Lilith: a novel

by Edward Trimnell

  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 contemplati
ng, 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.

  19.

  As she walked back toward the safety deposit vault, Jessica forced herself to avoid looking around in every direction. That would be a telltale sign of guilt, virtually a giveaway. She clutched the key discreetly in one hand.

  In her other hand she held her purse. As luck would have it, the purse she had brought to work today was larger than average, and she hadn’t loaded much into it. (Jessica had never been one of those women who carries around half of her possessions in a handbag.)

  Only a few more steps now. The entrance to the safety deposit box room was in the same general direction as the east exit. Therefore, there wouldn't be any real risk until the last moment—when she made the final turn into the room. If someone noticed her, it would result in questions. There would be no way for her to explain, really, why she was taking her purse into that room.

  She made the turn—took the plunge—and finally found herself inside the little room where the late Mrs. Crabtree’s large and mostly undocumented stash of wealth was stored. The interior of the room looked vaguely like a crypt or a morgue. On all four walls were customer safety deposit boxes, neatly slid into openings in the wall. In the center of the room was a long, floor-mounted table that customers used for reviewing the contents of their boxes.

  Home free!

  But no, that was a very temporary illusion—she wasn't home free yet. Oh, no—the real danger was only beginning.

  She happened to know that there was no camera in the safety deposit box room. (Otherwise, what she was about to do would have been out of the question.) This was for client confidentiality. Sometimes clients kept controversial items in their safety deposit boxes. Drugs, weaponry, and contraband like illegal forms of pornography were forbidden, of course. More than a few clients, however, used their safety deposit boxes to conceal wealth from spouses or other family members. The bank’s management did not want to get in the middle of legal disputes within client families. This was one more reason why there was no camera in this room.

  The tradeoff was the absence of the additional security that a camera could provide, of course. But this was an acceptable tradeoff: No safety deposit box could be opened without both the client key and the bank key, so the odds of unauthorized access to a safety deposit box were small.

  Unless a client makes a mistake like Ellen Frazier made today, Jessica thought: A one-in-a-million occurrence.

  So this was kind of like winning the lottery—if she could successfully claim her prize. And that was a big if.

  On the near wall there was a little cabinet where the bank keys for all the safety deposit boxes were kept. It took Jessica only a few seconds to locate the key to the Crabtree box. There were only a few simple steps to complete after that: First she had to remove the box from its slot and place it on the table. Then she had to insert and turn the two keys that opened the box.

  The box was so heavy that she had trouble manipulating it from its storage place and onto the table surface. It settled with a ponderous, metallic clunk that hinted of what might be inside. Her hands were trembling slightly as she held the keys. Both keys fit into their slots and turned flawlessly with one clean click each.

  She didn't bother to look behind her: There was no turning back at this point. Without further hesitation, Jessica opened the lid.

  Jessica stared in amazement at the contents of the box. There were perhaps twenty stacks of hundred dollar bills and piles of coins that looked very, very old.

  There was also a pile of tiny bars that Jessica immediately recognized as gold. Despite having worked in a bank for several years now, Jessica had never seen gold before.

  What was all of this worth? There was probably half a million dollars of wealth in here.

  How many years would it take her to save a tenth of the value of all this? How many years of working at the bank—or in some similar job? She might toil throughout her entire working life, until her youth and her opportunities were gone, and still never get there.

  Or—she could simply help herself to a little bit of what was here.

  She paused to consider: There was, really, a certain element of fairness involved here. All of this wealth belonged to Ellen Frazier now that Mrs. Crabtree was dead. But Ellen Frazier didn't even know how much was here.

  It wasn't as if she would be taking food out of the mouths of Ellen and her daughter (and, presumably, her husband and any other children there were). She would be taking only their surplus—only a percentage of their surplus, for that matter.

  That thought quickly dispelled any lingering guilt. (And there had never been any significant guilt, she had to admit to herself—not really.)

  There was, however, some last-minute fear regarding the risk involved. This would, without a doubt, be the riskiest thing she had ever done. The potential payoff was enormous—life-changing, in fact—but so was the downside. This wasn't like sleeping with a teacher for a higher grade when she was seventeen. If she were caught, she would be sent to prison.

  It was still possible for her to change her mind. She could close the safety deposit box, return it to its place in the wall, and go to lunch. Technically speaking, she had done nothing illegal so far—she hadn’t even done anything wrong.

  Whom was she kidding? There was no way she could let all of this easy wealth go. An opportunity like this would never come her way again.

  Jessica placed her purse on the table beside the open safety deposit box. She chose randomly from the contents: She grabbed a few bundles of money, a gold bar—and then a handful of coins. On further consideration, she put several of the coins back in the box, and took an extra gold bar instead. She knew nothing about old coins, and had no way to assess their value. The gold and the cash would be easier to convert into funds that could never be traced, by anyone, ever.

  Having stuffed as much into her purse as caution allowed, she lifted the safety deposit box and slid it back into the wall. She was gratified to feel that there was a barely noticeable difference in the weight of the box. Her purse hadn’t held as much as she had hoped. She would have to go out to her car and come back in order to maximize this opportunity, given the risk that she had already taken. If she was going to steal, she decided, she had might as well make it worth her while.

  Jessica made two trips to her car, each time filling her purse, and then methodically emptying its contents. Luckily, she had gone to the gym only last night, and she had forgotten to take her gym bag into her apartment when she returned home. Jessica hurriedly dumped the contents of the gym bag into the footwell of the front passenger seat—a still-damp towel, a set of workout clothes, and a water bottle. Then she filled the gym bag with far more useful items: gold, cash, and a handful of old coins.

  The combined haul from the two trips was all she dared take. But there was something amazing here: Even with all she had taken, Jessica had made only a modest dent in the total wealth that had been originally contained in Mrs. Crabtree’s safety deposit box. Her plan—hastily conceived and risky though it had been—was going to work.

  She took a few minutes to go back inside the bank and mark herself out for lunch. The branch maintained a whiteboard for this purpose, hung in an inconspicuous place behind the tellers’ counter. The whiteboard was laid out in a grid, with the name of each person and his or her status—“in” or “out”.

  Jessica noted that Tina was still marked “in”—which was unusual, because she could not see Tina anywhere. But if she couldn't see Tina, then that probably also meant that Tina couldn't see her. Tina might be in the women’s restroom, or maybe in one of the three priva
te meeting rooms that the bank used for sensitive client consultations.

  Who really cared where Tina was? Jessica wasn't going to allow that busybody to ruin her moment of triumph. All that money.

  Jessica walked out to her car in the heat of the summer afternoon. The cash and the gold and the coins were all in her car. She kept anticipating that someone—possibly Seth, or one of the two tellers who were presently in the bank, or maybe even Tina—would run out of the bank and stop her. Stop, thief!

  That was ridiculous, though. No one had seen her. She really was home-free now.

  Once in her car, Jessica felt almost intoxicated. It was both frightening and exhilarating to have this much wealth in her possession.

  She skipped lunch that day. Instead she drove to her apartment. There was no truly secure place to store so much wealth in her one-bedroom, economy accommodations, so she chose the best option available to her: She piled her newly acquired treasure at the back of the apartment’s narrow kitchen pantry. Then she covered it up with boxes of crackers, cereal, and brown bags that she’d saved from trips to the grocery.

  The hiding place would be completely inadequate in the event of an exhaustive search, of course. But her mind was already churning in regard to longer-term options. Jessica had no idea where one could sell gold. Heirloom pieces like gold earrings and necklaces could be converted to cash in any number of places, certainly; but what about gold bars? These would amount to serious money. Perhaps she needed to think about renting a safety deposit box of her own (at another bank, needless to say).

  Jessica drove back to the bank to finish out her workday. Ellen Frazier did stop back just before closing time, remembering the misplaced key. Jessica had the key ready for Ellen in her top desk drawer.

  “Thank you so much,” Ellen sighed. “Taylor—my daughter—did have a sprained ankle, as it turned out. She’ll be on crutches for a few weeks, that’s all. Say—I don’t have time to come in here tomorrow. How about if I stop back early next week to go through Mom’s safety deposit box? Would that be convenient?”