’d never even seen her own birth certificate.

  She returned to her desk and tried to focus on her typing. Mr. Halloran had been out for days, but the other middlemen were keeping her busy typing up accounting summaries. She found the endless clacking of the typewriter hypnotic and struggled to stay awake.

  The telephone on her desk rang.

  “Good afternoon, Auditing Department.”

  “Beatrice? Is that you?”

  “Tony?”

  “I need to see you. Can we meet tonight?” His voice sounded worn out.

  “Is everything all right?” she asked, sitting up in her seat. Had he caught her burglar? she wondered hopefully. Could she go home?

  “Not on the phone. Can I see you tonight?”

  “I . . . I can’t tonight.” She couldn’t explain that she would be spending her evening hiding in a bathroom and then sleeping in an empty office. “How about lunch tomorrow?”

  “The Theatrical Grille. Be there at eleven thirty.”

  At the end of the day, Beatrice went through the same routine as the night before. She waited patiently in the ladies’ room for the floor to empty. She ate her dinner of ham and fruit in the dark and watched the muted light from the window slowly fade. When the room was nearly pitch black, she scurried to the elevator and up to the eleventh floor. As she settled down on the soft carpet for the night, she pulled Aunt Doris’s key out of her pocket and turned it over in her hand. She still didn’t know why Doris had a safe deposit box. She set the key on top of Max’s files and fell asleep.

  Beatrice heard voices. At first she thought she was dreaming and rolled over onto her side. Then an alarm went off in her head as the voices grew louder. She sat up with a jolt. From the corner office where she hid, she could hear two voices in the hall not twenty feet away. She had locked the door and turned off the lights, but she still sat frozen, holding her breath, certain she’d be discovered. She searched the room for a place to hide but soon realized the men weren’t looking for her. They were arguing.

  Straining to hear what the angry voices were saying, she crawled silently toward the door. She became more and more certain, as she listened, that neither voice sounded familiar.

  “It’s gone too far,” one voice said. “I don’t care what the board says. This can’t go on much longer. The feds are already asking questions.”

  “The leak is contained,” a deeper voice said. “The feds don’t have a thing on us. Don’t tell me you’ve lost your nerve.”

  “If the feds aren’t a problem, then why the hell are we meeting here again?”

  “You can never be too careful.”

  “This is exactly what I’m talking about.”

  “Even if they are listening, the feds don’t have a thing on us. Where’s your backbone, Jim? Aren’t you the one who taught me making money is a dirty business?”

  “All I’m saying is we can’t afford to draw the ire of city hall. All the political favors we’ve counted on will dry up the second we let the city default!”

  “You’re afraid of the boy mayor and his band of merry men? Do you think anyone will listen to him once he’s driven this city into the ground? He’s nothing! He’s nobody! This bank, our board, we run this damn town! They’ll run that stupid son of a bitch out of town!”

  “You think they’ll stop there? Ever study history, Teddy? Bankers like us don’t fare too well when they start lighting the torches. Someone’s gonna burn for this. The feds will be the least of our problems if there’s a shake-up in the city council. Our friends in high places are going to scramble to save their own asses. All of the bribes in the world won’t keep CPD from banging down our door.”

  “You’ve gone soft. Anyone that tries to come through here won’t find a damn thing but a paper trail that leads nowhere. I don’t care how mad people get. This is a matter of principle. Fuck the mayor!” Teddy shouted.

  “Fuck the mayor? That’s your plan?”

  Beatrice bit her fingernail and strained to hear more. Cigar smoke was finding its way under the door as she pressed her ear to the jamb.

  “Ah, the mayor fucked himself when he refused to play ball. No one is going to take him seriously.”

  “I’m not so sure about that. I think you’re forgetting about our other little problem.”

  “Bill? He’s harmless. Besides, we’ve got all the leverage we’ll ever need on him.”

  “What if he decides to make a plea? A federal witness can certainly beat jail time. Shit, he may even get off scot-free.”

  “We’re watching him. Besides, he knows his little scam is over the second the bank goes belly-up. He won’t shoot the golden goose.” Teddy chuckled. A long pause followed, and then he added, “He’ll make a fantastic patsy when the time comes, don’t you think?”

  “I’m just not convinced he’s that stupid.”

  “Ha! Have lunch with him. It’ll set your mind at ease. Are you done with that goddamned thing?”

  The voices grew fainter, then disappeared altogether.

  Beatrice stared into the dark long after the men
left the floor. The bank was being investigated by the feds, just as Mr. Halloran had suggested. The men had spoken of bribes. They had friends on the city council. They were arguing over something to do with the mayor. She’d learned far too much, but she had no idea who they were or what they were actually doing. Her thoughts kept returning to Bill—Bill, who was running some sort of scam. She at least had a suspicion of who that might be.

  Eventually, the morning light trickled in from under the blinds.

  CHAPTER 36

  The hands of the clock moved at a glacial pace that morning. Beatrice sat at her desk trying to busy herself with her filing. In between pages, she decided to make some notes about the midnight meeting. She pulled out her steno pad and began to jot down a few details. She looked at the four words she had written in her girlish penmanship and paused. After the break-in at her aunt’s house, she couldn’t afford to be so careless. She crumpled the notes and shoved them into the bottom of her purse. Looking at her steno pad again, she thought of Max.

  Beatrice scribbled her notes in shorthand. Over three pages filled up fast as she described the conversation she had overheard in little ticks and swirls indecipherable to anyone outside the secretarial pool.

  The clock finally struck 11:20 a.m. It was time to meet Tony. Beatrice stood up quietly and hurried to the elevator with her overstuffed purse hanging at her side.

  The Theatrical Grille was empty for lunch. The jukebox was playing the blues as Beatrice walked through the door into the dark room. It took a moment for her eyes to adjust. Carmichael was sitting behind the bar, reading the paper.

  He perked up at the sound of the door and leapt off his stool to greet her. “Welcome! Bella! How are you today?”

  “I’m fine.” Then she thought to ask, “Say, Carmichael, have you seen Max around?”

  “Maxie? No. It’s been too long! You are meeting her here?” He raised his eyebrows hopefully.

  “Actually, I’m meeting someone else.” She looked down the empty bar and then the row of red booths. There was no sign of the detective. She checked the Old Style clock on the wall and saw that she was five minutes late. “Was there a man here waiting for someone?”

  Carmichael raised his eyebrows. “A man? No, but no man would leave if they were waiting for you.” He winked at her. “He’ll be here soon. I guarantee it. Can I get you something to drink in the meantime?”

  “Coffee?”

  Carmichael looked disappointed but nodded and headed behind the bar to start a pot. Beatrice picked a booth in the middle and faced the door. A few long minutes later, Carmichael brought a mug over to her. “So where’s Maxie been lately? It’s not like her to stay away so long.”

  Beatrice wasn’t sure what to say and sipped her coffee to buy time. It tasted like tar, but she forced a smile. “Still on vacation, I guess.”

  “Tell my sweet Maxie I said hello, all right?”

  Beatrice was just about to give up and leave when Tony plowed through the door. “I’m sorry I’m running late,” he said, shoving himself into the seat across from her.

  Carmichael immediately poured another cup of coffee and brought the mug and a full bowl of sugar to their table. Apparently, Carmichael and Tony had been introduced. The detective began dumping spoonfuls of sugar into his cup, and Beatrice waited patiently for some sort of explanation.

  When he finally looked up from the mug, she was startled by his face. He hadn’t slept in days from the looks of it. The boyish crinkle around his eyes had been replaced by the heavy bags of an older man. His jaw was peppered with stubble.

  “Max is missing.” He glared at Beatrice as if she might know where his sister had gone.

  “What?” Beatrice gasped. “I thought she went on a vacation.”

  “So did I. I went to her room at Mom and Dad’s, looking for something she’d borrowed, and something just didn’t seem right. She had packed hardly any clothes, and all of her summer stuff was still in boxes. So I did some checking at the airport. She wasn’t on any flight to Mexico that I could find. We haven’t heard from her in over a week.”

  “They said she quit her job at the office,” Beatrice blurted out.

  “What?” His eyes flashed angrily. “When?”

  “Last Tuesday.” Beatrice lowered her eyes. “I’m sorry I didn’t say anything before. I didn’t want to get Max in trouble.”

  Tony stared at her sharply until his focus dulled into a pained frown.

  “It was all so sudden. She didn’t clean out her desk or anything. Her things were still there.”

  The minute she said it she regretted it. Now she’d have to explain how she knew that, and possibly more. She bit her tongue and looked at the table, unsure of what to do next. There was so much more to tell. The conversation she’d overheard the previous night replayed in her head. Teddy had said something about a leak being contained. Her heart stopped beating for a moment as she considered what that could mean. Max was gone.

  “Beatrice,” Tony said in a carefully controlled voice. “I need you to tell me everything.” The thin line of his lips pressed together. The cop in him was keeping him focused, but she could see the protective older brother raging in his eyes.

  Beatrice still wasn’t sure she could trust him, but at this point she really didn’t have a choice. “Something is happening at the bank. Something illegal, and I think Max is somehow involved.”

  Tony nodded grimly, then took out his notepad and began jotting things down. She told him about the safe deposits that had gone missing, Max’s special assignment, and the conversation she’d overheard. She altered a few details, like the fact that she’d overheard the conversation in the middle of the night while she was sleeping on an office floor. She also left out that she now had a full ring of keys that seemed to unlock every door at the First Bank of Cleveland, and that she’d stolen those keys from Max’s hiding spot in the ladies’ room. She did admit to having found Max’s files and reading them.

  When she had finished telling her version of the truth, he looked at her with those detective eyes, and she knew it wasn’t going to be that easy. “What did your Aunt Doris have to do with all of this?”

  Beatrice hadn’t said a word about her aunt, the key, or the love letters. Her eyes widened in alarm. “Wha— . . . what do you mean?”

  “Well, the burglary to your aunt’s apartment just didn’t fit the profile of a B and E, so I did some checking around. Doris Davis worked at the First Bank of Cleveland a while back, didn’t she?”

  Beatrice paused and then nodded miserably. She hadn’t wanted to drag her poor aunt into this sordid business.

  “Beatrice, I need you to be up front with me about all of this. I know more than you think.”

  He looked at her long and hard with that last statement, and she realized the jig was up. He had checked up on her. She wasn’t sure just how much he had found out, but she couldn’t afford to not have Tony on her side.

  “Aunt Doris worked at the bank years ago—I’m not sure how many. When she had her stroke”—Beatrice’s eyes watered, and she worked hard to keep her bottom lip from quivering—“I looked through some of her things and found some letters. I think she’d had an affair with Bill Thompson. I found his love letters. She also had some records—letters about the safe deposit boxes. Max found the letters and read them when I was sleeping. Then she stole a safe deposit box key I’d found in Doris’s purse. That was the last time I saw her.”

  “When was that?”

  “Last week.” Beatrice wiped a tear. “She never came back to work after that.”

  “What did the burglar take from your aunt’s apartment?”

  “The letters. I think they were looking for something else too.”

  “I think you’re right. I’ve been in the apartment, and I’ve been watching it for a few days now,” he said, making a few more notes on his pad. “Any idea w
hat else they were looking for?”

  “I’m not sure. Maybe the key, but no one else knew about it, and Max had already taken it.” It wasn’t until that moment that Beatrice admitted out loud that Max was a suspect for the break-in—at least in her own mind.

  Tony rubbed his forehead and looked over his notes. “Max came to me a few years ago with this crazy story. Someone was robbing the safe deposit boxes. She said it was a big conspiracy. She’d been snooping around and ‘gathering evidence.’ ” He paused, and Beatrice could see the guilt wrenching his face.

  “She came to me last week and said she had finally found ‘undeniable proof’ about her theory. She was all fired up. I told her what I’d told her over and over before. No one at the department is interested in investigating the First Bank of Cleveland. I tried to open a case when that woman claimed her safe deposit box had been repossessed illegally—Rhonda Whitmore. That was her name. I took her statement after Max told me the story. Rhonda claimed she’d been keeping up with her payments, and one day she went into the bank to change her will and was told the box had been repossessed and to take her complaint up with the state. She did call the state. They had never heard of her or her deposits. They just disappeared into thin air, along with fifty thousand dollars in bond certificates. We were really getting somewhere, you know?”

  Beatrice remembered hearing the story from Max. “What happened?”

  “Nothing. My chief told me we had nothing but supposition. He refused to insult a businessman like William Thompson without proof. He wouldn’t even let me bring him in for questioning.” He ran a hand over his three-day beard. “Then the poor woman got hit by a car. It was filed as a hit-and-run. Max told me I had no backbone. That I should have investigated anyway. That case nearly got me fired. I couldn’t bring up the bank back at the station after that.”