they bill every year and she got a bill not too long ago.”
“Did she go to the box often?”
“I don’t know. I never asked her about it.” She took out a cigarette and I gave her a light. “That would be the obvious place, wouldn’t it? If she had something to hide—”
“Of course,” I said.
She took a deep breath. “But it doesn’t do us any good. Now that Jackie’s dead, we can’t get to the box. Unless, if we could tell them she was dead—”
“You’d still need a court order.”
“Then we’re stuck.”
I stood up, walked over to the window. “They don’t know Jackie is dead—”
“So?”
“Do you know how she signs her name?”
“Yes, but—”
“Could you fake her signature? After all, you have her keys. One of them may be the key for the safety-deposit box.”
She hurried into the bedroom, came out again with her purse in tow. It was a large black bag. She dipped into it and came out with Jackie’s key-wallet. She sat down on the couch and inspected the keys one by one.
“Let’s see—this is to the apartment, and this is the outer door and…Does this look right?”
It was a large brass key with a number on it. “That’s the key,” I said. “And that would be the box number. Two-zero-four-three. Now we need something with her signature on it.”
“I can forge her signature,” Jill said, “and she can—I’m sorry.”
“What?”
“I was going to say, she can forge mine. Wrong tense.” Again she repressed tears, sighed, and continued. “We used to practice copying each other’s signatures when we were kids. It’s been a long time, but I think I can come fairly close. Not exact, though. Do you think I can get away with it?”
I nodded. I did think so. The signature they require with each visit to a safe-deposit vault is more a matter of form than anything else. Not many people sign their name identically every time.
“There are little things,” I said. “You won’t know your way around. Won’t know which is your box or where you’re supposed to take it. Jackie might even have known the guards well enough to have exchanged a few words.”
“I think I can manage it.”
“Are you sure?”
She looked at me bravely. “Do we have a choice, Ed?”
We went inside together. It wasn’t immediately apparent where they kept the safe-deposit vault, but it would have been somewhat out of character if we had wandered around asking directions. Then I saw a sign at the head of a staircase and nudged Jill. We walked down the stairs together, broke an electric eye beam, went up to a long desk. A little old man looked up at us over the desk and smiled at Jill.
“Miss, uh—”
“Baron. Jacqueline Baron.”
“Yes,” he said. She told him the number of the box. He got a card from a drawer, wrote the time and date on it, and gave it to her. I held my breath while Jill signed her sister’s name. He glanced at the signature, set the card aside, walked around the desk, and unlocked a swinging iron gate. Jill turned, smiled sweetly, and entered the restricted area.
I watched her go into the vault room and hand her keys to the guard. He fitted his key into the double lock, then used her key. He withdrew the box and pointed toward a row of cubbyholes. She went into one of them and closed the door.
THE DOOR OF THE CUBBYHOLE OPENED. Jill came out with her purse over her arm and the metal box in one hand. The guard hurried back with her and locked the box away, going through the two-key ritual a second time. He led her to the gate, unlocked it, stood aside to let her pass. She winked quickly at me and I took her arm. We climbed the stairs, broke the electric eye beam once more.
On the street she said, “I have to believe it now. Jackie was a blackmailer!”
“What did you find?”
“I’ll show you. But not here. Can we go someplace?”
We walked over to Sixth Avenue and up a few blocks. There was a small, run-down tavern at the corner, with one man behind the bar and two drunks in front of it. Otherwise the place was empty. We took a booth in the back and sat together, facing the door.
I pointed to her purse. “Well, what did you find?”
She reached into the purse and pulled out a long white envelope, a short fat manila envelope, and a thick roll of bills.