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 shifts 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 finishing 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 damned 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.