The Dead Key Part 12

He stood up and grabbed a large stack of files. "These records are restricted access and quite sensitive. I need them sorted according to the footnotes and refiled. Can you get them back to me by the end of the day?"

The heavy files made her list to one side as he dropped them in her arms. "Of course, Mr. Halloran."

He led her to the door. "Please, Beatrice, call me Randy."

Back at her desk, Beatrice opened the first file and puzzled over the typed sheet of paper. It was all numbers-rows and rows of dollar amounts and dates. The header read "STHM" and the footer read "%$%." She began making piles of the sheets according to the symbols at the bottom of each page as Mr. Halloran had commanded. Within minutes her desk was covered with the stacks of paper, and she realized she was drawing attention to herself and the sensitive doc.u.ments. She gathered them up and began stuffing the pages into blank manila folders in her file drawer.

An hour later she carried the stack back to Mr. Halloran's office and softly knocked on his door. When there was no response, she turned the handle and peered inside. Mr. Halloran's desk was empty. Relieved there wouldn't be another awkward encounter, she set the stack of files on the edge of his desk. A narrow wood door behind his desk stood open. She'd never noticed it before. There was a glimmer of white tile.

Beatrice craned her neck to get a better look inside the mysterious room. There was a large stone sink and a shower. She took a few steps forward for a better look.

"It's pretty old-fas.h.i.+oned, isn't it?" Mr. Halloran's hot breath fell on her neck. She hadn't heard him walk in.

Beatrice jumped. "Oh, I'm so sorry, Mr. Halloran, I was just leaving the files . . ."

"Randy," he corrected her, smiling slyly as he stepped toward her.

She instinctively stepped back. "I'm so sorry, Randy. I was just leaving you the files and noticed the door open. It was incredibly rude of me."

He was uncomfortably close. She took another step back.

"The whole point of these rooms is privacy. Privacy is very important, don't you agree?" he said, and ran a finger down the length of her arm.

Panic swelled inside her. She had backed into his private washroom. His office door was shut. He lifted her chin, tilting her face up to his. Her mind raced through her options as he studied her lips. Kicking and screaming her way out of the bathroom would get her fired. His eyes twinkled as she squirmed. He really is a shark, she thought, and in a flash the answer came to her. What would Max do?

She leaned toward him, pressing her hips dangerously close to his. In her most seductive voice, she murmured, "Randy, we don't really have time for this, do we?"

It caught him off guard. Before he could react, she eased out from the corner. One foot in front of the other, she sauntered out of the bathroom all the way back to her desk, too terrified to look back.

She sat down, knees shaking. One row behind her, Max's desk was still empty.

CHAPTER 23.

By the time Friday morning came around with no sign of Max, Beatrice was worried. It was as if she'd disappeared into thin air. Beatrice had expected a phone call, a note, something from Max to say she was sorry or at least ask how Aunt Doris was doing. Nothing came. Day after day her desk sat empty.

Beatrice kept busy filing for Mr. Halloran and avoiding going into his office. She'd taken to using the mailboxes outside Ms. Cunningham's door to leave her work for him. He was hardly ever at his desk anyway, she noticed. The lunches had grown longer, and some days he didn't come back to the office at all. That was fine with her.

She couldn't stand not knowing what happened to Max any longer. After lunch, she walked over to Ms. Cunningham's closed door.

A m.u.f.fled voice behind the door said, "I need more time, Dale! You can't expect me to trace thirty accounts overnight . . . I know we have time constraints. She missed the meeting . . . Well, I can't take her statement if I can't find her . . . Yes, the deposits are still there . . ."

Beatrice tapped on the door. She heard the dull thud of heavy footsteps on carpet, and then the door opened. Old Cunny stood blocking the doorway. "Can I help you?"

"I'm sorry, Ms. Cunningham, but I was wondering . . ." She bit her lip.

"Yes? What?" Her boss's terse voice, along with the strange conversation she'd just overheard, almost made Beatrice forget.

"Umm. Do you know where Maxine McDonnell is?" Beatrice asked, and then felt like she needed to add some legitimacy to her question. "Mr. Halloran had a question about one of her a.s.signments." It wasn't a complete lie, she reasoned.

"I'm sorry to tell you that Maxine resigned Tuesday morning."

Beatrice's mouth fell open. Max quit. But she had been hoping for a promotion after she finished Mr. Thompson's secret audit. It didn't make sense.

"Is that all, dear? I really need to get back to my work."

"Okay. Thanks." Beatrice couldn't believe it. Max was gone. She hadn't even said good-bye. And she still had her aunt's key.

"You know, now that I think of it," Ms. Cunningham said, "you should go check with Mr. Thompson to see if he needs any more help. Maxine leaving has left him shorthanded."

With that, Ms. Cunningham closed her door.

Beatrice glanced down the hall toward Mr. Thompson's office. She hadn't seen him since he'd hired her. Now that she'd read his love letters to Aunt Doris, she didn't know if she could look him in the eye.

His door was closed. She knocked softly, to no reply. Maybe he had left the office, she hoped. She knocked harder and waited. Just as she was turning to head back to her desk, the door swung open and she was face-to-face with "Bill," as he was known to the women in her life.

"Can I help you, Bethany?"

Beatrice paused but didn't correct him. "Ms. Cunningham wanted me to stop by and see if you needed any additional a.s.sistance."

"Well, that was very kind of both of you. I'm doing just fine, but if I need some a.s.sistance I'll let you know." He started to close the door when something occurred to him. "Actually, could you please deliver something to Ms. Cunningham for me?"

He left the door open, and she followed him in. His office looked just as she remembered it. There was a photograph of a pretty woman and two smiling girls sitting on the bookshelf. Beatrice felt ill at the sight of his family, knowing he'd promised Doris he'd leave them.

He handed her a stack of files. "Thank you, Bethany. You have a good weekend."

"Thank you, sir." She couldn't put into words what she really wanted to say. Looking at him, she never would have guessed he was the sort of man who would lure a woman into an affair. Mr. Thompson was paunchy with salt-and-pepper hair, and his kind eyes and warm smile were almost grandfatherly. She might have believed he really cared about her weekend by the way he talked to her, but he didn't even know her name.

CHAPTER 24.

Beatrice pa.s.sed Max's old seat on the way back to her desk. She stopped. Looking at the stapler still sitting there, Beatrice realized that Max may have left more things behind. Maybe Doris's key was in the desk. Maybe Max had left a note or some sort of explanation.

Max did whatever she wanted, and no one ever said a word about it. Maybe it was time that she stopped worrying so much, Beatrice told herself. Her boss didn't even know her name. Ms. Cunningham, despite her warning to Beatrice that she took everything at the office personally, barely stuck her nose outside her office door. The other secretaries ignored her. No one really cared who Beatrice was or what she did now that Max was gone. Maybe it was time to do what she wanted to do. At that moment, Beatrice wanted Doris's key back.

At 5:00 p.m. Beatrice put her purse on her shoulder and followed the other women to the coatrack in the hall. She put on her coat, her hat, and her gloves alongside the other secretaries and walked to the elevator lobby. Just as everyone was climbing into an elevator car to go home, she stepped away as if it were an afterthought and headed into the ladies' room. No one noticed.

The lavatory was empty and dark. The overhead bulb was off. Beatrice squinted in the faint light streaming through the window where Max would blow smoke. She stepped into a stall and sat down to wait.

For over an hour she sat still and quiet. She had to be sure that everyone was gone. It was a Friday, and even the managers who liked to stay late would surely be going home on time. The holidays were upon them. There was Christmas shopping to do and family to see. She had noticed all week how eager everyone was to leave work. The streets downtown seemed to empty early each night as she sat in the shelter waiting for the 82 bus to take her home.

Beatrice had no one to see and nothing to do but go to the hospital and watch machines move air in and out of her aunt's withering body. Beatrice caught a glimpse of herself sitting in the stall in the dim bathroom mirror. Gaunt and pale, she looked like a ghost of herself.

The street noises outside grew quiet. She waited until it had been a full ten minutes since she'd heard the whir of the elevator in the hall and slowly crept out of the bathroom. The clicking of her boots on the tiles echoed off the walls. She slipped them off by the bathroom door and silently padded down the hall in her stocking feet.

No one was chattering on the phone or rustling through files. The floor was deserted. It was so quiet, she was certain that someone would hear her heart pounding against her rib cage. The hallway floodlights were still lit, but the big fluorescents that hung over the rows of desks had been shut off. The doors that surrounded her works.p.a.ce were all dark. Only dim yellow lights from the street below filtered through the frosted gla.s.s.

The faint light from the hall was bright enough to see by as she sat down at Max's desk and pulled open the center drawer. Instead of pens, paper clips, and other office supplies, it was filled with nothing but paper loosely scattered across the drawer. She felt around the piles for Doris's key and found nothing but more paper. Beatrice pulled out a sheet and struggled to read it in the faint light. It was covered in scribbled shorthand. Beatrice squinted at the notes and finally gave up and switched on the small desk lamp in the corner. Max's shorthand was not as neat as her own, but she could just make out the words among the ticks and curlicues on the page.

Box 304-payment delayed, notified 6/7/78, Taylor c.u.mmings, repossessed 6/19/78; Box 305-delinquent, contacted 6/6/78, Marion Delaney, no forwarding address, repossessed 6/19/78 It was a record of Max's audit. It seemed odd that it was written in shorthand. The notes were brief already, and they didn't appear to be dictated by anyone but Max. Mr. Thompson, or anyone else outside the secretarial pool for that matter, wouldn't be able to read them. It was almost as if Max had left them just for her. Her eyes wandered down the page, and her eyebrows raised as she read, State of Ohio Treasurer's Office contacted 6/25/78, no record of repossessions. Contents unaccounted for.

Max had called the state to verify the repossessions. There were pages and pages of records for the safe deposit box audits, and each page concluded that the state had no record of taking possession of the box contents. She leafed through sheet after sheet until it really hit her. The contents of over a hundred safe deposit boxes were officially missing. Max was verifying the missing accounts and keeping records in shorthand so that no one else could read them.

Doris had kept records of safe deposit boxes too. Beatrice carefully gathered all of the notes into a neat stack. She opened one of the larger file drawers, looking for a manila folder, and heard something clank at the bottom. It was a half-drunk pint of whiskey. She fished the little bottle of Old Grand-Dad out and shook her head at Max.

As angry as she was, holding the bottle made her feel nostalgic. Work would not be the same without her friend. She unscrewed the cap and took a little sip in honor of Max. It burned rolling down. She put the bottle back and poked around in the large drawer until she was satisfied her aunt's key wasn't inside. She grabbed an empty folder for Max's odd notes and slid the drawer shut.

She opened the smaller drawer above it and found a hairbrush and a small makeup bag. Whiskey was one thing, but leaving makeup behind seemed stranger. The small satin bag was heavy. It jingled like a pile of coins. She hesitated a second and then shrugged. Max had no qualms going through her aunt's purse. She opened the bag and felt inside.

A door closed down the hall behind her.

Beatrice's heart stopped at the sound. She zipped the makeup bag shut as footsteps approached her from behind. She turned. A tall security uniform came into view. She considered running down the hall, but that would just make her look guilty. There was a gun hanging in a holster on the guard's hip. Her only hope was to seem like she belonged there.

She tried to relax her shoulders and smiled. "Good evening!"

"What are you doing on the floor this late, ma'am?"

It wasn't an accusation really. Not yet.

"Oh, I forgot my makeup bag," she said, holding up the little zippered case for the man to see. "I'm such a clod!"

She stood up, putting the bag in her purse, and gathered the folder of Max's notes from the desk. The name st.i.tched on his uniform read "Ramone." She stared at the letters to avoid his eyes.

"The floor's closed. It's time to go home."

He led her to the elevator lobby, and she followed far behind him, praying he wouldn't notice that she wasn't wearing shoes. Her boots were still sitting by the bathroom door. She couldn't walk out into the snow in her stockings.

"Shoot. I'm sorry. I've got to use the powder room. Excuse me for a moment."

She dashed to the restroom before he turned around. Closing the door behind her, she threw on her boots and stuffed the file of Max's notes into her purse. She pulled out the makeup bag again and searched for Aunt Doris's key. It wasn't there. Just a pile of hairpins and loose change. Max's desk had one more drawer she hadn't searched yet. There might still be time, she told herself, and she may not get this chance again.

She walked into the bathroom stall where she had hid earlier that evening and flushed the toilet for the benefit of the guard waiting outside. Gazing at the window as water ran in the sink, she could almost picture Max standing there. She would have taken a cigarette out from under the loose stone where she stashed them and smirked at Beatrice for being nervous. It gave her an idea.

Beatrice turned off the tap and walked over to the windowsill. She lifted the loose piece of marble at the corner where Max hid her cigarettes. Underneath was a hollow clay tile. Beatrice reached inside. Something hard and metal brushed against her fingertips.

It was a huge ring of keys. Beatrice pulled them from the hiding spot and fanned them out. There must have been thirty of them of all shapes and sizes. The large steel ones looked like they were for office doors. A smaller key ring was attached to the large one. It held thirteen small bra.s.s keys. Her heart quickened as she picked one out. It read "D" on one side, with the words "First Bank of Cleveland" etched around its outer edge, just like her aunt's key. She flipped through the others. Each had a letter. None were Key 547.

There was a knock on the door. Beatrice jumped.

"Time to go," the security guard barked.

Beatrice threw the ring of keys into her bag and carefully placed the loose stone back where it belonged. When she returned to the hall, Ramone was visibly irritated. He motioned her toward an open elevator door.

Beatrice knew she was pus.h.i.+ng her luck, but she still needed to find her aunt's key. "Darn it! I forgot something else. I'm supposed to bring some notes home to look at over the weekend. I'm such an airhead. I'll be right back."

He grumbled behind her as she ran back to Max's desk. She held up a one-minute finger and pulled open the last file drawer. It was crammed full of files. She pushed them aside and felt the bottom of the drawer for the key. She came up with nothing but a handful of pencil shavings. She randomly grabbed one of the files to make her story to Ramone plausible and slammed the drawer shut.

"You find everything you need all right?" Ramone's deep voice asked from just over her shoulder.

Beatrice stifled a shriek. She hadn't heard him following her. "Um, yes, thank you."

"It's time to be going now, Miss-?"

He was going to report her. She was standing at Max's desk pretending it was hers, and he wanted her name. She decided to play deaf. "Yes?"

"What's your name, miss?"

"Oh," she gulped. "Maxine. Maxine McDonnell . . . I really should be going." With that, she rushed over to the elevators as fast as she could without running. A car was waiting, and she stepped inside and pressed the b.u.t.ton for the lobby.

Thankfully, the guard didn't follow her. He didn't leave Max's desk. He just stood there staring at it, seeming lost in thought. He finally looked up at Beatrice, standing there in the elevator.

"Have a good night, miss," he said with a grim face, and the elevator doors closed.

CHAPTER 25.

Sat.u.r.day, August 15, 1998 Iris berated herself the rest of the week for being an incorrigible s.l.u.t. How could she have just crumpled onto the floor after a few kisses? It was beyond her control, she argued. It wasn't her fault he was a mind-scrambling kisser. It wasn't her fault that the scant s.e.x in her life up until Nick had been lukewarm at best. They had kissed once before. They had flirted. It wasn't the same as dating but it was something, she reasoned. Besides, adult women could have s.e.x with men they liked without being branded or punished.

But she was being punished. He didn't call.

By noon that Sat.u.r.day, there was no doubt about it. She was just a piece of a.s.s to Nick. He would never take her seriously now. The sweaty walls of her apartment were closing in on her. She had to get out.

It was even hotter outside. She trudged past Mrs. Capretta's rocking chair without even looking up.

"Well, how do you like that? People don't even say h.e.l.lo to their neighbors anymore. I expected it from the Orientals upstairs, but not from you, Iris."

"Sorry, Mrs. Capretta. How are you today?" Iris sighed, avoiding eye contact.