CHAPTER 11

Monday, August 10, 1998

That Monday, Iris didn’t roll out of bed at 7:50 a.m. It didn’t matter if she was a few minutes late; there was no one to check up on her in an abandoned building. No makeup or awkward business casual clothes were required. In her old T-shirt, jeans, and baseball hat, she left for work feeling like herself instead of her stilted impression of a grown-up engineer. It was almost like not going to work at all.

Her beater car pulled in front of the rolling garage door behind the old bank at 8:41 a.m. Iris got out and stretched leisurely. A block away, a young woman was rushing down the sidewalk in a suit, balancing a coffee and a briefcase. Iris smiled to herself and pressed the white button by the loading dock entrance. Somewhere inside, Ramone heard the call and opened the door. She parked across all three spots in the loading dock and finished her cigarette, downed her coffee, and set out for another day of wandering the deserted hallways of the First Bank of Cleveland with her tape measure.

Clipboard in hand, she spent the morning tracing her steps down the hallways that circulated around the dead elevators on the third floor of the old bank, drawing a rough sketch of the floor plan. She stopped at a door that read “Human Resources” and pushed it open. It was another drab 1970s room with low drop ceilings, bad carpet, and avocado furniture. The broken windows were boarded up, so she flipped on the lights. She walked through the sitting area and behind the receptionist’s desk. The drawers had been pulled open, and papers were strewn everywhere. A name plaque lay facedown in a file drawer. Iris picked it up and read “Suzanne Peplinski.” She placed the name plaque back on top of the desk, as if Suzanne might be coming back soon. The center drawer of the desk still had a handful of paper clips and an unopened box of pens sitting inside it.

“What happened, Suzanne? You leave in a hurry?” she joked, and pushed the drawer closed. It was more creepy than funny.

Iris’s shoes thumped past the desk and into the office behind it. The door read “Director of Human Resources Linda Halloran.” The desk in the middle of the room was empty. Iris opened the drawers and saw that they were empty too. The bookshelf behind the desk was barren. There were no traces of Linda anywhere. Iris broke out her tape measure and plopped her clipboard on the desk with a thunk. It took five minutes to measure the room and mark up her sketch. When she picked her notes back up, her fingers left claw marks in the thick dust coating the desk. She wrote “Wash Me” next to her fingerprints, then brushed her hand against her jeans.

Iris left Linda’s office and wandered over to a narrow file room. Eight feet by fifteen feet she measured, and marked the graph paper. There were ten filing cabinets lining one wall. Yellowed labels were still taped above each handle. Iris scowled at them. She set her clipboard down and pulled out a drawer. It was still full of manila folders. She pried one open and found a hand-typed pay stub.

“What the fuck?” she said under her breath.

The bank had shut down and left its records behind. Looking down the row of cabinets, she realized they probably contained detailed information on every person who worked at the bank. Iris glanced over her shoulder at Linda’s empty office and pulled out another drawer. Haas, Haber, Hall, Hallock—there were no files for Halloran. Iris looked again but found nothing. Maybe Linda left long before the bank shut down.

“What about you, Suzanne? Are you in here?”

Miss Peplinski’s file was right between Peples and Peplowski, where it was supposed to be. Iris yanked it out of the drawer and opened the folder. A small, yellowed photograph of a woman in her late forties smiled up at her with slightly crooked teeth. The attached form listed Suzanne’s birth date, her address, and her social security number. Iris flipped back to the picture. Suzanne would have been sort of pretty if it weren’t for the checkered blouse with the built-in bow tie and the frizzed-out hairdo. Maybe it was the flickering fluorescent lights, but she began to feel like the woman in the photo was looking back at her. She flipped the file closed.

Poor Suzanne, Iris thought. One day you’re sitting at your typewriter minding your own business, and the next day you’re fired. Suzanne probably showed up on time to work every day, like a good worker bee. And look what it got her. Maybe her bartender friend, Ellie, was right. The bank owners just chewed her up and spit her out when it suited them.

Iris left the file room and plopped herself down at Suzanne’s desk. The chair was padded but not comfortable. Iris spun the paper Rolodex wheel. A flurry of dust scattered across the strewn papers that covered the fake wood desktop.

A coffee mug sat on the opposite corner of the desk next to an ashtray. At least Suzanne was allowed to smoke at her desk, Iris thought, and pulled her own cigarettes out of her field bag. She checked the ceiling for an active smoke alarm before lighting one. It was a tiny rebellion, smoking on the job, but Iris couldn’t shake the feeling she was going to get caught. It wasn’t professional.

“Fuck ’em,” Iris muttered, and took another drag but kept a watchful eye on the door.

The box of ballpoint pens in the center drawer caught her eye. She could always use more pens. It wasn’t like Suzanne needed them. Iris picked up the box and gave it a gentle shake. Something hit the bottom of the metal drawer with a clink. It was a small bronze key.

“What the . . . ?” She picked it up. There was “547” engraved on one side. Surrounding the number were tiny letters that read in a circular arc “First Bank of Cleveland.”

Iris sucked on her cigarette, turning the key over in her hand. The longer she studied it, the more she suspected that it was for one of the safe deposit boxes in the basement vault. It was too small to be a door key, and then there was the number. She ground out the cigarette in the ashtray and pulled the drawer open wider. Ramone had said all of the vault keys went missing when the bank was sold. Maybe they’d been right there in Suzanne’s desk all along.

She shoved aside the paper clips and highlighters in the center drawer and found nothing. She pulled open the other drawers one by one and shuffled through papers and hanging files. If she found all of the keys, she figured, someone would be overjoyed—Mr. Wheeler, the client, somebody. A twenty-year-old mystery solved by a lowly engineer just doing her job, going above and beyond the call. Maybe they would even let her open one of the boxes. They would track down its rightful owner, who would surely be some sweet little old lady down on her luck.

Before Iris had a chance to fully plan the hero parade through the streets of Cleveland, her hunt came up empty. She slumped back in the chair with the one key in her hand. Not ready to give up, she told herself there could still be more keys lying around in the building. Besides, she couldn’t just put Key 547 back in the drawer and walk away. What about the little old lady? Maybe that little old lady was Suzanne Peplinski. The key was in her desk after all.

Her eyes darted around the abandoned office. It wouldn’t really be stealing if she took it, she argued. She wasn’t taking it for herself. With that, Iris slipped the key into her back pocket.

CHAPTER 12

Iris left the old bank late that evening with the key still in her pocket. She needed a drink. Outside the loading dock, the sweltering heat of August was waiting, but at least the air wasn’t full of dust. She lit a cigarette and hiked up East Ninth Street, past the office building where WRE occupied the ninth floor. There wasn’t a bar in sight. East Ninth was a no-man’s-land for blocks. She didn’t want to walk all the way down to the bar district known as the Flats. Not by herself. She was about to turn back when she saw a small lit sign for Ella’s Pub on Vincent Avenue.