Hard Rain

by Waverly Fitzgerald

  I stopped in front of the dock which led to Matt’s houseboat. I could see yellow crime scene tape, barring the end of the dock, and a few figures in white jumpsuits picking through a mound of debris. All that was left of Matt’s home were a few charred timbers.

  I found my red Jeep parked where I had left it. I looked around it carefully before I got in. I don’t know what I expected. Another mysterious note. Another bomb. But it started like usual, a little rough at the start but smoothing out as I pulled out of the parking lot and headed towards the Mutual Bank. I needed to see the scene of that crime.

  The Mutual Bank is only a few blocks from the Baptist Church where I had attended the Rainbow Children preschool. It’s in the Seattle neighborhood that real estate agents call Madison Valley now that it’s being gentrified but which was known as the Central District, CD for short, when most of the residents were black. Now the CD is home to lesbian couples and families with young children who are moving in and renovating the old bungalows.

  Mutual Bank sat on a corner, surrounded on two sides by a parking lot. There were two doors, one off the parking lot, and one facing the street. On one side, sharing a common wall were two small businesses—a nail salon and a teriyaki place—with windows and doors that faced the street.

  I parked in the parking lot and headed into the building through the back door. There was a security guard in a dusty blue uniform outside the door, a middle-aged black man, perhaps a retired cop. We nodded at each other.

  Inside it was a simple layout. On one side glassed-in cubicles with fancy desks where I presume the managers sat. On the other side, a long counter topped by bulletproof glass, with stations for tellers. I could see two interior rooms, one on either side of the teller’s area. Presumably one contained a bathroom and the other the vault.

  The carpet was a dull grey with some blue swirls. The fake wood grain surface on the counter resembled cherry wood. The chairs in the waiting area were a dull maroon. The whole effect was vaguely American.

  I didn’t know quite what I wanted to do. You can’t really go up to a teller and start asking questions about bank robberies without causing some suspicion. So I decided to ask about opening an account. The teller, a young Asian woman, referred me to the manager, a middle-aged black woman who was just finishing up with an elderly couple in her office. I waited patiently, trying not to look too suspicious, as I scanned the room, trying to picture what had happened there.

  “Hello, I’m Joyce White,” she said approaching me, after walking the elderly couple to the door and holding it open for them. “Can I help you?” She had a wide face with high cheekbones. She wore her dark hair curled into a stiff pageboy. Her coral-colored lipstick matched the coral color of her blazer.

  I realized with a start that she had been one of the tellers at the time of the robbery.

  “I’m thinking of opening an account here,” I said. “I believe in supporting small independent banks. I just want more information to help me make my decision.”

  “I’d be happy to help you.” She waved me into her office, indicating that I should take a seat facing her desk. “Where do you bank now?”

  I named one of the bigger banks. “I don’t find I get the customer service I would like,” I said. “I’m just a number to them.”

  “Well, you’ll find that we pride ourselves on really getting to know our customers,” she said.

  “Can you tell me how long the bank has been here?”

  “The bank was opened in 1951 by a group of business owners in the area,” she said, pushing a colored brochure across the desk with long fingernails that were painted the same coral as her lipstick and jacket. “We’ve been serving the local community for forty-nine years. We’re planning a big celebration next year for our anniversary.”

  “Wasn’t this the bank that was robbed by Weevil?” I asked.

  Something happened to her face. I couldn’t really tell you what for sure. It was as if all her muscles were frozen in place. She tried to smile but it didn’t work.

  “That must have been terrible for the people who worked here then,” I added.

  She bobbed her head. I observed that her fingernails were clutching the edge of her desk. “Did you work here then?”

  She nodded again. Her tongue flickered out and wet her lips.

  “I know several bank employees died,” I said.

  “Frank, the manager,” she said, finally finding her voice. “And Carol, the other teller.”

  “So you were a teller then?” I saw my chance.

  She nodded. “I was counting a deposit for Melody when they came in.”

  I didn’t recognize that name from the newspaper story. “Melody?” I repeated.

  Joyce nodded. She was deep in the memory. Her eyes were half closed as she looked inside. “She was a waitress at that fancy vegetarian restaurant on Madison. She always brought over the lunch till on her way home.”

  “Was she killed?” I asked.

  Joyce looked at me, startled out of her trance. “I don’t know. All the customers were in the bathroom. She must have been in there.”

  “You must have been terrified,” I said, hoping to coax her back into the moment.

  “It was terrifying,” she said, “but I was lucky. I didn’t actually witness any of the shooting.”

  “How come?”

  “One of the robbers wanted me to take the customers into the bathroom,” she said. “I didn’t know it at the time—because of the mask—but it was the woman who escaped: Ellie Foley.” She said the name with a twist of her lip and a tone of contempt. “Luckily there were only a few customers in the bank that afternoon. Marla Mills and her daughter. Mrs. Baker. And Melody. I was just unlocking the door when the shooting started. The robber ordered them to get inside. She went back towards the main area to see what was happening. I heard her swear. She said something like, ‘That bastard! He knew!’ Then she ran into the bathroom herself. I heard her lock the door from the inside. So I ran into the men’s bathroom, which was just across the hall, and locked the door. The police had to beg me to come out when they finally cleared the building.” She shook her head, clearing the memories.

  “Did you hear the shot that killed the woman in the bathroom?” I asked.

  Joyce shook her head. Her hair barely moved.

  “You can’t imagine what it was like,” she said. Her voice had sunk to a whisper. “So much shooting and screaming. I could hear it all, but I couldn’t do anything about it.”

  “It really shows your dedication to the bank that you came back to work,” I said. “I would think just walking through the doors would trigger memories.”

  She gave me a bright smile. “I didn’t feel like I had a choice. I needed the income for my family. But, luckily, the management was appreciative. I was the only one left…” She blinked back tears. “I knew where everything was…” Her voice trailed off. “Why are we talking about all this?” she asked. Her eyes narrowed.

  “It’s just good to know that the bank treats its employees well,” I said.

  “Yes, I’ll be here thirty years in September,” she said with pride.

  “Congratulations,” I said.

  She looked up and out the glass door, frowning at something that was going on in the lobby. For a moment, I got jumpy, thinking about the bank robbery. I twisted in my seat but all I saw was a man walking out of the lobby. He looked vaguely like the man who Joel thought was following us during our first meeting.

  “Did they offer you any kind of counseling after the event?” I asked. “It sounds very traumatic.” I was worried about this woman who seemed to have bottled up her feelings and carried on as if nothing had happened.

  She shook her head impatiently. “No, but they put in new security measures.” She pointed at the counter. “The bulletproof glass is new. We closed up the vent. And there’s a security guard here whenever the bank is open. We’ve never had another robbery. You can feel totally safe here.” She tapped her fingerna
ils on her desk, as I pretended to study the brochure. “So what kind of account would you like to open?”

  “I think I need to read up through this,” I said, waving the brochure. “But I’ll be back. I’m very impressed.”

  Chapter 14

  It seemed like a good time for lunch. I was shaken and in need of sustenance. And the mention of the vegetarian restaurant had my mouth watering. It’s one of my favorite places to eat in Seattle: the first gourmet restaurant in the city that catered to vegetarians. It was the kind of place you could take your meat-eating friends and they wouldn’t complain. In fact, they would be amazed and keep saying things like, “I can’t believe there’s no meat in this.”

  The main dining room was quiet and fairly empty on this summer day. That’s because everyone was eating in the atrium, which was where I was shown to a seat at a small table in the corner beside a huge palm tree in a wooden tub. A fountain burbled in the middle of the room, water trickling down the surface of rough rocks. The roof was covered with a grape vine so I was in dappled shade. A wind chime tinkled and fell silent. The whole effect was soothing and I began to relax, realizing for the first time how tense Joyce had been and how much that had affected me.

  I ordered a glass of the rosemary lemonade and a black bean burger which came with sweet potato fries, garlic aioli and enough arugula for me to pretend I was eating something healthy, like a salad.

  I flipped through my notes as I waited for my food. I noticed that although early reports of the bank robbery mentioned four customers (that would be Marla Mills and her daughter, Mrs. Baker and Melody, the waitress), later reports, when names were made available, mentioned only three. Melody had mysteriously disappeared. Where had she gone? Through the vent with Ellie? And how did someone get through a vent anyway?

  I contemplated that with horror. I have a bit of claustrophobia. Had Ellie noticed the vent on her first visit with her daughter and realized she could use it to make her escape? But surely they had planned to walk out of there alive.

  When my waitress showed up with my order, I asked her if there was anyone I could talk to who had been working at the restaurant for twenty-one years. She was young, probably only about twenty-one herself. She had long blond hair which she wore in a thick braid. Her eyebrows shot up. “I don’t think anyone has been working here that long,” she said, “but I’ll go ask.”

  The black bean burger was spicy and juicy and delicious. I dipped the fries in the aioli and managed to portion it out so that I had enough to finish all my fries. I finally tackled the arugula salad which was dressed with a nice herb vinaigrette, despite the fact that I was feeling satisfied.

  Unfortunately, I was not satisfied by the answer to my question. When the waitress came back to ask me if everything was OK, she told me that no one had worked there for twenty-one years. But when the check arrived, a different waitress showed up.

  “Are you the person who wanted to talk to someone who worked here twenty-one years ago?” she asked. I looked her up and down. She had spiky black hair and a heart-shaped face with a pointed chin. Although older than my first waitress, it didn’t seem likely that she had been old enough to wait tables twenty-one years earlier.

  I nodded.

  “Actually there are a couple of people who work here, who have been here since the beginning,” she said. “The executive chef, for one. She worked her way up from the line.”

  I practically jumped up. “Can I talk to her?”

  The waitress shook her head. “She’s on vacation right now.” She rolled her eyes. “Culinary tour of Sicily!”

  “Too bad,” I said, thinking about my project.

  “Yes, too bad,” the waitress echoed my words but her tone was sarcastic.

  “Did you say there were two people?” I asked.

  “The bookkeeper,” the waitress said. She handed me a business card. Wendy Brooks, Brooks Books, catering to the restaurant trade.

  “Oh, thanks!” I said. “This might be really useful.” The bookkeeper should have the names of the past employees in her records. Now all I had to do was figure out how to get her to give me that information.

  I headed for home and dialed the number on the card but Wendy was not available either. According to her voice mail, she was off site, working with a client. She would get back to me as soon as possible. I hung up without leaving a message. For my cover story to work, I needed to talk to her in person.

  While I was at the restaurant, I had gone through my notes and pinpointed my next interview: Karen Jones, the woman who had visited Ellie while she was in prison. A quick search established that Karen Eveschild worked for the Department of Social and Health Services at a building not too far from my house. It only took me five minutes to drive there, but ten minutes to find parking, as it was located in close proximity to Seattle University and Providence Hospital.

  The building must have been built in the 1950s. It was a low-slung, one-story building made of dark wood. It seemed brooding somehow. The concrete area in front of the glass front was littered with cigarette butts. Two smokers lounged against the side of the building. To get inside, I passed through a cloud of smoke. The door was covered with notices, warning that one could not enter with a firearm.

  Inside, I found rows of plastic chairs facing a bank of windows. It reminded me of the Department of Motor Vehicles, which was not a good sign. So did the little machine that gave out tickets. My number was 510 and they were currently serving 479. It seemed like it would be a long wait, especially if everyone was taking as long as the old woman who was arguing with the one visible clerk at the one staffed window.

  I settled down in a plastic chair for my long wait. At least, the people watching was good. Two black men behind me were talking about their girlfriends. A mom across the way was trying, ineffectually, to control a rambunctious five year old whose curly ringlets kept falling in her face as she climbed around on the chairs. A wizened old man, whose skin was cracked like tree bark, muttered to himself in the back corner.

  From time to time, someone would appear through a double door, to the right of the windows, and call a name, at which point everyone in the seats would look up, then look back down at the swirled pattern in the carpet or, if they were smart, at a book they had brought along to read.

  The minutes ticked by slowly. I fidgeted in my chair. If I still smoked, I would have gone outside and added to the toxic cloud outside the door. Finally another clerk appeared in another window and the line began to move a bit faster.

  When my number was finally called, I introduced myself to a black woman who said her name was Mrs. Williams. I told her I needed to speak to Karen Eveschild and she told me I needed an appointment. And the next available appointment was three weeks away at eight AM. Despite my insistence that the matter was urgent, I was unable to budge Mrs. Williams.

  So I had to sneak in. I withdrew to the back of the waiting room and watched the patterns of traffic until I found my opportunity. A young woman came through the double doors and called twice for a “Mrs. Oliver” who didn’t appear to be in the room. Probably she was out smoking. I followed the worker to her cubicle before we established that I wasn’t her client.

  “Oh, I thought you said Tolliver,” I explained. The young woman offered to walk me back to the waiting room but I said I could find my way. Then I wandered down the aisles, trying to look purposeful, looking for Karen Eveschild. There was a large open area in the middle of the room, probably thirty or forty little cubicles, all defined by oatmeal-colored dividers. A row of glassed-in offices ringed the perimeter. Each door bore a name, printed in black ink on a piece of typing paper—apparently no one stayed around long enough to have a permanent name plate, except Karen Eveschild, whose nameplate on her door was bronze and engraved.

  She had a corner office with windows looking out over the parking lot. She was sitting at her desk and on the phone when I walked in. She looked up with a question in her eyes when I entered. I just gave her a big smil
e and plopped down in the empty chair as if we were old friends.

  “So how can I help you?” she said, as she hung up the phone. She was a large woman with a rather square face. Her silver hair was cut short, in a stylish but mannish cut. She wore a royal blue silk blouse and there was a tailored grey jacket hanging on the back of the door but she didn’t look comfortable in her clothes.

  “Hi!” I said. “I’m Rachel Stern. I’m writing an article about Ellie Foley and I was told that you would be the key person to interview.”

  “How did you get in here?” Her voice was not friendly.

  “It was no problem,” I said, pretending I misunderstood her meaning.

  “I’m working right now. I can’t possibly talk to you,” Karen said. “Anyway I don’t want to talk about Ellie.”

  “Why is that?” I asked.

  A look of pain crossed her face. “Bad memories.” She ran her hands through her hair. “What did you say your name was?”

  I told her again. “I’m doing a story for Gus Holliday,” I said, digging his card out of my purse and handing it to her, along with one of mine.

  She studied them, then looked up with her brow furrowed. “Rachel Stern. Any relation to Marty and Sylvia Stern?”

  “I’m their daughter,” I replied.

  “Wow!” she said. Her eyes got big. They were a striking shade of grey-blue. She looked me up and down. “I remember when you were two years old. You were a cute little kid.” She said that as if I had changed radically.

  “Should I remember you?” I asked.

  She shrugged. “I don’t know. We probably all seemed like a bunch of crazy adults to you. You and your sister were the only kids in the house. We were all kind of freaked out by being around kids. I think that’s why your parents moved out.”

  “So you were living at the RAG House?” I asked.

  “Yes, I was one of the original residents,” she said.

  “Did Ellie ever live there?”