The Wash N Rinse was deserted. She filled up three washers. As she slammed quarters in each one, a small bit of the weight lifted off her shoulders. She’d finally done something right. She plopped down onto a plastic chair and watched her clothes spin around in soapy water. If only she could throw her whole body in as well and come out clean and ready to start over. She dropped her throbbing head into her hands and shut her eyes.

A fly buzzed past her ear and settled onto the arm of the chair next to her. It rubbed its greedy little hands together, watching her. She lurched away from it. No one in the world could possibly want her used underwear anyway, she told herself as she backed out of the Laundromat, leaving her clothes unattended.

She flung open the door to her apartment and surveyed the mess she’d made of a once-sparkling new home. It was supposed to be her first grown-up apartment for her new grown-up life. It looked like a vagrant had moved in. It didn’t look that different from the homeless hovel on the eleventh floor of the old bank tower.

Four hefty bags of garbage, some bleach, and an entire roll of paper towels later, Iris was ready to finally unpack. One by one the moving boxes were broken down and thrown onto the curb. Dishes stacked in cupboards, books piled on shelves, silverware shoved in drawers, and her carpet slowly reemerged from the chaos. The apartment was starting to look as if a functional adult lived there.

She pulled out the last box she’d stashed in the hall closet and ripped it open. It was the junk box that held everything that didn’t have a proper place in her life. She pulled out a flashlight, a pack of batteries, a screwdriver, chewing gum, bandages, a box cutter, and a book.

It was Beatrice’s guide to shorthand. Under it she found Beatrice’s missing notes, along with the files from the lonely suitcase and the key she’d taken from Suzanne’s desk. Key 547. She ran a finger over the number. It couldn’t really be the reason Beatrice vanished, she told herself, and tried to believe it. She sat down in the middle of the room and turned to the back page of the shorthand manual, where Max had left a note. She traced Max’s pen strokes with her fingertip. Max was a cop’s sister. She had disappeared when the bank closed. Just like Beatrice. From the look on his face, the detective was still searching for Max. The old bank haunted him the way it haunted Iris.

That’s it. Detective McDonnell still didn’t know what had happened to his sister. If Iris could find some clue to her whereabouts somewhere in these notes, maybe he would forgive her for not telling him the whole truth. Maybe he would believe her when she explained she’d taken a few things from the building but she wasn’t a thief. She wasn’t after whatever was buried in the vault or anywhere else in the bank. She never meant for any of this to happen. It might be her way out of this mess.

Iris picked up the manual, determined to decipher the bird scratch that passed for writing in the 1970s. The first sheet of paper from Beatrice’s file was filled top to bottom with scribbling. She grabbed a pencil from her field bag and began decoding the words.

After five minutes the thrill of unraveling the mystery wore off as she stared down a page of nonsense. “Mole hunt bust.” “Inside man lost?” Iris decided she must be doing something wrong.

She grabbed the other file, the one from the suitcase. Translating the first sheet, she came up with a jumble of letters and numbers and “D is for three hundred, E is for four hundred . . .” She scanned down, until she finally found something that seemed to make sense. “In God We Trust.”

She read the words again and then tossed the shorthand manual aside. In God We Trust? Was Beatrice some sort of religious nut or something? It was getting dark outside. It was way past dinnertime. Crap. She’d forgotten her laundry.

Iris stumbled out into the evening to collect her clothes. A gray sedan parked across the street pulled out and headed the same direction. She only noticed because it was driving behind her a bit slow. She turned to look at it, and it sped away.

CHAPTER 51

Iris spent half the night trying to find some clue to the disappearance of Beatrice or the detective’s sister, with no luck. What she had produced was a disjointed collection of words—“In God We Trust is the key . . . Inside man lost? . . . Mole hunt bust . . . Fuck the mayor . . . Move the accounts . . . Teddy and Jim . . . Tell Max to stay on vacation . . . A bank’s only as good as its records . . . the meek shall inherit the earth.”

Eventually, she dozed off on the floor and drifted back into the building. It was late. Iris was working overtime again. She was in the old HR office, sitting in Linda’s chair, clicking away at her keyboard. The plans were coming together well. She picked up her hand-drawn sketch and squinted, trying to decipher her own sloppy writing. Something dropped next to her keyboard with a metallic clank.

It was a key. A skull and crossbones was etched into its bronze face. She picked it up and stared, mesmerized. A key marked for death. She turned it over and shrieked. There was blood on her fingertips. The key was bleeding.

Iris sat bolt upright on the floor. Heart racing, covered in sweat, she swore she could hear flies buzzing. She clawed at her arms and neck, checking for phantom bugs, and then leapt up from the carpet, itching with them.

“Jesus fucking Christ!” she hissed.

Iris stumbled into the kitchen for something soothing. No more booze; her liver couldn’t take it. She opened the fridge and settled for a glass of warm milk. She’d never actually tried warm milk but figured it might help. As the glass spun in the microwave, she rubbed her forehead. For days she’d been too drunk to remember her nightmares. The image of the key from her dream turned in her head. It had been covered in blood. There was a skull on it or something. She suddenly had to check the key she’d taken from the dead man’s room to be sure it wasn’t there.

She rushed to her field bag and fished the lone key out from the front pocket. Remembering where she’d found it, she took it to the kitchen sink and washed it under the hot water until her hands burned. After the suds rinsed away, she studied the key carefully. The face on each side was blank. There was no skull, but there were no marks for the type of lock it opened or of any kind. It seemed wrong.

Iris went to her purse and pulled out her key rings. She checked her house key, her car key, and her key to the office. Each one had an inscription of some kind. “Schlage,” “Mazda,” and “Larson” the keys read. Her eyes wandered across the counter. Even Suzanne’s mysterious key had the name of the bank and the box number on it.

The keys Brad had given her for the old bank were of all shapes and sizes, but none were blank. She pulled the key ring someone had left in the vault from the bottom of her field bag. Someone who had been trying to open a safe deposit box, she reminded herself. Someone who was not Ramone, or at least he claimed it wasn’t him. The keys were all marked with letters and the name of the bank. She still had the dead man’s key in her other hand. She looked from the vault keys to the blank key and realized they were very similar. They were all bronze with round heads. She pressed the blank key against one marked “D.” The blank key was shorter. They didn’t match.

The microwave dinged. Iris set the keys on the counter and went to get her warm milk. She looked into the glass skeptically. It didn’t smell appetizing, but she took a sip anyway. The sickly warm liquid slid down her throat, leaving a scummy film behind.