“Damn it.”

The elevator doors slid shut. She shoved the papers three at a time back in her files, until something caught her eye. It was a sheet full of hand-drawn swirls and tick marks. Iris picked it up and studied the odd markings again. They’d come from Beatrice’s personnel file. She picked them up one by one, skimming through the nonsense until a number jumped off one of the pages—547.

It was the same number as Suzanne’s key. She rifled through more pages and saw it again. Then again. “547” was written all over the notes left by Beatrice Baker. It couldn’t just be a coincidence, she thought. Beatrice had called Suzanne about a deposit box. Key 547 was in Suzanne’s desk, and now the number was all over the strange notes hidden in a personnel file. Maybe the key really did belong to Beatrice.

Iris stood up and lifted her finger to push the button marked “8,” and hesitated. Beatrice Baker had worked on the ninth floor—that’s what Suzanne had said. There wouldn’t be any harm in taking a look. Besides, there was no rule that said she had to survey the floors in order. She pressed “9,” and the elevator car carried her up the tower.

A long, narrow hallway led from the service elevator to the northwest corner of the ninth floor, where a set of double doors were wedged open. The gold letters on the wood read, “Auditing Department.” This is it, Iris thought, as she pushed her way in.

Through the doors was a large room with eight typing stations packed tightly together. A ring of office doors surrounded the typewriters on three sides. Iris walked the perimeter of the work area, reading the nameplates next to the doors. The third was marked “Randall Halloran.” Iris paused. Suzanne had said the Hallorans went bankrupt after the bank closed. Iris swung the door open to Mr. Halloran’s office. It looked similar to the others she’d seen already. The wood was a little darker. The desk was a little bigger. There was a tufted chair with a tall back pushed behind it.

Iris sat down behind an enormous desk blotter. She pulled open the center drawer. It was empty. She opened another drawer and another, trying to find some clue as to who Mr. Halloran was and why he went bankrupt. A silver letter opener and a dried-up fountain pen were the only items left behind. Like Linda in Human Resources, Mr. Halloran had cleaned out his desk. Behind her, the bookshelves were also bare. She peeked into the washroom, trying not to think of Nick. An old bottle of aftershave sat next to the gilded mirror. It smelled terrible.

Beatrice was probably a secretary, Iris thought as she exited Mr. Halloran’s office. Suzanne had called her a “young girl,” and something told her that a receptionist like Suzanne wouldn’t just casually go looking for someone with an office and a door. Iris certainly wouldn’t. She didn’t feel comfortable speaking to any of the bigwigs at WRE. They would pass her in the hall and nod, but she was fairly certain none of them even knew her name. Except maybe Mr. Wheeler.

None of the eight secretarial stations in the center of the room had nameplates. They were anonymous. “Where are you, Beatrice?” she whispered.

Iris plopped down at the closest desk. She thumbed through random files in the largest drawer. Scraps of paper, typewriter ribbon, binder clips—she found nothing of interest in the drawers and nothing that said “Beatrice.”

There was a clank as she pushed the drawer shut. Iris raised her eyebrows and opened it again. A glass pint bottle under the files was sloshing about. The label read “Old Grand-Dad.” She glanced around the empty room, then cracked it open. It just smelled like whiskey. Whiskey didn’t go bad, did it? She took a tiny sip. It was sour and burned holes in her throat all the way down.

“Ugh! You do not improve with age, Grand-Dad,” she said, grimacing.

There was nothing but office supplies and congealed cough drops in the next several desks. Iris plopped herself down at the last dusty workstation.

The view from the typewriter was oppressive. A drop ceiling hung low overhead. It was probably some 1960s renovation to cover up the gorgeous hand-painted ceiling and keep the ladies’ eyes on their work. The school clock hanging on the far wall had burned out years ago, but sitting there Iris could almost hear it ticking. Some poor woman had spent eight long hours a day in that chair facing that clock. She knew exactly how it felt. The desk wasn’t that different from Iris’s tiny workstation at WRE. No windows and surrounded by the watchful eyes of men. It was depressing how similar her working conditions really were to that of a secretary, despite her fancy degree.

Iris pulled open each drawer, finding nothing until she reached the last one. Inside, rows of green card-stock folders hung empty from little metal hooks. She ran a fingernail over them as if ruffling a deck of cards. As she closed the drawer, something in the bottom caught her eye. She shoved the hanging files aside. It was a small book with a gray binding. Iris picked it up and read the cover: A Guide to Simplified Gregg Shorthand. She opened to the middle and immediately recognized the strange writing. It looked exactly like the notes she’d found in Beatrice’s personnel file.

An inscription on the first page read, “Dear Beatrice, Practice makes perfect. Love, Aunt Doris.” This was Beatrice’s desk. Iris turned the pages of the manual one by one as if they might contain the answers to all of her questions about the bank. She found nothing but instructions on how to write in shorthand. On the last page she found another note. It read, “Practice on your own time, kid. Love, Max.”

Iris read the words “Love, Max” again and gazed up at the circle of offices. There wasn’t a Max on any of the doorplates. Were they lovers? she wondered, turning the book over. Maybe Max was one of Beatrice’s bosses. Sexual harassment wasn’t even a crime back then. She could picture the young secretary sitting there, keeping her head down at her desk. Trying not to be noticed. It struck Iris as incredibly odd that a secretary without a nameplate on her desk would disappear when the bank closed. Beatrice was a nameless, faceless employee. Why her?

Iris flipped the handbook closed. After a moment’s hesitation, she put it in her field bag. It wouldn’t be missed, she told herself. Besides, deciphering the bizarre notes Beatrice had left in her personnel file would be far more entertaining than watching TV reruns that night. More importantly, it might help her figure out what the hell to do with Key 547.

It was almost noon. She had wasted over an hour looking for Beatrice. With only five days to sketch eight more floors, she had to get to work. She pulled her tape measure and clipboard out of her bag and set them on Beatrice’s desk.

CHAPTER 33

Within thirty minutes, Iris had the conference rooms, the bathrooms, and the storage closets mapped using the fourth floor as a template. She returned to the Auditing Department and began to sketch the layout. She opened one office door after another, marking the windows and partitions. By the time she reached “Joseph Rothstein,” her hand was aching from holding the clipboard. She set it down on his desk and stretched.

Mr. Rothstein’s old office was a mess. His desk was piled high with files and books, his shelves were crammed full of binders, and there were stacks of reference manuals on the floor. Rothstein didn’t have his own bathroom or that big of an office, but he worked really hard, or at least spent his time trying to look like he did.

Volumes of books sat on the shelf with titles like Full Reserve Banking, Macroeconomics Volume I, and The Gold Standard. There wasn’t even room for her to write on the desk. She shoved a stack of spiral-bound notebooks aside. Mr. Rothstein’s calendar for December 1978 was buried underneath them.