by D. M. Pulley
Max had told Tony she’d found some new evidence. It must be the journal. Max had found this book detailing the safe deposit box robberies. Beatrice looked at the note in the margin again. The red ink looked like Max’s handwriting. Beatrice had seen it plenty of times, transcribing handwritten notes. Max must have taken the book from Bill somehow. Then she deposited it in Doris’s box. Why? It was a risk. What if Bill had checked there? He knew Doris.
Max’s voice came back to her: “Doris was different. She had her key.”
Bill didn’t have the key to Box 547. Max asked Tony to return the key to Beatrice. It could only mean one thing—Max had wanted her to find the book.
Beatrice paced the room, trying to make sense of it all. Max had put all of the incriminating evidence in Beatrice’s hands. Then there was the blank key. Why would Max trust her and not her own brother? Surely Tony would know better what to do with it. Her only instructions were to keep the key hidden and safe, and that Max would find her when it was all over. But it would never be over. Tony made that clear. No one was going to believe Max, and no one was going to allow the bank to be searched. It was a dead end.
Beatrice flopped onto the bed and stared at the closed book.
CHAPTER 59
The sun streamed into the room the next morning, waking Beatrice from a dead sleep. Her fitful nights in the building had taken their toll. She could barely pick her head off of the pillow. She blinked at the blinding sun and then sat up with a jolt. She was late for work. Her clothes were slept in, and she didn’t have so much as a toothbrush with her. She ran to the bathroom to rinse her mouth and smooth down her hair. She looked like she’d slept under a bridge, but it would have to do. Running out of the room in her half-buttoned coat, she nearly forgot the incriminating journal hiding under her pillow. She threw it back in her purse and rushed out into the crisp morning.
There were eleven days until Christmas. The streets were decked in red and green, and the sidewalks were filled with smiling, chatting people on their merry walks to work. Beatrice barreled past them, pushing her way through the gray snow. When she finally reached 1010 Euclid Avenue, she was twenty minutes late. She hurried to the elevators, cursing the clocks. She didn’t want to draw any attention in the Auditing Department, at least not until she had left for good.
When Beatrice stepped off the elevator, she realized drawing attention to herself was the least of her worries. No one was at their desk. All of the secretaries were standing in a clump in the corner, talking in hushed voices. Beatrice stood nailed to the ground in the office entrance, gaping at the commotion. Something had happened—something big. Her first instinct was to turn around and run out of the building. Get out. But she couldn’t leave yet. All of her possessions were still up on the eleventh floor. She just had to make it through one more day. She inched her way toward the clutch of women.
“What’s going on?” she whispered to Francine.
The woman looked out of place standing on her feet instead of hunching over her typewriter. “You don’t know?” Francine asked, looking down her pointed nose at Beatrice.
Beatrice felt her heart skip a beat. “No.”
“It seems that your little friend Maxine has been up to something more sinister than any of us imagined.”
The words “guilty by association” were written all over the woman’s hard, lined face. Beatrice opened her mouth to protest and ask more questions, but before she could make a squeak, Ms. Cunningham came thundering up to the crowd.
“Ladies! Ladies, please!” the rotund woman bellowed. “Get back to your desks. This is the First Bank of Cleveland, not a sewing circle. I’m going to dock ten minutes from each of your time cards.”
“I . . . I don’t understand,” Beatrice said out loud, feeling more and more hysterical.
“Mr. Thompson will be meeting with each of you individually this morning to discuss the events of the last twenty-four hours.” Ms. Cunningham pointed her dagger eyes directly at Beatrice. “The authorities have also been notified, so I suggest you cooperate.”
The blood drained from Beatrice’s face. She bit her lower lip hard enough to keep her composure. Her meeting with Tony, the book she’d found, the keys in her pocket, her promise to Max—it all amounted to nothing. She was too late. Max had been found out.
Beatrice spent the next agonizing hour waiting to be called into Mr. Thompson’s office. One by one the other secretaries’ names were announced from the back. They each walked solemnly to his desk to be interviewed. They each returned looking bewildered. They didn’t dare talk to each other, but Beatrice caught ladies giving each other knowing looks. One of the Sisters Grim even turned in her seat to steal a glance at Beatrice, then quickly turned away, shaking her head.
She wanted to run, but her instincts told her if she made one move to the door she’d be stopped by armed guards. If they wanted to arrest her, she argued with herself, they could have done it the minute she walked into the building.
Still, she stayed in her seat until Ms. Cunningham called her name. The other secretaries couldn’t restrain themselves from turning to look as she stood up numbly and walked to Mr. Thompson’s office. She clenched her hands into fists to keep them from trembling. She might as well have been marching to the executioner.
Mr. Thompson was seated at his desk when she approached the door. He looked up at her and smiled warmly. She was amazed that even after everything she’d learned about him—his thieving, his lechery—she had to fight the compulsion to smile back at him.
“Please close the door,” he said pleasantly, without a trace of an accusation.
She obeyed.
“Come sit down.” He motioned to the chair. “I know this morning has been a bit unusual, but I want to assure you that we still consider you a part of the First Bank of Cleveland family. We simply need your help.”
“What is this all about?” She tentatively approached the desk.
“I was hoping you could tell me.” His face showed no trace of guilt or regret for the affairs or the robberies or anything he had done.
She had to play along. She lowered herself onto the edge of the seat and folded her hands in her lap, one tightly gripping the other. “I’m sorry, sir, but I have no idea what is going on.”
He studied her carefully as if she were the one with something to hide. He had no idea how much she knew. He seemed satisfied that she was thoroughly confused.
“Perhaps you don’t. It seems as though your friend Maxine has been breaking into the building at night.” He paused to gauge her reaction.
Beatrice gaped at him with shock scribbled over her face while her heart palpitated in her chest.
“We’ve also found evidence that she’s been sleeping here.”
“I don’t understand. Sleeping here?” Beatrice squeezed her hands together and fought to not look away. Judging from his expression, he was mistaking her panic for shock.
“Yes, in an abandoned office. Have you seen Max lately?” He leaned forward.
“No, sir. I haven’t seen her since she left her job. Her brother said she was on a long vacation.”
Someone had found her hiding place. Every morning she hid her suitcase in the broom closet. Did a janitor stumble upon it somehow? She searched her mind, cataloging all of the things she might have left on the eleventh floor. She decided it was safe to look down without drawing suspicion. There was nothing in her suitcase that had her name on it. She had made sure of that. The only things in there besides clothes were the files from Max’s desk. Her shorthand notes for her meeting with Tony and Max’s personnel file were safe in her purse, and so were the keys. Her heart rate slowed slightly when she realized Max’s key was still safe.
She looked up at him with the desperation of a deer on a highway. He smiled kindly again, and she knew she’d escaped detection.
“Well, as I say, we have evidence she�
��s been in the building. We believe she’s involved in a crime ring to defraud the bank. Now, we’ve notified the police and the FBI, and we’d like your cooperation in their investigation.”
Beatrice nodded. Tony had said the FBI was already investigating the bank but had only found dead ends. Now the feds had Max to blame. Mr. Thompson was going to frame her for the robberies. Max had the keys at one time. Max had been in the vault. Max had been investigating abandoned safe deposit boxes. It would be easy.
“I just can’t believe what you’re saying!” Beatrice let her eyes water for effect. She’d wanted to cry all morning anyway. “Max doesn’t seem like a thief.”
“Oh, you’d be surprised what people are capable of.” He looked deep into her eyes, and she fought the urge to shiver with revulsion.
She lowered her gaze as if saddened and nodded. Mr. Thompson was capable of terrible things. The words “Rhonda Whitmore!” were scrawled in red ink across her mind. Was he capable of murder? Had he already found Max?
“Have . . . the police found her yet?”
“Not yet, but don’t worry, Beatrice. We will.”
Hours after her interview with Mr. Thompson, the words “we will” repeated in her head. She sat at her desk under the watchful eyes of the entire office and tried to look as shocked as everyone else. Mr. Thompson had set the scene perfectly. All of the employees were on high alert, anxious to find Max and save the bank. She looked down at the flip calendar on the edge of her desk. The next day was Friday—the day the bank was going to let the City of Cleveland default.
After the other women had seemed to tire of sneaking glances at her, Beatrice carried her purse to the bathroom and locked herself in a stall. She put her head to her knees and rocked for a little while, tracing the floor tiles with vacant eyes. Tony wouldn’t let them arrest Max, she told herself, but she didn’t believe it. If Tony had enough clout to save her, Max would have given him the key. But Max had given it to her instead.
She finally left the bathroom and took the elevator down to the main lobby and the pay phone in the corner. She deposited her money and dialed. She listened to the hypnotic ring of the telephone and squeezed her eyes shut.
“Hello?” said a voice on the other end of the phone.
“Mother? This is Beatrice,” she said. “Don’t hang up.”
After a long silence, the voice said, “You’ve got a lot of nerve calling me up like this. After all this time . . . What the hell do you want?”
Beatrice tried to picture the black-and-white photograph of her mother and aunt arm in arm when they were young, before they hated each other. “It’s Doris. She’s in the hospital.”
“So that’s where you’ve been all this time. I guess that figures, don’t it?” Ilene breathed cigarette smoke into the receiver.
“What figures?”
“Huh.” Her mother chuckled. “I guess Doris never told you why she left town all those years ago.”
Doris hadn’t told her a thing. Beatrice had been too afraid to pry. None of it mattered now. “She’s dying, Mom. I just thought you should know. She’s at University Hospitals in Cleveland.”
Beatrice hung up the phone before her mother could say another acidic word. There was no tenderness, no concern, no relief her daughter was still alive. She never should have called. Ilene would never come for Doris.
When she returned to her desk, she began to methodically remove every last trace of Beatrice Baker from the Auditing Department. She tried to make it seem as if it were business as usual. Drawer by drawer, she picked her station clean of anything personal. There wasn’t much. Several folders were packed in the last drawer. They were her filing assignments for Randy. He had said the files were sensitive, and that he would only trust them to her. She decided to decipher why.
She pulled them out as if to sort them and studied the pages more closely. Each file contained a list of transactions. The only thing that made any of them different from the other accounting records Beatrice had filed was the labeling system. Instead of a client name and account number, there were a bunch of symbols, “$#$,” and a jumble of letters, “LRHW.” The symbols and letters varied, but none of them made much sense.
“What are you reading, dear?” Ms. Cunningham’s voice boomed behind her. Beatrice jumped.
“N-nothing,” she stammered, and shoved the sheet in her hand into the nearest folder. “It’s some filing for Mr. Halloran. I . . . wanted to make sure I sorted it correctly.”
“Of course. Keep up the good work.” She then raised her voice to the entire room of women. “Filing is an important responsibility that shouldn’t be taken lightly. A bank is only as good as its records.”
Then Ms. Cunningham waddled away. It was the closest thing to a secretarial staff meeting Beatrice had ever witnessed at the bank. Maybe her supervisor was trying to calm everyone’s nerves, but she also seemed to be pointing her comments directly at Beatrice.
Once she was certain no one else was looking over her shoulder, Beatrice cracked the folder where she had buried the page she’d been holding. The sheet didn’t belong there, she realized, checking the label. Beatrice started to refile it correctly but stopped herself. She stared at the accounting record in her hand and silently repeated what old Cunny had said. A bank is only as good as its records.
Beatrice squeezed the paper between her fingers. No one was going to believe a thing she had to say about the bank, Bill Thompson, or the money men, but no one would ever be able to piece together what had happened to the accounting record in her hand either. Her mind made up, she proceeded to shuffle pages randomly into the wrong folders, scattering the data across thirteen files. She walked them over to Mr. Halloran’s mailbox and shoved the files inside before she changed her mind. It might not make any difference, but it was something.
When the clock struck five, Beatrice Baker left the bank for the last time.
CHAPTER 60
Beatrice didn’t realize where she was heading until she got there. She stepped off the bus in Little Italy and walked the three blocks up Murray Hill to her aunt’s apartment, looking over her shoulder the whole way. She stood at the bottom of the dark, covered steps that led up to her aunt’s door. The lights were out. There weren’t any suspicious cars parked along the curb. It all looked exactly the way she’d left it thirteen days earlier.
She climbed the stairs holding her breath and listened again for footsteps. Nothing. She swung the door open and tentatively stepped inside the cold, dark room. With the flick of the wall switch, light poured down the stairwell. The apartment was just as she’d left it—a wreck. The furniture was still strewn about. Loose papers and kitchen utensils were still scattered across the floor. She stepped over the ravaged pieces of Doris’s life and headed to the bedroom. She searched the rubble until she found the photograph of her mother and aunt together. She picked it up and slid it into her purse. Someday she would visit Doris’s grave, she promised herself.
Her eyes circled the room, looking for anything else she should take with her on her way out of town. The mink coat was in a pile next to the bed. She shook off her own wool coat and slid the mink onto her shoulders. She was amazed the knee-length fur almost fit. She tightened the belt. Her aunt was overweight from years of greasy diner food, but the young woman in the photograph was different. She had been small like Beatrice once. She hugged the soft coat to her chest as if it were Doris herself.
“I wish I didn’t have to go,” she whispered.
The clock inside her head ticked loudly, reminding her to hurry. She ran to the hall closet and grabbed a small suitcase. She needed more clothes. Her stash of belongings had been discovered deep in the bank while she was hiding in the hotel. The thought of what might have happened if she had returned to the eleventh floor the night before made her shudder.
Beatrice grabbed the few items she’d left at the foot of the radiator. She ran to
the bathroom and threw a spare toothbrush and other essentials into the bag. She glanced up at the mirror and shrieked.
There was writing on the glass. At first she thought it was blood, but she looked closer and realized it was lipstick. It looked like nonsense before she realized it was shorthand. It was Max. She must have been there sometime in the last twelve days. Beatrice scanned the smeared, greasy marks slowly, her heart rate speeding up as she read.
“Get out. They know.”
There was more, but the markings blurred together. They’d been written quickly. The only other words she could pick out in Max’s shorthand looked like “Lancer Motel.”
Beatrice backed away from the mirror. She switched off the light and grabbed her bag from the floor. She rushed out of the house without bothering to lock the door behind her. She peeked down the driveway from the shadow of the stair shed, then slipped behind the building. Running between the boarding houses, she avoided the street. When she hit the sidewalk a block down the road, she slowed to a walk to avoid drawing attention. The engine of a car started up several houses back. It was heading her way. She broke into a run toward the shops and restaurants on Mayfield Road.
The sign for her aunt’s old diner was the first light she saw. She dashed inside, letting the door slam behind her. She only dared to look back once she was safely behind the glass doors. A black car with tinted windows slowly passed outside the diner. She was hyperventilating.
A voice behind her said, “Beatrice? Is that you?” She spun around and saw Gladys walking toward her, holding her coffeepot. “Are you all right, honey?”
“I’m fine.” She forced an awkward smile while gasping for air. “I was just . . . I was running.”
“Isn’t it a little cold out for that?” The old waitress scowled and looked down at her bag. “You goin’ somewhere, hon?”