“Well…” the manager hesitated. “I shouldn’t really say, but the tellers mentioned she often asked to use the side exit. The one that leads to the back alley by the loading docks. She said it was a shortcut to the pharmacy.”
The side exit. The back alley. Where the dumpsters are and where the delivery trucks park. No cameras, a dead end. Perfect.
“Can I…” my voice cracked. “Can I see the security footage? From last Thursday. It was the last time she was here.”
Mrs. Miller bit her lip.
“That’s against policy, Mr. Miller. Usually, we need a police request for that.”
“Please,” I said, using her first name. “I’m not going to the police. Not yet.”
“I just need to understand. For Eleanor’s sake. I’ll lose my mind if I don’t know.”
She was silent for a long minute. I could hear the hum of the computer. Finally, she nodded.
“Okay. Just this once. And just one clip.”
She turned the monitor toward me. Black and white footage flickered to life. Date: Last Thursday. 10:15 AM.
There she was. My Eleanor. In her old winter coat and her knitted hat. She moved slowly, favoring her bad hip. She went to the window. The teller handed her an envelope. A thick one.
Eleanor looked around, her eyes darting. She looked terrified. Hunted. She tucked the envelope into her bag and clutched it to her chest with both hands.
Then she didn’t head for the front. She went down the side hallway. To the service door. The camera switched. The hallway.
She pushed open the heavy metal door and disappeared into the snowy alleyway.
“That’s it?” I asked.
“Our cameras don’t cover the alley,” Mrs. Miller said. “That’s public property.”
I walked out of the bank, stumbling. The cold air hit my lungs like a physical blow. The back alley.
I walked around the building. A grim little spot, piled with dirty snow and trash cans. It smelled of exhaust and damp cardboard.
She came here with the money. Someone was waiting for her. I stood there, looking at the packed snow. The tracks were gone, but I could almost see the ghost of a car.
I needed eyes. Eyes that saw what the bank cameras missed. And I knew exactly who to call. I pulled out my phone and dialed a number I’d known since my days at the construction company.
“Bill?”
“Hey, Tom. How you holding up?”
“I need a favor. A big one. Are you at the shop?”
Bill, a retired sheriff’s deputy who now ran a private security firm, was the only man I knew who could get information from a stone. And he was the only one I could trust with this shame. Because if what I suspected was true, I was going to need more than just information.
I was going to need a plan. Bill’s office was in a small industrial park. It was a place where things got done quietly.
I made my way through the slush, leaning on my cane. The temperature was dropping fast. By evening, it would be below zero, and the air already felt brittle.
Bill’s shop was at the end of the row. He was waiting for me. The door buzzed open before I even reached for the handle.
“Get in here, Tom! You’re letting the heat out!” he barked from the back.
Inside, it was warm and smelled of coffee and gun oil. Bill was a big man, silver-haired, with a face like a topographical map. He sat behind a desk cluttered with monitors.
“Sit down, Tom.” He didn’t get up—his back was shot—but he offered a hand as solid as a vice. “You look like hell.”
I took off my hat and sat down. On the wall were his old commendations and a photo of us at a company picnic thirty years ago.
“I need a drink,” I said hoarsely.
Bill silently poured two fingers of rye into a glass. I drank it down. It burned, but it helped. Bill watched me, waiting. He knew how to let a man find his words. I reached into my pocket and pulled out the blue notebook.
I laid it on the desk.
“What’s this?” Bill squinted.
“This, Bill, is the price of my marriage. Take a look.”
He put on his glasses and opened the notebook. He flipped through the pages, his eyebrows climbing higher with every flip. He was doing the math in his head.
“Good lord, Tom,” he breathed. “How much is this? Two hundred thousand? Three?”
“It’s Eleanor,” I said, looking at the floor. “She was paying it out. Every Thursday. For forty years.”
“Eleanor?” Bill looked stunned. “Your Eleanor? She wouldn’t spend an extra nickel on a loaf of bread. Where was it going?”
“That’s what I need you to find out.”
I told him about the bank, the side door, and the alleyway.
“I need to know who was waiting for her, Bill. My gut is screaming. I’m thinking… a blackmailer? Or some kind of scam?”
Bill frowned and tapped his desk.
“Blackmail is usually a lump sum or a few big hits. Forty years? That’s a lifestyle. That’s a parasite.”
He turned to his computer.
“The alley behind the Credit Union on 5th Street?”
“Yeah.”
“The bank cameras don’t cover it, you’re right. But…” He grinned. “The hardware store across the street has a high-def 4K camera on their loading dock. It points right at those dumpsters.”
“And I happen to do their security.”
“Can you see it?” I leaned in.
“I can pull the cloud archive. Give me a minute.”
Bill’s fingers flew over the keyboard. The room was silent except for the clicking of the mouse. I watched the screen, my heart hammering against my ribs. I almost wanted him to find nothing. I almost wanted it to stay a mystery.
But the truth was already there, waiting in the pixels. Bill found the timestamp. Last Thursday. 10:18 AM.
The footage was crystal clear. The alley was empty. Then, a car pulled in. A black sedan. Dirty, but expensive. A BMW.
It parked near the dumpsters, tucked away from the street view. The engine stayed running. Exhaust puffed out in the cold air. At 10:20, the side door of the bank opened. Eleanor stepped out.
I recognized her immediately. The way she held her bag, the way she hurried. She walked straight to the car.
The back window rolled down. Just halfway. Eleanor reached into her bag and pulled out the white envelope.
She handed it through the window. A hand reached out to take it.
“Pause it! Zoom in!” I rasped.
Bill clicked and dragged. The image enlarged. It was grainy, but clear enough. The hand was a man’s. He was wearing a dark designer coat. On his ring finger was a gold signet ring. A heavy one with a black stone.
And on his wrist… the gold Rolex. My stomach did a slow, sickening roll.
I knew that hand. I’d seen it yesterday at the wake. I’d seen it a thousand times over the years. I’d held that hand when it was tiny and reaching for a baseball.
“Greg…” I whispered.
Bill froze. He slowly turned to look at me.
“Your son?”
“That’s his ring,” I said, my voice barely audible. “I gave it to him for his thirtieth birthday. And those are the watches he was bragging about.”
“Your son was shaking down his own mother?” Bill’s voice was hard, like granite.
“Tom, are you sure? Maybe he was just… picking it up for her? Helping her?”
“Helping her?” I gave a bitter laugh. “Watch the rest.”
Bill hit play. The hand snatched the envelope. Not a gentle take—a grab. Eleanor said something, reaching out as if to touch his face, to get a moment of his time.
But the window rolled up, cutting her off. The car gunned its engine, kicking up slush, and sped out of the alley. Eleanor was left standing there alone in the cold, looking at the empty space where her son had been.
She stood there for a long time. Maybe twenty seconds. Then she lowered her head and walked away.
The video ended. Bill closed the laptop with a sharp snap.
“That piece of work,” he muttered. The contempt in his voice was thick.
“His own mother. He had her on a payroll.”
I sat there, staring at the blank screen. Inside, everything felt dead. There was no more pain, no more doubt. Just a cold, hard resolve.
“Forty years, Bill!” I said, my voice steady and strange. “He started this in 1985.”
He was seventeen then. A senior in high school.
“Blackmail?” Bill asked. “What could he have had on her?”
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