When we reached the far back wall, Sue discreetly pulled out a keycard and slid it into a near-invisible slot in the oak panel. A small door slid open. I was beginning to think Mama knew what she was doing when she left her secrets in the hands of the Bank of the Wild West.
The door shut behind us and we stood inside a wood-paneled room, large enough to hold about ten humans with very little breathing room. It was otherwise bare of anything except for cameras on spidery black arms hanging from the corners and a flat screen glowing like a blue aquarium window. It was positioned near a steel door. Sue punched six numbers into a keypad and placed her hand flat on the screen. It scanned her whorls and lines in seconds. James Bond technology still amazed me, although even Disney World scanned thumbprints at the front gate these days to assure that customers weren’t sharing passes and avoiding Mickey’s ninety-dollar-a-day fee.
The lock on the door clicked, Sue braced her hips and pulled it open, and we walked right into the muzzle of a gun.
Instinctively, I jerked Sadie’s arm and yanked her behind me.
“Didn’t mean to scare ya,” the man drawled, as he replaced his gun into a holster. “It’s just procedure. Hi, Sue.”
The ID hanging off a cord around his neck read “Rex Ferebee, Security Systems Manager.” We now stood inside a glass box, the working digs of the overzealous Rex.
Through the glass, on three sides, we could see into a much larger room lined floor to ceiling with hundreds of metal boxes, each embossed with a large number and the same insignia of the Wild West bank that had been stamped on the Yellow Pages ad: two derringers crossed over each other to make an X. Pendant lights hung from the ceiling, giving the room a cozy, modern glow. A gleaming maple conference table swallowed most of the floor space, along with a dozen overstuffed leather chairs.
“How much is it to own a security box here?” I asked, thinking this room was like something out of a John Grisham novel. His characters often started in hell and wound up on a sunny beach, I reminded myself.
Sue’s smile was smug. “They cost a lot. But our customers can well afford it.”
Rex waved his badge over a sensor. The glass wall on the right slid open enough for us to walk through. Sue marched over to Box 1082 and stuck in her key. I recognized this routine from the movies. I pulled out my keychain, inserting Mama’s key into the other keyhole. We heard a loud click. Sue pulled the box easily from the slot, placing it on the table.
“Toodle-loo,” Sue said, and she and Rex exited the room. I imagined their leaving was just for show. They were probably pulling up chairs to TV monitors with enough angles to see up my nose.
“Hey, I’m Pee-wee Herman,” Sadie said, twirling her chair in circles.
“Wave to the cameras,” I replied, trying to match her light tone, as I slid open the top of the box.
And then I hesitated, the dread ramping up again, and Sadie stopped her game with the chair. Her head reached about halfway up the back of the plush burgundy leather; her feet dangled a good six inches off the floor. I would have laughed on any ordinary day.
“Maybe this is where professional basketball players keep their stuff,” she said. “Or billionaire giants. Are those newspaper clippings?”
I reluctantly turned back to the box. Not a million dollars in hot cash. Not a cousin of the Hope Diamond. Instead, an odd collection of old newspaper clippings cooked with age to a golden brown. None of them appeared to be from the same newspaper, or from the same town, for that matter.
They seemed perfectly benign, which is exactly why they scared me.
I glanced quickly through several of the headlines: GARDEN CLUB MEETS THURSDAY, JOE FREDERICKSON WINS DISTRICT ATTORNEY’S RACE, WOMAN FOUND DEAD IN LITTLE RIVER.
The box held no clue to Mama’s fascination with these particular articles or why she felt compelled to safeguard them. I set aside the rest of the clippings to look at later, and pulled out the last item in the box, a sealed plain white business envelope, thick with whatever was inside.
“Rip it open,” Sadie instructed. “And then let’s get out of here.”
I slid my nail under the flap and pulled out a wad of checks. Seven of them were made out to Ingrid Mitchell and the rest to Ingrid McCloud. My head was spinning. How many identities did my mother have? The checks were issued from the Shur Foundation, whatever the hell that was. They ran consecutively for five years starting in March of 1980, written on the first of each month for exactly the same amount of $1,500. I quickly multiplied: $90,000. Was it blackmail money? But she’d apparently never cashed them. Mama hid these checks for thirty-two years. Coincidentally, the same number of years I’d lived on this planet.
Sadie opened a large manila envelope helpfully provided by Sue Billington, gathered everything up, and placed it inside her backpack.
Then she pressed the red buzzer underneath the center of the table as we’d been instructed, so Sue and Rex could release us from this prison of sleeping secrets.
Blood pounded in my brain, drowning out every thought but one.
Mama was a liar.
After a quick lunch with Sadie at a new sushi joint, we parted ways so she could pick up Maddie. Nothing like eating questionable raw fish on a hot Texas day chased by an icy Dr Pepper.
Ten minutes later, I stood nervously at the front desk of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, a venerable 106-year-old institution in mortal combat with iPhones and iPads like every other metropolitan newspaper in America.
One foot in front of the other, I told myself. Don’t trip.
It was hard to say I trusted any newspaper completely, but I was counting on trusting one man inside this one with my life. He stepped off the elevator in a bright orange University of Illinois T-shirt stretched tight across his belly, barely topping sagging Dockers that displayed signs of the something Italian he’d had for lunch.
Lyle Matyasovsky, managing editor for print and new bullshit media (the “new media” was added in the publisher’s fit of modernization; Lyle added the “bullshit” in a fit of disgust), was old school all the way. I suspected that Lyle, nicknamed by reporters for his poofy Lovett-style hair and his poetic way with the language, bought his T-shirt wardrobe at the Dallas flea market.
He enjoyed letting Texans butcher his name before telling them that the first y and the v were “kind of” silent. His résumé included stints at The New York Times and the National Enquirer, where he made big bucks to write headlines like DAUGHTER FINDS MOMSICLE DEAD IN BASEMENT FREEZER AFTER 20 YEARS. No one knows why this Yankee chose to land here. It’s all part of the mystery of Lyle.
But the main thing: Lyle was an FOD. Friend of Daddy. Favors had been passed back and forth between the two for years. Daddy had insisted I carry Lyle’s card in my wallet since high school, along with W.A.’s and, of course, Victor’s. Like the spark that made the universe, no one knew how or why the relationship between Lyle and my Daddy began, just that it thrived.
“When you’re a McCloud in trouble, you need a friend in the press, a friend in the court, and a friend on a horse,” Daddy used to say.
Lyle, W.A., Wade.
As soon as I saw Lyle, my face crumpled. Lucky for me, Lyle was an old hand at face crumples, because 60 percent of newsroom journalists are currently on a cocktail of antidepressants.
He ushered me into the elevator to the third floor, past the prying eyes of reporters shocked and hopeful that the newspaper might be hiring again (but surely not someone who wore red boots), and into his office, located in a tiny space in the corner. Lyle required nothing fancy.
Although I’d met Lyle fifteen or so times in my life, I’d never been in here. The 1950s-era metal desk-at least the parts you could see under the reporter notebooks, memos, and press releases-looked like chickens had two-stepped across it every night for years. The fluorescent lights were off, and a small antique desk lamp on a corner table was on. A brown and pea-green easy chair of indeterminate age sat crunched into one corner, possibly containing the contagion that would take out the Star-Telegram before technology did.