The Dead Key Part 15

"No, I was at work."

Maybe his concern for her safety would keep him from asking too many questions. Tony took out a small pad of paper and a pen. Maybe not.

"What's the address?"

She told him.

"Your aunt's name?"

"Doris Davis."

"Was anything missing?"

"I . . . I don't think so." She swallowed hard. She didn't want to tell him about the love letters and the files from the bank. She should have never snooped and found the papers in the first place.

"Did your aunt have any valuables you may not have been aware of? Cash? Jewelry?"

Beatrice immediately thought of the safe deposit box key. If her aunt did have any valuables, they were undoubtedly hidden away in a vault at the First Bank of Cleveland. The only other person besides her aunt who knew about the key was Max. "I don't think so. There was a mink coat, a TV . . ."

"Were they taken?"

"No." Her tiny frame was dwarfed by the height of the table, and she could feel herself shrinking in the detective's eyes. She couldn't afford to look like a lost twelve-year-old, and sat up taller. She forced out a stronger voice. "It doesn't make sense, does it?"

"No," Tony said, making small notes on his pad. "It doesn't."

"That's why I thought to call you. It just doesn't seem like a normal robbery."

He studied her carefully. Being Max's friend, she prayed he would trust her. She batted her eyes just a little. Flirting couldn't hurt. It seemed to work to her advantage, as the focus of his eyes softened.

She released the breath she'd been holding. "I really appreciate you meeting me here, Tony. How's Max doing?"

He flipped his notepad closed at the change of topic and sipped his mug of sugared coffee.

"I haven't talked to her for a few days. She's on vacation," he said, and then paused. "I thought you knew that. Aren't you two pretty good friends?"

"Vacation?" She frowned. "No, I didn't know that. Where did she go?"

"Cancn." He looked at her sharply. "Did you two have a fight or something?"

"No. Well, sort of. I guess we did," Beatrice said, stumbling. "Where is Cancn?"

"Mexico. She'll be gone a couple weeks. Said something about needing to get away for a while. Now that I think of it, she wanted me to give you this if I saw you." He reached into his wallet and pulled out a small key.

Beatrice's eyes swelled at the sight of it. It was labeled "547." He dropped it into her palm.

"What's that for anyway?"

Beatrice wiped the astonished look off her face. "Oh, this? . . . It's for my locker at work. I thought I had lost it!"

"I have no idea why she thought I might see you. I told her she was nuts. But you know Max. She's gonna get what she wants one way or another."

In some fit of remorse, Max had given her Doris's key back. Maybe Max was a friend after all. Maybe Beatrice was the one who shouldn't be trusted. She had snooped in Max's things and stolen an entire ring of keys. Worse, Beatrice had betrayed Max's project to Mr. Halloran.

"Listen, I'll check into your aunt's break-in, but without anything missing it's gonna be hard to get anyone to do much. Cleveland's a big town with big problems. Most B and Es don't go very far."

"Do you think it's safe for me to go back tonight?"

"I wouldn't. Besides, if the burglar knows you and your aunt are away, they may try to go back and even squat there. Drug addicts love a free place to stay. It may be our best chance at catching the perp. I'll swing by there a few times in the next week or so. I'll let you know what I find out. Do you have another place to stay?" he asked, raising an eyebrow like he suspected she was only sixteen.

"Me? Sure! Of course. I'll just go stay with my cousin for a few days." Beatrice panicked as she nodded. She didn't know why she said it. The words just came out, and she couldn't take them back. Lies were becoming second nature.

The matter was closed. "Where can I reach you?"

"Uh, you can call me at the bank. I practically live there anyway." She gave him her extension.

He paused and studied her face one last time as if he was trying to decide something. This was the moment where he would call her bluff and haul her off to juvenile detention. Instead, he simply nodded and stood to leave.

"You take care of yourself, Beatrice."

CHAPTER 30.

Beatrice dragged her heavy suitcase through the snow all the way to the hospital. She'd seen families sleeping in the waiting rooms as she'd come and gone after work. She decided it was her best chance at shelter for the night. She made her way up to the intensive care unit, where her aunt had been lying for over a week. It seemed like years. The nurse didn't look up as she pulled the bag behind her and into her aunt's room. Beatrice found the small closet in the corner reserved for patients' personal items. She stuffed her suitcase inside and forced the door closed. It would have to do for the night.

She collapsed into the stiff vinyl chair next to her aunt's pillow and put her head on the edge of the bed.

"Someone broke into your apartment," she whispered in the dark.

She confessed it all to Doris, hoping the shock of it might wake her up. The apartment, the letters, the key, the missing fortunes, Max fleeing to Mexico-Beatrice told her aunt everything. The woman didn't move.

Sometime after 1:00 a.m. a loud beeping sound woke Beatrice up. She startled at the alarm and grabbed Doris's hand. Air was still rattling in and out of the tube in her mouth. Her sunken chest was still moving up and down. A nurse floated into the room. She turned off the alarm and changed the bag of saline hanging from a hook over her aunt's shoulder.

"Miss, I'm sorry. Visiting hours are over," the nurse said in the scolding voice Beatrice had grown accustomed to at the hospital.

Beatrice took the elevator down to the main lobby, where an old man was snoring in a chair. She curled up on a hard bench, using her purse as a pillow. She laid with one eye open for most of the night. Some point after 5:00 a.m. she abandoned her vigil and drifted off to sleep, until the doctors and nurses changed s.h.i.+fts two hours later.

Beatrice spent the weekend lurking in the hospital. She ate in the cafeteria, washed up in the public restrooms, and slept where she could. It was a blur of fluorescent lights and hushed voices. She spent most of her time sitting with Doris, trying to figure out what to do next. Eventually, she'd fall asleep in the chair, simply too exhausted to string her thoughts together.

Sunday afternoon she awoke to an older man with a white coat tapping her on the shoulder. "Miss? Miss? Are you okay?"

"Hmm?" Beatrice replied sleepily.

"I'm Dr. McCafferty. I've been attending to your aunt. Some of the staff are concerned that you've been . . . spending so much time here. Do you have any other family?"

"Family?" Beatrice straightened in her seat. The nurse's comment about contacting Child Services rang in her ears. "Uh, yes. My uncle. I believe you met him?"

"Yes, but is he here with you now?"

"No. He . . . he works weekends sometimes. He asked me to keep Doris company."

"I see," the doctor said, nodding. He checked the chart at the end of Doris's bed and then turned to leave. Beatrice was grateful the two questions were the extent of the doctor's concerns. She decided to risk a question of her own.

"Is she . . . is she going to be all right?"

"We're doing all we can. I suggest you speak with your uncle about that, miss."

Once the doctor left, she leapt to her feet and grabbed the chart from the end of the bed. She scanned the sheet, desperate for some clue of her aunt's condition. She couldn't make sense of all of the numbers and initials and check marks. Only one thing stood out. Big letters were scrawled across the bottom of the page in angry red ink. They read "DNR." She read the letters again and again, not knowing what they might mean.

CHAPTER 31.

Monday, August 17, 1998 Iris barely made her Monday deadline. Brad showed up in the loading dock at 8:00 a.m. sharp, expecting a full set of drawings for the first seven floors. She had yanked herself out of bed at 4:00 a.m. to put the finis.h.i.+ng touches on her survey. Her roll around the bathroom floor with Nick the Tuesday before had cost her a couple of precious hours and most of her dignity, but she'd be d.a.m.ned if it cost her her job too.

She met Brad at the dock and slapped the fully annotated plans into his hands. He looked them over and put them into a manila folder. "These look pretty good. There's been a slight change of plans. We need someone here for a few weeks drafting the plans directly."

"Drafting directly," she repeated, trying to keep the question mark floating in her head out of her voice. She had no idea what he was talking about but nodded in total agreement.

"They'll be bringing over a workstation for you to use. Do you feel comfortable working in AutoCAD?"

"Yeah." Iris had used the drafting software in school.

"I brought a copy of the style manual," he said, producing a binder from his bag. "The most important thing is that you draw to scale and use the proper layers."

It was beginning to make sense to Iris. They wanted her to draft the plans on a computer at the building rather than making hand drawings for another person to transcribe.

"Are my sketches too messy for them to follow?"

Brad chuckled. "No, it's not that. The scope just expanded, and the schedule's tight. Mr. Wheeler doesn't want us wasting any time running back and forth from the office."

"The scope expanded?"

"Yep, we're going whole hog on this one. It seems as though someone down at the county is determined to buy this old pile of bricks. We've made the short list. It's between 1010 Euclid and the old Higbee Building. They want full floor plans with structural, mechanical, electrical, plumbing, you name it. I think they're crazy!"

They were going to save the building and its marble stairs and cathedral ceilings after all. More importantly, she would be working far away from the office doldrums for weeks, maybe even months. Iris couldn't help but smile. Mr. Wheeler and Brad were trusting her with a really big job.

"You'll be the primary drafter for the structure," Brad continued. "We'll bring in the mech-Es and double-Es next week."

"Will you be here too?" She tried not to visibly cringe at the thought. That would be the end to her freewheeling jeans and T-s.h.i.+rt workdays-let alone her hours fornicating with coworkers on bathroom floors. Brad was all business, from his parted brown hair to his polished leather toes.

"Nope." He was obviously a little disappointed. "I'm too expensive to be on-site full-time drafting. There are perks to being young and cheap."

She forced a small smile and tried to tell herself it wasn't an insult or any sort of reference to her personal life.

Iris and Brad discussed the logistics of her a.s.signment for the rest of the morning as she gave him a guided tour of the floor plans she'd drawn. He took a few measurements at random to verify her work. They paused in Linda's HR office, and Iris stood in front of the smashed bookcase to block the view. Fortunately, Brad was less concerned about the furniture and more interested in the s.p.a.ce hidden behind the locked door.

"Did you confirm this s.p.a.ce here marked 'bathroom,' 'cold-air return,' and 'mechanicals'?"

"Well, I couldn't get any access," she said apologetically. "The door is locked, and Ramone doesn't have the key."

"But how did you determine what the s.p.a.ces are?"

"Ramone told me . . . and they match the fourth floor."

"We'll need to remove the door and probe some of the walls to confirm it," Brad said, making notes on the plan. He looked up at her scowling face and added, "Don't worry. You couldn't have done more without some equipment. In two weeks we'll have a contractor cut some holes."

Iris nodded, but the perfectionist straight-A student inside her deflated a bit. Brad's review was the closest thing to an evaluation she'd received since starting the job, and she'd just been given a B. She tried not to sulk as she followed him back down the stairs to the loading dock.

"All right. I guess I'll leave you to it. I'll check in Friday on your progress. They'll deliver the workstation at the end of the week."

Brad walked out the overhead door, and she was alone again in the dock. Ramone was nowhere to be seen as usual. She paused, looking around the dimly lit cavern, and s.h.i.+vered in the dank, putrid air. Suzanne's words echoed in her mind. "There's a reason that building hasn't been bothered all these years."

The reason the building hadn't been bothered was that n.o.body wanted to buy it until now, she argued. Downtown was full of vacant buildings. A real estate investment firm bought it as a tax write-off. They bought it to just let it sit-that was the point. If they were planning to sell it to the county, there couldn't be some deep, dark secret buried inside. She had to stop running around talking to crazy old women.

Iris climbed the dock stairs up to the service elevator door just beyond the loading platform. She was hoping the elevator still worked but hadn't tried it yet. She pressed the b.u.t.ton and was surprised when it actually opened. Inside, she hit the b.u.t.ton for the sixth floor and stood there waiting. She hit it again. Nothing happened. s.h.i.+t. She had to find Ramone.

Ramone's office couldn't be far, but she hadn't seen any sign of it yet. Her first day in the building with Brad, they had been down in the bas.e.m.e.nt vaults when Ramone had appeared out of nowhere. Maybe it was down there.

Iris walked the long service corridor to the third set of stairs, hidden in the back of the building. She flipped on her Magnum flashlight and pulled the heavy door to the bas.e.m.e.nt stairwell open. The white beam poured down the dark well. The sound of water dripping echoed up from the cold stone floor. She gripped the flashlight like a weapon as she crept down the concrete steps toward the bas.e.m.e.nt.

At the bottom of the stairs, the clang of something metal hitting the ground on the other side of the door stopped her in her tracks. She recognized the m.u.f.fled sound of Ramone's gravelly voice. He was cursing. She eased the door open a crack and caught a glimpse of Ramone. His back was to the door, and he was crouching inside the vault. Steel tools glinted in the light on the floor next to him.

He threw one to the ground with a loud "f.u.c.k!" He turned toward her and leaned his head back against the wall of safe deposit doors. He might have been trying to pick a lock, she realized.

He lit a cigarette and studied a long, thin awl with disgust. Then he lifted his eyes in her direction. She ducked behind the door and it slammed shut. s.h.i.+t.

Thinking fast, she began twisting and pulling at the handle and kicking the door, making a terrible racket. "d.a.m.n door!" she shouted, pounding on the steel. "Ramone? Ramone, are you in there? I need help with this stupid thing."

She slammed her shoulder against it and nearly fell to the ground when Ramone swung the door open.

"What the h.e.l.l you doin'?" he barked. A flicker of rage lit his bloodshot eyes.

She decided to go with her act and prayed he bought it. "That d.a.m.ned door nearly slammed on my hand! This place is a death trap, I swear!"

Ramone shook his head. His expression softened to mere annoyance. "This isn't a good time. I can't show you the tunnels today."