Short Story: The Ring

Kelly jockeyed open the front door of Roxy’s Antique Shoppe while carrying a tray of Starbuck’s coffee. Her purse, in that inopportune moment, slipped off her shoulder. The tray teetered in her arms dangerously. Casey in one swift move got the door for her and steadied the tray. A wave of relief washed over her and she whispered, “Thanks.” Casey stared at her hair for a moment then gestured his head towards Lucky’s office.

Kelly’s insides caved. The line at Starbucks crawled with sexy young mothers and their spoiled toddlers. She had picked up coffee to celebrate her accomplishment; six months sober. Last night she was awarded a medallion. Not that Casey or Lucky knew she was in AA, but still, it was a way to mark the occasion. Now she was late and pissed off.

She let out a long sigh, so much for starting a new leaf. She must be jinxed she thought because something happened everyday that messed with time. Her toilet would overflow or the bus broke down and she had to wait for a new bus. When she was irritated she itched her scalp raw. In high school she was irritated a lot. In her mother’s bathroom she found an escape; pain meds. Oxy was her favorite. That was a lifetime ago. True enough as her sponsor warned, ‘The desire for a quick one never goes away.’

Lucky came out of his office and stopped short when he saw Kelly. “Oh, Jesus,” He said holding his chest taking two short gasps.

Kelly gruffly held the cup out to him, “Here, it’s a Grande Mocha.”

“Uh, thanks,” Lucky said carefully accepting the cup. “Your hair looks…different.” Lucky faced Casey for support.

“Yeah, it looks sharp. What color are you calling it?” Casey shot Lucky a tight lipped glance.

“Its Vin Rose with Eggplant tips,” Kelly said and scratched her scalp by her ear.

“Oh, yes, very nice. Roxy had a troll doll with that color.” Lucky took a sip of his coffee, ”Oh, this is good.”

Kelly noticed a stack of metal boxes on the counter. “What are those?” She asked.

“Look what I picked up this morning.” Lucky held out his free arm like a circus ringmaster and gestured towards the boxes.

Each box was rectangular with two combination dials on the front. Kelly instantly noted that the numbers ran sequentially from 10-50. “Are those old Safe Deposit boxes?” Kelly asked with a snort.

Casey set the tray of coffee on the counter and freed his Grande black. He said dryly, “Yeah, Lucky got them at the Seattle Police Auction this morning at 6 AM. Remember?”

Kelly rubbed her forehead with her hand. “You said only if I wanted to, right? If I got up in time.”

Lucky nodded.

“Well, I over slept,” Kelly said biting her lips. She wished she could sleep at night. It was hot in her studio apartment and opening a window in her neighborhood was not an option. Nights were the hardest. It was when she wanted to get high more than anything. Take a tab of oxy, smoke a pack of Marlboro’s and drink wine. In that blurry haze she could forget how much she hated herself and feel peace.

When she first sobered up she watched old movies from the 30’s and 40’s on YouTube. She fell in love with Jimmy Cagney and Humphrey Bogart. Those guys looked like real people, like they knew what life was all about. Not like the permanently perfect pretty faces of today. While she watched she painted her toes, gave herself facials and sometimes she dyed her hair. Anything was better than staring at the ceiling.

Casey held her Grande Americano in front of her. “Hey sleepy.” Kelly took the cup and sipped.

“Come on, get to it,” Lucky said and circled his arm in the direction of the boxes.

“Is this legal?” Kelly examined the stack.

“The cops sold them to me. They don’t want to spend the time or money to open them. So, yeah legal,” Lucky said in his get down to business voice.

Kelly took her coffee over to her desk that sat outside the office Lucky shared with his wife. Roxy passed away last year of breast cancer. After her death every middle aged divorced woman within twenty miles came wooing Lucky. They put on make up and wore new shoes. Some offered him casseroles or homemade muffins. Occasionally they purchased an antique broach or bracelet while in the shop. Lucky never took the bait. Kelly suspected he was still in love with Roxy and always would be. He was that kind of a guy.

After Roxy died, Lucky expanded the business to include an EBay page. His office became a complete disaster with all the mail orders. Boxes with papers exploding out of files were in every available space. But the centerpiece of his office was his vintage roll top desk, just like something out of a 1930’s movie. Whenever Kelly looked at it she imagined Humphrey Bogart smoking non-filtered cigarettes and drinking bourbon in a small glass.

By contrast, her desk was always immaculate. It was a piece of junk Lucky got from a fire sale. It was probably left over from one of the loan companies that went belly up during the bank crisis. She scrubbed that desk until it shined.

She figured that’s why Lucky put up with her lateness. She excelled in turning chaos into order. Kelly set her keys in the little crystal ashtray that lived on the top right hand corner of her desk. Opened up the lower left hand drawer and put her purse inside. The Lysol wipes were brought out and she cleaned off the arms of her chair.

While she finished wiping her hands Casey said, “Now that you’re finished with your morning routine, can we get started?”

Casey was a good guy. They never talked about it, but she could tell he was in AA, too. He was about 40 had long black hair in a ponytail and tattoos up and down his arms. Kelly sensed he worked just as hard as she did at staying sober. She often wondered how long he’s been sober.

“What do we do with them?” Kelly asked.

“Open them of course,” Lucky said his eyes sparkling. “That’s why I got them so cheap, they are too old to find any paperwork. All we have to do is work the combination dials.”

Kelly groaned. She was going to have to manage the combinations and lock number. She curled her lips and rested her right hip onto her desk. At a total of forty safe deposit boxes, it wasn’t insurmountable just a ton of fiddle work. “What do you think you’ll find Lucky, a stash of diamonds stolen by the Nazis?” Kelly asked.

“Maybe kid, maybe,” Lucky said and winked.

Kelly picked up a pad of paper and her favorite mechanical pencil and began the process of decoding the locks. Starting with box 10, she set both dials at the first position and tried the button. Then moved the second dial keeping the first dial at its location. This was her process until the button clicked and the box opened. She made note of the combination that worked on her spreadsheet. Her head ached. She thought no wonder the police were so agreeable to give up these boxes. It was grueling.

After two hours she had opened two boxes and released the metal containers within. One held several clippings from an old Seattle newspaper. It was an expose on the building of the Fifth Avenue Street Bridge. The articles insinuated that there was massive corruption and mishandling of public funds to build the bridge. There were also a bundle of private letters and an old deed to a section of land on Harbor Island dated 1974. Kelly handed it to Lucky. “Not exactly diamonds,” she muttered.

Lucky glanced through the articles, put his hand over his mouth and said, “Oh, no! Government corruption. How can that be?” Lucky and Casey shared a wicked laugh.

Casey suggested that the deed might be of interest for the Historical Society. Lucky agreed and placed it in one of the many files in his office.

The next box she opened held what was closer to Lucky’s fantasies. On the top there was a packet of letters wrapped with a blue ribbon. Under the letters were two expired passports of a husband and wife. Kelly was curious about the letters and set them aside for later. Her eyes were drawn to a bundle wrapped inside a lace hanky. Carefully held together were several necklaces and two rings. The rings were simple gold bands. Kelly figured they were a pair of wedding rings. Of the necklaces one had a red center stone with crystals surrounding it, one was a strand of pearls and one was a string of gold fans. Each fan had a different colored stone embedded at the handle. It had an oriental theme as the fans were etched with flowers. It occurred to Kelly she was looking at the last precious items from a marriage. What happened to the couple that they didn’t retrieve these things? A sadness she never experienced before gripped her. These beloved items contradicted dramatically to her parent’s brief and unhappy marriage. She was certain they never saved anything from that disaster, including her.

Kelly’s neck and back ached from twisting this way and that to decipher each code. She stretched out and sipped from her Americano. If the rest of these boxes were like that last one, this would be harder than she ever imagined. She began the process of slowly decoding the third box. After a few turns of the dials, the box clicked open.

“That was fast,” Casey said. “Safecracker might be in your future.”

“Oh, ha-ha,” Kelly said and pulled the long metal box out of it’s sleeve. “This one is heavy.” She carried it to the counter and set it down. There was a strange feeling she got from this one. It felt different to her touch. She shook it off.

The metal clasp was rusty and difficult to lift. Casey told her not to bend it and found out a piece of sandpaper. He carefully scraped away the rust. Orange dust fell and covered a small corner of the glass counter. “Strange.” Casey said more to himself. He touched his finger to the dust and rubbed his thumb and forefinger together. “Huh,” He muttered.

Kelly checked the clasp and it looked like the sanding had helped. She carefully lifted the clasp and opened the top. What was inside caught Kelly’s breath. For a moment both she and Casey stared at the contents. It was the most organized box she had ever seen. It was filed with white boxes of differing shapes and sizes perfectly placed to fit inside the box. It looked like a jigsaw puzzle. Kelly and Casey exchanged looks and Kelly shrugged her shoulders and picked up the first box.

The first box was one of the smaller boxes about 2 x 3. Inside were three bobby pins sitting atop cotton stuffing as if the bobby pins were a piece of fine jewelry. The bobby pins had a few blonde hairs attached. Kelly closed the box and picked up another. Casey had already opened up one of the flat 4 x 6 boxes. He was flipping through a series of Polaroid photographs. It looked like a camping trip. The girl had long dark wavy hair and stood in front of an orange VW bus.

Casey said. “There is something weird about this.”

Kelly looked up. Casey set down the box with the photos and picked up another one of similar size. It too had pictures from a camping vacation. The same VW bus was in the background but a different girl was in the shot. This girl had red hair. Although the shot was blurry Kelly could make out a toothy grimace on the girl. Kelly thought maybe the girl was laughing so hard she couldn’t sit still.

“Oh god, look at that old van. These girls look like, oh what’s that word? Hippies! That’s it.” Kelly said and studied the pictures closely.

“God, you are so young,” Casey said. “Hippies were in the 60’s. That’s a 1972 VW Bus. And pretty beat up at that.” Casey checked the photograph.

Kelly rolled her eyes in response. She picked up one of the same shaped boxes. Again it was a selection of photos with a girl, the VW bus and beautiful mountain scenery. In this one the girl wasn’t smiling. Kelly studied the photograph and it looked like the girl was frightened. Kelly went back to study the other two girls. The dark haired girl at first glance Kelly thought the picture was snapped when she was posing, waiting to be told when to smile. When Kelly examined the photo she could see the girl’s eyes were red from crying. Kelly turned to the photo of the redhead. The redheaded girl looked unhinged with her wide grin.

Kelly and Casey exchanged glances. “What is this?” Kelly asked.

Casey picked up another photo box. Kelly was done looking at strange photos of old camping trips. She pulled out a ring box. She opened it. For a moment she didn’t know what she was seeing. Fear raced through her. Her face contorted. She dropped the box. She let out a wail. She fell against her desk.

Casey picked up the box and opened it and involuntarily shook. “Don’t touch anything else.” Casey shouted. Lucky came out from his office but Casey stopped him. “Call the police.”

Lucky looked confused. Casey showed him the ring box. Lucky called the police station once he saw what was in the ring box.

It was an engagement ring still attached to a decayed finger.

When the police arrived, Kelly was sitting outside the back door of Roxy’s Shoppe. There were two metal folding chairs that Lucky and Casey would sit to take smoke breaks. Kelly wanted to drink; a gin and tonic, or a margarita, or a bottle of wine and a handful of oxy, anything to stop the feeling of dread.

Casey exited the shop and sat next to her. He puled out his cigarettes and offered her one. She took it. He flipped his Zippo and both took deep drags.

“You okay?” Casey asked.

Kelly shrugged. “Do you think the girls in the photographs are…were killed?” Kelly asked.

Casey nodded. Kelly closed her eyes as if to blot out the thought.

“Were there any more…,” Kelly’s throat closed up.

Casey shrugged, “The police took the boxes. They’ll examine it in the Lab. Maybe one of the girl’s family still lives in the area and can identify her by the photographs.”

“I want a drink like you can’t believe.” Kelly said. She took a long drag on the cigarette. She pulled out her 6-month sobriety medallion from AA. She handed it to Casey.

Casey held it for a minute and smiled slightly. “8 years for me. Lucky ‘s going on 23.”

Something softened in Kelly when she heard Casey. “That’s explains a lot.” she said.

They heard Lucky and the police finish up. Lucky came out the door and locked it. “What a find, huh?” Lucky said and looked at Kelly. “You okay there, kid?”

Kelly nodded.

Casey said, “Let’s get out of here, huh?”

Lucky rubbed his hands together and said, “ Starbuck’s on me this time!”