Lilith: a novel (9 page)

After graduation, Jessica got lucky: The early twenty-first century economy was still buoyant from the go-go 1990s. But Jessica had no intention of going to work in the factory alongside her mother—let alone Tony McClure. That writing was already on the wall: Most of the local manufacturing employers were already moving work to China.

Instead she landed an entry-level job with a bank in Cincinnati. Her boss was a portly, red-haired man in his mid-thirties named Seth Greenwald. Throughout the hiring interview, Seth’s eyes continually wandered to her legs, her breasts, and everywhere else. She thought of Floyd, and then of Mr. Frogge. She was not the least bit surprised when the bank called to inform her that she had been given the job, even though nothing in her academic record nor her background suggested an aptitude for banking.

Jessica started sleeping with Seth after about four months on the job. Seth was different from any of the men she had been with so far.

Floyd and Mr. Frogge had each, in their own way—and perhaps without fully knowing—taken advantage of her thwarted love for an absent father. Tony had simply treated her cruelly, she now decided; he had never had any real feelings for her.

But Tony, Mr. Frogge, and Floyd had all had one thing in common: They all had the balance of power on their side.

Seth, on the other hand, was obviously besotted with her. Seth thought she was amazing. She knew this because he told her so at regular intervals.

She had been sleeping with Seth only a few months when he proposed marriage to her. Jessica was taken aback. She wondered what Seth would say if he had known about Bryan—the man she had met at a bar only a few weeks before Seth’s proposal. Bryan was the polar opposite of Seth: He worked in construction, and he rippled with an undercurrent of violence. Come to think of it, Bryan was a lot like Tony.

“But—but what about the bank?” Jessica faltered. I mean—aren’t there rules against that?”

“Yes,” Seth said. “There are. But we can get around them if we transfer you to another bank.” He gave her the half-smile of a wounded puppy. “Do you
want
to marry me? Is there a problem with—with the age difference?”

She saw her out and seized upon it. “No, no—I’ve always known that you’re thirty-four. But you see, I’m only nineteen. And—”

“And marriage is a big commitment.”

“
Yes!
Marriage is a big commitment. I was a high school student a little more than a year ago.”

“Okay,” Seth said. “I understand.” But something told her that Seth did not understand. In any event, Seth did not raise the subject of marriage again.

She continued to see Seth, while at the same time seeing Bryan. One rainy night she came home from visiting Bryan’s apartment when she noticed a familiar-looking car following her. She braked suddenly in the parking lot of her apartment complex, and the car accelerated and abruptly sped around her. The heavy rain prevented a clear view, but she was almost certain that it was Seth’s car.

Nevertheless, the next day at work Seth said nothing to her about the incident. Jessica told herself that she had probably been mistaken; Seth’s car was a common enough make, model, and color.

A little before lunch time, Seth sheepishly approached her at her teller’s window and whispered, “Dinner tonight?” Since her roundabout rebuff of his marriage proposal, Seth had become almost timid around her, despite the fact that he was much older than she was, and her boss to boot.

Jessica nodded. “Sounds good.”

“Great! Okay then. I’ll pick you up at six-thirty. I found out about this excellent little Italian place. You’ll love it!”

The uneasy arrangement with Seth had been going on for about a year when Mrs. Crabtree died. Mrs. Crabtree was a seventy-eight-year-old widow who had been a customer of the bank since 1963, or some ridiculously remote date in the past.

Mrs. Crabtree had a checking account and a savings account. She also had a large safety deposit box. The Crabtrees (back when Mr. Crabtree was alive) had been afraid to put all of their wealth in their accounts, where banking officials, government auditors, and other snoops could have access to it. Moreover, the Crabtrees had been severely unnerved by the savings and loan crisis of the 1980s.

The elderly couple therefore hedged their bets by converting a significant portion of their funds to hard cash, gold, and rare coins. The Crabtrees had probably considered keeping this hoard in their basement, but they instead opted to put this trove of cash and valuables in a safety deposit box at the bank.

No one at the bank knew for certain the total value of the cash, gold, and coins in the safety deposit box. Items placed in any safety deposit box—including bundles of cash—were outside the bank’s normal accounting system.

The unfortunate passing of Mrs. Crabtree therefore resulted in a fateful appointment one day between Jessica and Mrs. Ellen Frazier. Ellen Frazier’s maiden name had been Ellen Crabtree. She was the daughter of the late Mr. and Mrs. Crabtree—and the couple’s sole heir.

“We were so sorry to hear about your mother,” Jessica said. Ellen Frazier was seated in the visitor’s chair in front of Jessica. Jessica was seated behind her desk at the bank.

As Seth had become more uncertain about his own position vis-à-vis Jessica, he had begun to promote her. Although Jessica still had to take her turn behind the tellers’ counter during peak hours, this was no longer her primary job. She had been given a desk in the open office space of the bank, and a host of new responsibilities. One of these responsibilities was the management of client safety deposit boxes.

She had done her best to keep her arrangement with Seth a secret, but the branch office of a bank is a microcosm. The relationship between Seth and her was an open secret. Some of the bank’s employees also knew that she had another boyfriend, as well.

For the most part, this was simply an entertaining tidbit of gossip. One of Jessica’s coworkers, however, actively resented the situation, and took a clear and open disliking to Jessica.

This coworker’s name was Tina Hartley. From her position behind the tellers’ counter, Tina pointedly observed Jessica as the latter chatted with Ellen Frazier about taking possession of her parents’ safety deposit box. The unwanted attention did not overly alarm or perturb Jessica. She knew that Tina was anticipating any slip-up that she might make, anything that could be leveraged against her. Or perhaps Tina believed that she could rattle Jessica, effectively causing her to make such a mistake.

Whatever Tina’s specific motive, it was a game that she loved to play—giving Jessica the evil eye as if she were Jessica’s boss. The two of them were of equal rank, however, Tina’s stares and glares notwithstanding. Tina could look at her until her eyes were full, as Jessica’s grandmother used to say.

“You don’t plan to empty the box, do you?” Jessica asked Ellen Frazier at a discreet volume. “It’s just that well—I’ve been told there’s a lot of money and other valuables in there.”

“No, no,” Ellen said. “I plan to hold on to the safety deposit box. But I would like to inventory the items, you understand. Mother told me that there was a lot of money in there, but she never told me exactly how much. And I’ll need an exact accounting for the estate taxes. Uncle Sam will be sure to get his cut, you know.”

Jessica smiled and nodded at the pleasantry. Ellen Frazier had removed her key—formerly her mother’s key—from her purse. She laid the key in front of her on Jessica’s desk. Two keys were required to open every safety deposit box. One key was held by the party that rented the box, and the other key remained at the bank.

“We can go back there whenever you’re ready,” Jessica said, referring to the windowless, isolated room where the bank’s safety deposit boxes were housed.

Ellen Frazier was about to stand when her cell phone began chiming inside her purse.

She removed the cell phone, noted the number with immediate concern, and hurriedly held the phone to her ear.

“Hello? Yes, this is Mrs. Frazier. Oh, that’s—are you sure? Is she going to be all right?.....Okay. What? She was taken to the
hospital
? Yes, yes, I understand. I’ll go directly to Mercy Hospital, then. All right, thank you.”

Ellen Frazier closed the phone and returned it to her purse, a blank look on her face.

“I hope nothing’s wrong,” Jessica said reflexively. Obviously something was wrong.

“My daughter,” Ellen said. “She’s fifteen. They were playing volleyball at school, in gym class. She jumped for the ball and came down at an awkward angle.”

“Oh, no. I hope she wasn't hurt too seriously.”

“The school nurse said that she has a severely sprained ankle. They’ve sent her to the hospital for x-rays. I—I know she’ll be fine, but as a parent, when you get a call like that, you just start imagining the worst. You know what I mean?”

“Of course,” Jessica said. She couldn't imagine herself as a mother, so she really had no idea what Ellen Frazier meant. But this seemed to be the appropriate response.

“Anyway, Ms. Knox, I need to go see my daughter. I’m going to have to look at the contents of my parents’ safety deposit box another time.”

“Of course, Mrs. Frazier. Go see your daughter. You can come back here whenever it’s convenient. Just ask for me if I’m not at my desk.”

“I’ll do that. And thank you again, Ms. Knox.”

“You’re welcome. I hope your daughter recovers.”

“I’m sure she’ll be fine. No one ever died from a sprained ankle, but I need to go see her.”

Jessica watched Ellen Frazier walk out the main entrance of the bank. She was about to swivel around in her L-shaped desk and face her computer when she noticed something of great significance.

Ellen Frazier had walked away without picking up her key to the safety deposit box.

This did not have to mean anything, of course. Ellen Frazier would eventually become aware of her oversight. She would come back, or perhaps call.

Not for a while, though. Her daughter was in the hospital. Ellen Frazier had other matters on her mind.

And that opened up a window of opportunity.

What kind of an opportunity?
she thought. Then she chided herself for her coy denial. There was nothing to be gained by lying to herself.
You know exactly what kind of an opportunity, Jessica Knox.

The key continued to sit there on the surface of Jessica’s desk, far enough that she would have to reach for it, but close enough to grab without standing up from her chair.

This was a moment of choice: She could seize this moment, and possibly win big, but she would do so at an enormous risk. Or she could simply put the key in her desk drawer for safekeeping, and send Ellen Frazier a text message notifying her that she had left it behind.

Jessica glanced up at the tellers’ counter: Tina Hartley was talking on the phone and scribbling on a notepad—apparently ignoring her for once.

In one fluid motion, Jessica leaned forward across her desk, palmed the key, and returned to her original, upright position.

Another glance at the tellers’ counter confirmed that Tina was still busy with her phone call. And she wouldn't have to worry about anyone else. Although her desk was in open view, no one would make the connection between the shiny object that was now in her hand, and the uncounted wealth in the late Mrs. Crabtree’s safety deposit box.

Jessica checked the time on the clock above the tellers’ counter: It was nearing 2:00 p.m., the beginning of the weekday lull. The morning and noontime rushes were over, and the after-work flood of customers had not yet commenced.

Although there was some flexibility in the system, the bank strongly encouraged its employees to schedule their lunch hours at this time. The sixty minutes between two and three p.m. was therefore the hour when the bank operated on a skeleton crew. This was the hour when there were the fewest customers and the fewest bank employees.

And that would be the perfect time to go back into the safety deposit box vault.

Two o’clock was the hour in which Jessica customarily took her lunch hour as well. She attracted only a few stares and questions when she lingered at her desk. It was easy enough for her to claim that she was under the gun on several projects.

There was only one fellow bank employee who concerned her, really. Though she knew that the others occasionally gossiped and tittered about Seth and her, Tina was the only one who took it as a matter of personal offense, as if Jessica had somehow cheated the system.

Jessica found herself suddenly resenting Tina’s resentment. After all, she had done nothing more than make use of the advantages that nature, or God—or whoever—had given her. (And she had perhaps taken advantage of the weakness of a man. Was it her fault, though, that Seth Greenwald, like so many men, was weak?) 

Those same forces, be they destiny or chance, had saddled her with a father who had deserted her mother and her, and with a crummy little childhood in Iron Mills, Ohio.

Tina, she knew, had two doting parents and a college degree that her father had paid for.

So the breaks balanced out. Who was Tina to judge her for what she did?

Jessica looked up at the tellers’ counter: Tina was no longer there. Then she furtively looked over at Tina’s desk. The other woman’s chair was empty, and her purse was gone.

There was no guarantee, of course. Tina could be in the restroom behind the teller’s counter. For that matter, Tina could have seen the key, and—sensing what Jessica was about to do—she might have deliberately set a trap. She imagined Tina catching her in the act she had been contemplating, perhaps with a digital camera in hand.

Would Tina go that far? Photographic evidence?
Yes, Tina actually might go that far.

These risks, while very real, would have to be ignored. She had a limited window of time in which to act. At three o’clock there would be too many people in the bank again. Moreover, it would be only a matter of time until Ellen Frazier became aware of her oversight regarding the key.