The American Café

by Sara Sue Hoklotubbe

  A female hummer flew into his airspace. She hovered near the feeder, slowly edging her bill toward the yellow flower-shaped plastic portal of artificial nectar. In an instant the male took flight, his body transformed into a small missile aimed directly at his adversary. He sideswiped her. They twirled in midair in a dance of grace and precision and then zoomed off. Sadie shook her head, grinned, and watched. A few seconds later, the male bird returned to his duty station.

  “You are so tough for such a tiny bird,” teased Sadie.

  Another dazzling hummingbird ventured near. Showing its aerial agility, the bird held its flight pattern high near the roof of the porch. The guarding hummer flew toward the intruder and found himself caught in an abandoned spider web. He fluttered and reversed flight, pulling strands of the sticky web across his wings and body. Sadie gasped and ran to help, determined to rescue the little creature. Just as she reached for him, he maneuvered, pulled free, and escaped. But she had reached too far. Her foot slid off the edge of the porch and suddenly she was falling. She fell hard on her knees and rolled onto the ground. When she tried to get up, her legs would not move.

  “Sadie, what are you doing on the ground?”

  The soft voice caught her unaware.

  “Grandma?” Sadie's voice echoed as if it were in a tunnel. “Is that you? I'm hurt. Alisdelvdi,” she said. “Help me.”

  “You must help yourself, Sadie. You are strong. You are a Walela. Get up.”

  Sadie moved her legs, trying to increase blood flow to her tingling toes, and opened her eyes. She had been dreaming. Certainly no hummingbirds flew inside this cold steel vault. But the spirit of her grandmother, she was sure, had been there while she slept.

  Her knee still hurt from the spill she had taken and it was swelling. She looked at her watch. It was only a little past nine o'clock and she wished she had access to a restroom. It was going to be a long night.

  She took the reports she had scraped off the floor earlier and decided to put them back in order. She studied the different headings, some of which made absolutely no sense to her. Guided by the report numbers at the top of each page, she began to sort through the mess of paper.

  “Dormant accounts,” she muttered to herself. “Who cares about dormant accounts?”

  She scanned the report, thinking she might recognize a name or two. Nothing. Then suddenly a dollar amount jumped out of the column on the right-hand side of the report. It was an odd amount. She had seen it earlier in the day. She concentrated, trying to remember where. Probably the same page, she thought. “I'm looking at pages I've already looked at,” she reminded herself. She continued to scan through more reports. Again, the same dollar amount leapt off the page at her. “What report is this?” She looked for page one. Unable to find what she was looking for, she laid out the pages on the floor, grouping the different report numbers together. Before long she saw a pattern of questionable transactions, the same odd amounts going in and out of different accounts. “Why doesn't this stupid report have names on it?” she said aloud. She would have to remember to bring them to Tom's attention.

  “Why am I doing this?” She spoke out loud again. “I don't care about strange transactions. This is ridiculous.”

  She bunched the papers together, stacked them on top of the counter, and sat on the floor. Her knee throbbed. Maybe if she could go back to sleep, she thought, morning would arrive sooner.

  But her mind wouldn't rest. She searched her memory, trying to figure out who would lock her in the vault, and why. This was all so hard to believe. Friend or not, she promised herself she would never consider working in another bank as long as she lived.

  Eventually her mind drifted. She thought about her aunt and uncle, the farm and the café, Sonny and Joe. She remembered her life as a banker and silently lamented the toll it had taken on her. She replayed the events in her life since buying the café—Goldie's death, the broken window, Pearl's suicide, Emma and Rosalee's arrival, and their sour relationship. Next she thought about Lance Smith and how he had reappeared in her life. For a fleeting moment she wondered if there was a place in his nice, orderly world for an unorganized ex-banker who, so far, was willing to place her trust only in a horse and a dog. Her fluid thoughts moved on to Sonny and Joe. She knew they would be all right but she didn't like to be away from them. She drifted into dreams of riding Joe at the edge of the creek with Sonny scouting the path ahead of her.

  Lance knew the signal on his cell phone would be too weak to reach Maggie Whitekiller until he reached the hill north of Tahlequah on Highway 82. So he held the phone in his left hand, poised to dial, and as soon as he could he punched the send button. Maggie answered on the second ring.

  “Maggie, where's the chief? Have you had any alarms or calls coming in from the new bank?”

  “Everything is pretty quiet around here, Lance. The chief is, uh, out-of-pocket. I have orders to call him only if there is an emergency. What's wrong? I thought you were off tonight.”

  “What does out-of-pocket mean, Maggie?”

  “It means he is busy, uh, in a personal sort of way.”

  “That's great.” Lance didn't try to hide the disgust in his voice. “Do you have an emergency contact for the bank?”

  “Hold on.”

  When Lance placed the phone on his lap, waiting for Maggie's voice to return to the tiny speaker, Red began to talk.

  “Your dog-man is out-of-pocket, you say?”

  Lance ignored the question.

  “He's probably at Polly Gibson's house,” Red offered. “She got divorced last month after her husband got suspicious of all the overtime she was working at the bank.”

  Lance continued to drive north at breakneck speed until he had to slow down to make the turn off the highway onto Moody Road. “Maggie? Where did you go?” He looked at his phone, realized he had lost his connection, and threw the phone on the seat. It bounced onto the floor of the truck and Red retrieved it.

  “Gibson?” asked Lance. “She works at the bank?”

  “Yes, she is the teller.”

  Lance absorbed the information without expression and floored the accelerator.

  Sadie woke to the sounds of muffled voices. It took a moment before she remembered where she was. She jumped up. A bolt of pain shot through her knee and her bladder at the same time. Ignoring both, she called out. “Help! I'm in the vault!” She waited a moment, then repeated her cry for help.

  Her mind raced. According to a small digital clock on the work station, it was almost ten-thirty. Maybe whoever shoved her in had come back to finish her off. She recoiled against the back wall and looked for something with which to defend herself. Her mind ran wild. How would they get to her unless they had access to the combination, and even if they did, she was sure the alarm would go off when they pulled the door open. An ink pen was the closest thing to a weapon she could find; she grasped it in her hand, poised to plunge it into her assailant's eye at the appropriate moment. Her knee hurt, so she slid back onto the floor and waited in silence.

  After a few minutes, she closed her eyes and let out a heavy breath. “Please let it be someone I know,” she prayed.

  22

  Lance recognized Sadie's vehicle before he parked in front of the Liberty branch of First Merc State Bank. He could see the lights on inside the building and thought for a moment he may have jumped to conclusions. Sadie was a dedicated worker and was probably just working late. Then reality set in, and he realized it was after ten o'clock. Not even Sadie was that dedicated.

  “Where's your gun?” asked Red.

  “Stay here,” ordered Lance as he opened his truck door. He reached behind his seat, pulled out a .357 revolver, slid it inside the waistband of his jeans at the small of his back, and clipped his badge to his belt. He entered the bank through the unlocked door and searched the entire building. He felt like a rock dropped in the pit of his stomach when he found Sadie's purse sitting under a desk and her keys sprawled on top of it in full sight. Wher
e was she?

  “Hello?” Lance yelled. “Anybody here?”

  Nothing.

  “Sadie? Are you here?”

  Suddenly he thought he could hear something. He stood completely still and listened. Then he heard it again. Someone was in the vault. He leaned against the vault door, cupped his hands around his mouth, and shouted. “Sadie, are you in there?”

  The reply was muffled, but he knew in his heart it was her. He returned to his vehicle and called Maggie again. In less than an hour he had rousted both the chief of police and Polly Gibson out of bed and contacted the head of security at the main office of First Merc State Bank in Oklahoma City. They would send someone named Walker out from Sycamore Springs to open the vault. No alarms had been tripped, and Polly Gibson swore Sadie was closing up when she left the branch a little after five o'clock.

  Lance forbade anyone from entering the bank until he could determine if he needed to take fingerprints. He thought the cash would be gone and expected soon to be working a robbery. While he continued to wait for Walker to arrive, a thought occurred to him. He walked back to where Polly Gibson was sitting inside her car and leaned down to her open window.

  “Polly, are you sure you don't know how to open that vault?”

  “No, sir. They keep the combination a secret because I have the vault key. You know, dual control. I didn't do anything wrong by leaving before she did. She told me to. And Chief Stump says I don't have to say anything. I'm just here as an employee of the bank.”

  Stump heard his name and walked over to Polly's car. His hair was wet and he smelled like Ivory soap. “What's the problem, Smith?”

  “I just thought perhaps Mrs. Gibson might be able to open the vault and we wouldn't have to wait for the banker from Sycamore to arrive. I'd kind of like to make sure the other employee is all right.”

  “Well, if you ask me, when a woman is dumb enough to get herself locked in the vault, she ought to have to wait until morning to get out,” sneered Stump.

  Lance turned on his heel and reentered the bank. He cupped his hands against the vault door and yelled again. “Sadie, can you hear me?”

  He could hear her answer, but her words were inaudible. It sounded like she said she was “cursed” and it was “funny.”

  He laughed to himself and tried again. “You are not cursed, Sadie. Where's the combination to the vault?”

  It sounded like the same muffled words were trying to escape the heavy door.

  “Hang on,” he said. “Someone's on their way to get you out.”

  Poor girl. When it came to bank robberies he was beginning to think she was cursed. He scanned the small office, trying to figure out this strange scenario. “Okay, Smith,” he mumbled to himself. “This can't be that hard.” He sat at the manager's desk, looked at every item on it, and thought. He took the pen out of his pocket and carefully pulled out each desk drawer, searching.

  If I was filling in for a bank manager, he contemplated, I would need to write down the combination somewhere. Where would I put it? His first answer was in his spiral notebook in his shirt pocket. Okay, if I was a woman where would I put it? He looked at the floor and suddenly laughed out loud. “Damn, Smith, if it had been a copperhead you'd be dead by now.”

  He picked up Sadie's purse and hesitated. Then he dumped the contents out on the desk. “Why do women carry all this crap around?” he continued to himself. He pilfered through gum wrappers, ink pens, a check-book, a hairbrush, and a couple of unopened pieces of mail. When he unzipped a small beaded coin purse, he remembered teasing Sadie about her bad habit of wadding up her money and shoving it all together with her coins. Just before he rezipped the bag, a small piece of white paper caught his attention. He dug it out and unfolded it to discover a string of numbers.

  He jumped up from his chair and ran to the door. “Chief,” he yelled. “Can you bring Mrs. Gibson and her vault key in here? I think I've found the combination.”

  It took Lance four tries before frustration set in. The air conditioner had been off for a while and cool air had escaped each time the front door was held open. Sweat dripped from his forehead and onto his hands. “I don't think this is right,” he complained. “It doesn't work.”

  Polly shrugged her shoulders. “Don't look at me. I've never been allowed to open the vault. I don't know how.”

  Stump interrupted. “If you don't need Mrs. Gibson for anything else, Lance, I'm going to take her home. This doesn't seem to be too serious. The man from Sycamore should be here any time.”

  “What about my key?” Polly protested.

  “We'll take responsibility for it, Polly,” said Stump. “Let's go.”

  Lance followed the two to the front door. He was beginning to wish he'd never taken this job. He watched the chief escort Polly to her car, open the car door for her, slide into the driver's seat, and drive off.

  Red appeared out of the darkness. “I can probably open it.”

  Lance raised his eyebrow. “Oh, yeah? What makes you think so?”

  Red held up his outstretched hands and smiled. “I have very sensitive fingers.”

  “Be my guest. They're going to have to change this combination anyway.”

  The two men returned to the vault door. Lance inserted the key in the middle of the dial while Red studied the numbers. Then Red stepped up and started spinning the dial to the left over and over. “This kind of clears it out,” he said. Then he held up the small piece of paper and stopped the dial on the first number, reversing the spin in each direction twice more before coming to rest on the final digit. He grabbed the lever and yanked it to the left. Nothing.

  Lance's shoulders slumped. “Obviously your fingers aren't sensitive enough.”

  “Shhh. I'm working here. Are you sure these numbers are right?” Red spun the dial once more several times to the left and repeated the turns according to the numbers on the paper. “Bingo.”

  Red stepped back and Lance jerked the handle. Clunk.

  “Way to go, Red.” Lance pulled the heavy door open.

  Sadie sat on the floor at the back of the vault holding her knee. “I never thought I'd be so glad to see two Indians. Can somebody help me up?”

  “Are you all right?” The two men exclaimed together.

  “Was it a robbery?” continued Lance.

  “How could it be a robbery? The money's all in here. Hurry up. I've really got to go.”

  Lance and Red both helped her stand and watched while she limped with determination toward the ladies room. As the door to the restroom closed, the sound of a ringing phone pierced the night. Lance instinctively plucked a tissue off a nearby table and used it to pick up the receiver. It was Maggie.

  “Lance? I thought you might still be there. The bank alarm just went off.”

  “That's okay, Maggie. We just got the vault open. I'm sure that set it off.”

  “Is Sadie okay?”

  “Seems to be. Go ahead and tell the security company that Liberty Police is out in force.”

  “Will do.”

  As Lance hung up the phone, Sadie came out of the restroom wiping her face with a paper towel. “Wow. Thanks, Lance. I don't think I could have made it much longer.”

  “Don't forget to thank Red, too,” said Lance. “I couldn't have done it without him.”

  “Really?” Sadie turned to Red. “Thanks, Red.”

  Red grinned and waved her away.

  “So what took you so long?” she asked.

  “It took me a while to figure out where you hid the combination.”

  “Why?” Sadie seemed puzzled. “I kept telling you it was in my purse, in my money.”

  “Purse? Money?” Lance laughed. “I thought you said you were cursed and it was funny.”

  Sadie gave him a serious look. “This is not funny.”

  “How did you get locked in the vault anyway? What happed to your leg?”

  “I was shoved in by a very strong, pushy person. I fell over the step stool in the vault. Sprained
my knee, I guess.”

  Lance frowned. “Do you know who it was? Man? Woman?”

  “If I knew that, I'd be on my way right now to strangle them. But I can tell you this. They meant for me to fall pretty hard.”

  “Do you think you could look around and see if anything is missing?”

  Sadie limped to Tom's desk and looked around, then moved behind the teller counter. “I don't know, Lance. I don't see anything. Can't we just lock it up and go home? Somebody else can figure it out tomorrow.”

  A car door slammed and Lance tensed. A middle-aged man in jeans and a tee shirt trotted up to the front door and entered. He zeroed in on Lance's badge, walked over, and offered his hand. “I'm Timothy Walker. I got here as fast as I could. I'm vice-president over the branches in this area for First Merc State Bank.” He handed Lance a business card. “I understand we had a break-in or something?”

  Lance studied the man's card while Sadie stepped forward and introduced herself. Walker nodded and shook her hand. “Yes, I remember meeting you at the main office one time. I understand you were filling in for Tom Duncan today. He speaks very highly of you.”

  “Thank you,” she said. “I really think everything is okay here. The money was already put away so I know it is safe. I think it was just a prank. Polly had already gone and someone must have been hiding in the unused part of the old lobby or…someplace. I don't really know. They just snuck up on me, pushed me in, and slammed the door.”

  Walker looked at Lance. “Did the alarm go off? If it did, we didn't get a signal.”

  Lance shook his head. “I don't think the alarm was ever triggered.”

  “Then how did you know she was in the vault?”

  Lance smiled. “It's a small town. We try to take care of one another.” He guided Sadie toward the door. “We'll wait for you outside while you secure the building.”