Black Cat Weekly #54

Chapter 8

by“Know All Men by These Presents.” The words blazed out in large English typeface across the top of Miranda’s Phase Three. Phase Three was a banking form called a “Discharge of Mortgage.” It had been easier than working the computer in Phase Two and far easier than stealing the loan file in Phase One. Only Phase Four remained.

Miranda was robbing her own bank. Moreover, she was robbing it of her own mortgage loan. It was really, she thought, quite an appropriate cap to a twenty-five-year career as an escrow clerk.

After twenty-five years of escrow, school taxes, property taxes, fire, life, and accident insurance, and all the headaches that went with them, she’d decided the bank owed her the amount of the loan and more. So she’d set about stealing it. It wasn’t a large amount in terms of what the bank had, but, to her, getting out from under the loan meant freedom and the chance to build a nest egg for her retirement, something the bank’s niggardly pension plan certainly wasn’t going to do.

It had been almost ridiculously easy. She’d plotted out the four phases; none of them presented a problem as long as her nerves held. So far, they had, and the worst was now behind her.

In Phase One, she’d stolen the actual loan file. She had smiled at that smarmy new management trainee at his platform desk outside the vault as she passed. (With all her service, she still had to use a half-desk unit behind the teller counter in plain sight of all the customers.) Inside the vault, she’d simply pulled her loan file from the filing cabinet along with a half dozen others that needed work. No one ever questioned an escrow clerk taking loan files. She returned the other six, but hers went home with her that night, hidden in her knitting bag. It had burned beautifully in the small fireplace in the living room of her soon-to-be-free-and-clear home. She’d smiled dreamily as the mortgage, bond, title search, abstract, four years of tax and payment records, and hated escrow turned to ash and fled up the chimney.

Phase Two was harder. Miranda was not a computer person. If it hadn’t been for that nice Shirley from EDP and the computer training Miranda had coaxed her into giving, the whole caper would have been impossible. (Miranda liked to think of it as a caper. It made her feel wicked.) What eventually happened was curious, complex, and almost certainly guaranteed to be untraceable. All record of Miranda’s loan vanished. To satisfy the mechanical bookkeeper, the amount of her loan reappeared in odd sums of between ten and thirty dollars in almost every loan balance the bank held. Naturally—and, she thought, fittingly—the explanation was “miscellaneous escrow charges.”

And now she’d completed Phase Three. Having eradicated the physical and electronic evidence of her mortgage, she had to get rid of the legal records. Like all mortgages, her loan had been recorded at the county courthouse on the other side of town. She had needed only the Assistant Manager’s signature and a notarization on the Discharge of Mortgage form.

She had put it in a stack of eight other forms, those of people legitimately paying off their mortgages, and had carried the stack to the Assistant Manager’s office. She had been pleased and proud that her hands didn’t shake at all.

The Assistant Manager had been a piece of cake. A blond, blown-dry young man with many affectations yet few talents in the financial area, he signed the forms without reading them.

She walked her stack of Mortgage Discharges through the rest of their process. She personally affixed the company seal to them and took them to the blowsy hussy of a receptionist to be notarized. There, again, she smiled to see that the forms went totally unread.

She was waiting with her papers when Bob, the retired Office Manager, arrived. Bob came by twice a week out of habit to run small errands—among them, satisfying mortgages like these at the courthouse. Almost giddy, Miranda shared a cup of coffee with him and reminisced about the old days before seeing him on his way.

Except for Phase Four, she was home free. And Phase Four was the easiest of the lot. It consisted solely of a three-by-five salmon-colored index card that rested in a file box not six feet from her desk. It detailed her mortgage, listing type, location, amount, and, of course, borrower’s name. It was the last existing evidence that she’d ever had a loan. And it would be flushed away in tiny pieces in the ladies’ lounge not five minutes after she got back to her desk.

Satisfied, happy, smiling, Miranda returned to her work area. As she entered the bank lobby, she saw the group of people clustered around her desk. Terror clawed at her suddenly. How, she wondered. How could they have known? And so quickly. She’d done it all so right. Her pulse hammered at her temples. Her ears roared. Like an automaton, she approached the group, wondering if her legs would give out.

Then Miranda saw their faces. They were smiling at her. It puzzled her. As a discovered embezzler, smiles were the last thing she expected.

She began to pick out the faces. None of them belonged to Security. There was young Haber, the polite boy from Marketing, and Marge Wilson, the woman who had the affairs, from Public Relations. There was her boss’s boss, Jack Leary, the head of lending operations—and, oh heaven, there was Mr. Cassidy, the president himself. He was coming toward her, his hand outstretched and his face wreathed in the Irish grin that always made Miranda’s heart flutter.

The others followed in his wake. Some she didn’t know carried cameras and notepads.

As Mr. Cassidy took her hand, flashbulbs went off and some of the younger personnel clapped their hands and cheered. Cassidy enfolded Miranda’s hand in both of his and widened his grin. From somewhere someone gave her a bunch of roses. Miranda took them absently and cradled them in her free arm.

She smiled tentatively and realized that Mr. Cassidy was speaking to her.

“At first I thought this contest was just the usual marketing hog-wash, but when I found out who had won, I realized what a great idea it was. Congratulations, Miranda!”

Contest? Miranda wracked her brain. She’d concentrated most of her time lately on her caper and her normal work. Had there been something about a contest?

Cassidy straightened and his face became benignly grave. “Miranda, it is my very great pleasure to give you an award you have deserved for a long, long time. I hereby formally declare you our Employee of the Year.” His grin began to reappear. “As such, Miranda, you will be entitled to—”

Half stunned, Miranda barely heard him go on. Employee of the Year! It was hard not to giggle. What a perfect note on which to end her caper. She tried to focus on what Cassidy was saying.

“There will be a formal dinner with myself and, regrettably, the other members of the board. You’ll enjoy two football and two baseball games as our guest at the bank’s special glass booth at the stadium. You’ll be featured all year in our advertising campaign—that will involve some first-class travel I’m sure you’ll enjoy. And, finally, the bank will totally forgive any outstanding loans you may have on the books.”

Miranda felt the blood drain from her face.

“I beg your pardon, Mr. Cassidy?” she whispered.

Cassidy beamed. “I know, Miranda. It’s a lot to take in at once. Quite simply, the bank will forgive your debts outstanding—we’ll pay off all your loans. Whatever you have—an auto loan, a personal loan, a mortgage, anything at all—it will be gone as soon as we make the entries and get the bookkeeping done. Miranda, you’re debt-free!”

Miranda couldn’t help herself. She shot a glance at the card file that held Phase Four. Cassidy followed her eyes. He laughed. “Right! Let’s do it now. One of you, pull Miranda’s loan card for us.”

Mary Miller from Public Relations snapped a picture of Miranda and Cassidy just minutes later. She felt the snapshot captured the essence of both the moment and the event. It showed Cassidy presenting Miranda with the card detailing her mortgage loan. The Employee of the Year was so overcome with emotion, she had burst into tears.