The Dead Key

Less than a minute after the door slammed closed, the back entrance opened. Two sets of heavy shoes walked into the room. Iris squeezed her eyes shut and shrunk into a corner. They were there to drag her away.

“Bruno, we need to clean the scene. Get our thief here back down to the vault so our detective can shoot him,” Carmichael instructed. “Ramone, did you get what I requested?”

A gravelly voice answered, “I got the bag, but I’m not sure what you want me to do with it.”

“Do what you like with it.” Carmichael paused and there was the sound of a back being patted. “Consider it payment for twenty years of service and you being my eyes and ears in this place.”

“I didn’t stay here for you,” Ramone muttered.

“I know. You stayed here for my Maxie. This is for her too. It’s for all the girls that brought those goddamned bankers down. Even Iris here. If she hadn’t found that body, those bastards would have sold the building off to their friends at the county and found some way to cheat us out of what was owed. She kept ’em honest, and I always pay my debts.”

Something hit the ground with a silvery clink.

“I’ll see what I can do,” Ramone said.

“You both need to disappear. For good. This warning will only come once. I’m sure you understand. Tell Iris I’m sorry, but I warned her not to disturb the ghosts.”

Two minutes later, Ramone pushed Iris, dazed and stumbling, through the loading dock and out onto the sidewalk.

“We gotta move. Keep your head down, Iris.”

Iris didn’t look up for several blocks. Scenes from the last two hours flashed by with each seam in the concrete—Detective McDo

Iris’s field bag swung heavily from Ramone’s shoulder. Back in the vault, she had filled it with cash and jewelry at gunpoint. It was all stolen from the safe deposit boxes. It was Carmichael’s reward to them both. It was hush money.

Ramone stopped at Prospect Avenue and waited for the light. Iris looked back over her shoulder. Four blocks behind her, the abandoned First Bank of Cleveland loomed darkly in the sky. For a split second, Iris swore she could see a girl in a window looking back at her.

“Beatrice,” Iris whispered.

“Come on.” Ramone pulled her forward.

When Iris turned back, the girl was gone.

CHAPTER 76

Thursday, December 14, 1978

Beatrice pressed her face to the windowpane and gazed down at Euclid Avenue. The street below her was empty, except for the dull glow of the sodium lamps and the factory smog. The muted light barely reached the dark room where she stood. The last time she’d been in the perso

Beatrice pulled the baby picture out of the bag and studied it again in the faint light. She hadn’t been able to leave it in the vault. Seeing her own blue eyes staring out from the photograph broke her heart all over again. On the back “Beatrice” was written in a scrawling hand. Under it was a note she could barely make out in the dark:

Hush-a-bye, don’t you cry

Go to sleep my little baby

When you wake, you shall have

All the pretty little horses

A tear fell as Beatrice hummed the lullaby she’d known her whole life. Doris must have sung it to her before her memory had formed, before she had left Beatrice behind in Marietta. All the pretty little horses, she thought, looking down at the jewelry in her bag.

Her mind retraced the lines in Doris’s ledger. Safe deposit boxes began disappearing the year she was born. Her birth certificate read, “Father: Unknown.”

She could still feel Bill’s fingernails scraping her palm as he greedily snatched the key. What a bastard. He might have been one of the men who had beaten Max. Her throat tightened as she thought of her friend down in the tu

“Nine-one-one. What’s your emergency?” a faraway voice asked.

Beatrice hung up the phone. Max had told her not to call anyone. Beatrice stared at the receiver. One of the buttons on Suza

“Hello?”

“Hi. Is this Suza

“This is.”

“I’m sorry to call so late, but . . .” There were so many things she needed to know. “Did you once know a clerk at the bank named Doris Davis?”

“Who is this?”

“Me? I’m . . . Beatrice.” It was too late to lie. “I work up on the ninth floor, and think I found something of hers. Someone thought . . . you might know her.”

“God, I haven’t heard from Doris in years. At least ten. She was up in Auditing when I started. Nice enough gal, I guess, but she got into some trouble.”

“Trouble?” Beatrice’s voice cracked.

“I don’t like to gossip, but the way I heard it, she was in the family way and got herself fired. It happens all the time. These poor girls fall for the wrong sort of man and then don’t have a soul to turn to. So what did you find, hon?”

“Oh, just an old file. Probably nothing.”

Doris had been fired. She’d dumped Beatrice in Marietta and started robbing the vault. Or maybe it was the other way around. Either way, she had stashed all of the stolen jewelry in Box 256 and registered the box in her daughter’s name. Was she saving the money for me, or was she just covering her tracks?

Beatrice cleared her throat. “The department’s been auditing the safe deposit boxes. I understand you have one.”

“Me? No.”

“That’s strange. It says here there’s one in your name. You might want to look into it. Have a good evening.” Beatrice hung up, pulse racing.

She hadn’t meant to call or give Suza

Beatrice Baker should never have been born. She slammed the key down and stormed into the file room, snapping on the light. She pulled open the drawer with her perso

She turned back to Suza

Beatrice rifled through her bag. She set Max’s last ring of keys aside and searched through the jewelry until she found the right thing. She opened the center drawer of Suza