"So where'd the elevators disappear to?"
"The public elevators stop at lobby level. Clearly, Beck doesn't want anyone to have access to his offices from down here," she said. "One elevator does a short loop between the parking garage and the lobby. Anybody who needs to reach floors two, three, or four has to exit into the lobby and cross to the public elevators. That way, Willie can intercept them and quiz them. You better have a pretty good reason for being in the building or you're out of luck. If you need to take an elevator down this far, you have to have a key. There isn't any button you can push."
"But if the service elevator originates down here, can't someone hop on down here and bypass Willard altogether?" I asked. "I mean, even with the cameras rolling he can't be watching all ten monitors at once."
"In theory, you're right, but it'd be tricky. For one thing, all these passageways are kept locked -"
"Which didn't keep us out."
"And for another," she said, plowing right on, "there's a security code for every floor. You could risk the service elevator – assuming Willie didn't spot you in the corridor down here – but you couldn't get off unless you knew the code for the alarm panel on any given floor. Mess up the numbers and all hell breaks loose."
"Which means what to us, exactly?"
"Which means we better impose on Willie's good nature and retrieve your purse before the end of his shift."
Chapter 21
We retraced our steps, emerging from the service corridor in the parking garage near Macy's. We crossed to the escalator and went up one level to the esplanade. When we reached the front entrance to the Beckwith Building, Reba pushed the door and discovered that it was locked. She cupped her hands to the plate glass. "Hey, Willie. Over here."
She tapped on the glass to get the security guard's attention. The minute he looked up, she gave him an enthusiastic wave and pantomimed his unlocking of the door. Willard shook her off, like a pitcher shaking off a sign. Reba motioned him over with an exaggerated rolling of her arm. He stared at her, unmoved, and she clasped her hands together earnestly as though in prayer. Reluctantly he left his perch at the desk and crossed to the door, where he said, "Building's closed!" from his side of the glass.
"Come onnn. Open up," she said.
He considered the request, his ambivalence clearly evident.
She put her mouth against the glass and made a big sucky kiss. She gave him the big eyes and produced the dimples for effect. "Please, please, please?"
He wasn't happy, but he did pick up the keys attached to the chain on his belt. He unlocked the door and opened it a cautious three inches. "What do you want? I can't be doing this unless you're one of the tenants."
"I know, but Kinsey left her bag upstairs and she needs her car keys and wallet."
Unimpressed, Willard flicked a look at me. "She can come back on Monday. Building opens at seven."
"How's she going to do that? Without her car keys, she can't even drive. I had to pick her up at her house and bring her over here myself. This is her handbag, Will. Do you know what it's like when a woman's separated from her purse? She's going berserk. She's a private detective. She has her license in there. Plus her address book, makeup, credit cards, checkbook, every nickel she owns. Even her birth control pills. She gets pregnant, the burden's on you, so get ready to raise a kid."
"Okay, okay. Tell me where it is and I'll bring it down to her."
"She doesn't know where it is. That's the point. All she knows is she had it when we went up with Marty last night. Now it's gone and that's the only place she went. It has to be there somewhere. Come on. Be a peach. It won't take five minutes and we'll be out of your hair."
"Can't. The alarm system's on."
"Marty gave me the code. Honest. He said it's fine with him as long as we cleared it with you first."
The long-suffering Willard opened the door and allowed us in. I thought he'd insist on coming upstairs with us, but he was serious about his monitoring duties and didn't want to leave his post. Reba and I took one of the two public elevators, which made the four-floor journey at an agonizingly slow pace.
"You sure you know the code?" I asked.
"I watched Marty do it. Same code we had before when I was working for Beck."
"How come he's such a nut about security and so careless about his codes? Sounds like anybody who ever worked for him could get in."
Reba waved the observation away. "We used to change 'em all the time – once a month – but with twenty-five employees, somebody was always messing up. The alarm would go off three and four times a week. The cops came out so many times, they started charging fifty bucks a pop."
The doors slid open and Reba hit the Stop Run button while she stepped out of the elevator. I leaned around and watched as she punched in the seven-digit code: 4-19-1949. "Beck's birthday," she said. "For a while he used Tracy's, but he was the one who kept forgetting that date so he switched to his own."
The status light on the keypad shifted from red to green. She left the elevator on Stop Run, awaiting our return. I followed her into the reception area.
The offices were dead quiet. There were numerous lights on, which oddly contributed to the overall feeling of abandonment. "Bart and Bret, the cleaning twins, were in last night. Check the vacuum cleaner tracks. We better hope whoever comes in here first thing Monday morning doesn't wonder about our footprints running up and down the halls."
"How do you know the vacuuming was done by Bart and Bret and not the guys with the cleaning cart?"
"I'm so glad you asked. Because I'll tell you why. They weren't real cleaning guys, which is something I figured out in the dead of night. Know what bugged me about them?" She paused for effect. "Wrong shoes. What guy mops the floors wearing four-hundred-dollar shiny Italian loafers?"
"You are Sherlock Holmes."
"You're damn straight. You grab your shoulder bag while I satisfy my curiosity. This shouldn't take long."
I made a beeline for the roof, heading down the corridor closest to the stairs. Given Beck's edict about clean surfaces, every desk I spotted en route looked as barren and untouched as an ad for office furniture. I took the steps two at a time and pushed through the big glass door that opened onto the roof. The morning sky was immense, the perfect shade of blue. I slowed and crossed to the parapet, drawn by a desire to see downtown Santa Teresa from this vantage point. The sun had warmed the air in the rooftop garden, coaxing fragrance from the flowering shrubs while a light breeze rustled through the foliage. In the distance, light spilled like pancake syrup across the mountain peaks. I leaned over and looked at the street, which was largely empty at this hour. I tilted my face to the light and took a deep breath before I righted myself and turned back to the task at hand. I retrieved my bag from behind the big potted ficus tree and went downstairs. Reba had been right about my birth control pills. I pulled out my packet and popped two like after-dinner mints.
When I got downstairs, she'd taken out a tape measure and was busy checking the length and breadth of the corridor, one foot on the metal ribbon while she extended the tape to the full. She released the button and I could hear the metal tape sing as she brought it zinging back to her hand. The tip-end whipped against her finger and dealt her a nasty blow. "Shit. Son of a bitch!" She sucked on her knuckle.
"You need a medic?"
"Look at that. I'm bleeding to death."
The nick on her index finger was a quarter of an inch long and she studied it with a frown. "Anyway, bet you dollars to donuts the friggin' room is right there. Press your ear to the wall and see if you can hear anything. Minute ago I heard a humming. Like machinery."
"Reba, that's the elevator shaft. You probably caught the sound of the service elevator going down."