Suzanne’s key was missing. She’d passed out holding it. She could tell from the red mark on her hand. Iris forced herself up. It wasn’t on the coffee table or the couch. She searched under the couch, the rug, and the cushions.

“Damn it.” Iris lit a cigarette and slumped back. A key doesn’t just disappear. She crossed her arms angrily and felt something poking at her chest. Darned underwire, she thought, and unhooked her slept-in bra. Something fell out and hit the floor. It was the key.

“There you are.” Iris picked it up and looked hard at the number 547 etched into its face. “Who do you belong to?”

The key didn’t answer, but she wished it could. She lay back down.

When Iris had managed to keep an entire cup of coffee in her hungover stomach, she picked up the phone and dialed Suzanne’s number.

“Hello,” a raspy voice answered.

“Suzanne?”

“Yes.”

“This is Iris. You called me last night.”

“Of course. Iris. You should come and see me this morning. My niece is at church until noon.”

“Can you tell me what this is about?”

“If you want to talk, come to 13321 Juniper Drive in Lakewood. I’ll be waiting.” The woman coughed, then hung up.

“Okay, crazy lady. I’ll be right there,” Iris said into the dead line, and set the phone down. It was nuts, she told herself, but she had taken the key to find its rightful owner. Regardless of whatever drunken theories she’d conjured up the night before, it was her responsibility now. Iris rehooked her bra and slipped the key into her back pocket.

Juniper Drive was a long, crowded street in Lakewood one hundred blocks west of Tremont. Iris navigated her way through the tight grid of bungalows until she found the right one. It was a small brick box with aluminum awnings and a screened-in front porch. An old woman was sitting in a rocker behind the rusted screen.

Iris squinted into the porch. “Are you Suzanne?”

“You must be Iris. Come in. Come in. We don’t have much time before my niece gets back from Mass.” Suzanne waved her through the splintered side door. The tiny porch was wall-to-wall green plastic carpeting, a wicker sofa, and Suzanne’s rocker.

“Hi.” Iris eased herself down onto the creaky couch. “Um, thanks for inviting me over.”

Suzanne’s face was so brown and shriveled she must have spent the last twenty years smoking in a tanning bed. The only thing that vaguely resembled her personnel portrait was her teeth.

“Well, after you called I started thinking . . .” She pulled an extralong menthol out of a red leather cigarette purse and lit it with a shiny, gold fashion lighter. “About the bank. I didn’t mention it before on the phone, but you know there were investigations. Police investigations before the bank closed.”

“Really? Why?”

“I’m not sure. The police questioned all of us. They asked me all sorts of strange questions about the files. I didn’t know a damn thing of course. But I talked to one of my friends, Jean—you know, in private—to find out what the heck was going on. She said that strange things had been happening.”

“What sorts of things?”

“Files were disappearing from the Deposits Office. And keys . . .”

“Keys for what?”

“The safe deposit boxes, among others,” Suzanne said through a cloud of smoke. “You see, the story to the customers was the keys got lost when the bank was sold to Columbus Trust and they chained the doors, but they were lost a couple weeks before that. It was a witch hunt through all the departments right up until the day they chained the doors.”

“Did your friend tell that to the police?” Iris leaned forward on the couch and stared into Suzanne’s leathery face. The woman’s pale blue eyes were trained on her cigarette.

“Well, no. She didn’t.”

“Why not?”

“There were threats.” Suzanne said it flatly, as if it were common knowledge.

Iris waited for more information, but Suzanne seemed lost in thought. She tapped a two-inch ash into the crystal tray balanced on her knee. Thick blue veins ran the length of her skinny calves. Iris couldn’t help but wonder if the old bat was just making it all up. She seemed to like the attention.

Finally Iris had to ask, “What sort of threats?”

“I got a call in the middle of the night the week before the bank closed.” Suzanne gazed out the ratty screen at the brown grass dotting the front lawn. “The man said I would do well not to mention any odd goings-on at the bank. Said I should cooperate with police but keep my mouth shut.”

“Or what would happen?”

“Didn’t say really, but I had a good idea. A few people disappeared around that time.”

“Disappeared? Who?”

“That girl, Beatrice, for one thing. I got that phone call from her late one night about some safe deposit box. I didn’t think much of it at the time. But you know it kinda got to me. I couldn’t stop thinking about it. So I went to see her. I went all the way up to the ninth floor to find her a few days later. She wasn’t there. No one knew where she was, and the way I heard it, she never came back.”

“What do you think happened to her?”

“I couldn’t say.” Suzanne stamped out her cigarette.

“Why did you say she was a liar?”

“Some girl I never met called me up thinking I had some deposit box at the bank. That was a lie! Lord knows who else she blabbed that nonsense to. You can’t be too careful. At least, I can’t.”

Suzanne had been scared. Iris supposed she would be too if some man called in the middle of the night with threats. None of this had anything to do with why she’d driven all the way to Lakewood. She pulled the key out of her pocket and showed it to the old woman.

“Is this yours?”

Suzanne’s eyes narrowed. She lit another cigarette and blew out an angry stream of smoke. “I told you. I ain’t never had a safe deposit box.”

“Do you know who it might belong to?” Iris pressed, not wanting to admit she’d taken it directly from Suzanne’s desk. “Maybe this Beatrice person.”

“I really couldn’t say.”

Damn it. Iris shoved the key back in her pocket. “So . . . whatever happened with the police investigation?”

“Nothin’. That was the thing. One day they were calling everybody, and the next day nothin’.”

“So, then, what did you mean when you said the other day that some people got what was coming?” Iris asked.

“A couple rich families went bankrupt. It was all over the news. The Hallorans. The Wackerlys. Old Man Mercer died. They said it was a car crash.” Suzanne shrugged. “Maybe it was.”

The name Halloran was familiar for some reason. Iris puzzled over it until she remembered Linda up on the third floor. Her last name was Halloran. Iris shook her head, trying to knock loose the connections between Linda, Suzanne, Beatrice, and the bank. Suzanne’s story didn’t add up. Then again, she probably had a screw loose.

“You better be careful who you go asking about the First Bank of Cleveland,” Suzanne said, pointing a bony, brown finger at Iris. “There’s a reason that building hasn’t been bothered all these years.”

“Is that why you called me? To tell me to be careful?”

“Well, I wasn’t going to say nothin’, but you seemed like a nice enough girl on the phone. I didn’t want to have you on my conscience.” She lit another cigarette.

“Thanks, I guess, but what do you think is going to happen exactly? I mean, who really cares about the old bank at this point?” Iris eyed the smoke and debated lighting one herself.

“You’d be surprised how many of those fat-cat bankers is still around.” Suzanne looked Iris dead in the eye. “The last person that called me at home asking about safe deposit boxes disappeared. I just thought you should know that.”

Something on Suzanne’s wrist flashed in the sun. It sparkled like diamonds. Iris squinted at the hint of a bracelet. She opened her mouth to ask about it, but the roar of a station wagon pulling into the driveway stopped her. A pretty young woman got out of the car and retrieved a little girl from the backseat.