Chapter 2
It was Friday, almost three o'clock, and Adele was looking forward to the weekend. It was one of those rare weekends where she didn't have to work on Saturday. She was humming to herself, making Mrs. MacGregor, the small brown-haired Scottish teller next to her, smile.
No one paid particular attention to the two lumbering ox-like men who walked into the bank just before closing. They were speaking with Audrey, the lovely brunette receptionist. Actually, Audrey was more than a receptionist. She opened the new accounts, straightened out problems customers had with existing accounts, helped with bank credit cards, doing any one of a number of things that elevated her somewhat about teller status. She had been a teller for ten years herself, before being moved into this position.
Audrey was close to forty, but looked more like twenty-five. Though she smoked a little too much, her teeth were always gleaming white. She had jet-black hair which she combed in various fluff styles. Today it had the winged look of Ann Landers. Her nose was short but broad, and she had full, tantalizing lips. Audrey always wore black sweater-blouses and tight slacks, both emphasizing the fact that though somewhat slim in the hips, she was most definitely a woman.
Behind Audrey's desk was another equally large desk where the new employee, Marsha, sat. Marsha was heavy, flat-faced, not at all pretty, though with what seemed to be a lively disposition. Marsha had large, ponderous breasts, somewhat flabby because she had not exercised in her youth and as a result had let her body run down. Marsha was also in her forties, married once, divorced once, and with no intention of marrying again. Marsha wore blowsy dresses to cover the fact that she was overweight, and when the two men came in and started talking to Audrey, she imperceptibly shook her head. One of the men, the chunkier of the two, with hair as dark as Marsha's and cheeks as round and as ruddy, walked over to the long counter behind which the tellers were standing. Adele was the first teller there, and Marsha nodded.
The other man, the meaner-looking one, seemingly thanked Audrey for answering whatever question he'd asked, then walked over to where his friend was standing. Marsha, meanwhile, closed her desk and walked to the door as if preparing to lock it and keep any other customers out.
Adele looked up at the ruddy-faced man. He smiled at her, then opened his jacket to show her the handle of the gun in his waistband, saying, "No noise, no pressing the silent alarms, no sudden movement. Just scoop all the fifties, twenties, and tens in your drawer into a sack and hand it to me. You have fifteen seconds."
Adele was terrified. She froze.
The second man, the mean-looking one, seeing she wasn't about to obey his buddy, shouted, "Freeze, everyone! This is a stickup."
The heavier man ran behind the counter and quickly scooped all the money in the various cash drawers into a sack, leaving the last bill in each slot in each drawer, knowing the removal of any of those bills would set off an alarm. He worked so quickly, he had all the money in the sack in less than thirty seconds.
The nasty-looking man grabbed Adele's arm, saying, "We're leaving now, and we're taking pretty girl here, with us. If the cops chase us, they're gonna have to stop to pick her up otta the gutter."
"Take the chubby one by the door, too," the heavy man insisted.
Before Adele realized what was happening, she was being tugged out of the bank, into the cool March air, and forced into a non-descript-looking black sedan. Marsha was sitting beside her, and the two men were in front, the chubby one driving, the mean-looking one in the passenger's seat, looking back and making sure the women behaved themselves, while checking to see if any police were following them.
It was obvious a lot of careful planning had gone into this. The moment they exited through the west side of the huge shopping center parking lot, the car turned right, drove one black, made a sharp left, then another right, moving along streets that had almost no traffic at all. Timing was important, because less than a minute after they traveled down on particular street, school let out for the day, and kids came rushing into the street, blocking it to any vehicular traffic for the next five minutes.
In that five minutes, the black sedan turned down a side street, then whipped into an open garage. An electronic garage door-closer brought the overhead door down behind them.
"You okay?" the mean-looking man said to Marsha.
He had a wrinkled, prune-face, with a sharply jutting nose, two brown little eyes, a small slash of a mouth, and a large chin. His hair was short and iron gray. Though somewhat flabby himself, he wasn't fat. The man with him had slick black hair, a pudgy face and a round body. Both men wore jeans and leather jackets.
"I'm fine, Charlie, the chubbier woman nodded, and Adele stared in amazement.
"You're part of all this!" she gasped.
"That's right, honey," Marsha nodded. "I'm part of all this. You behave, and by the time the weekend's over, you'll be home, safe and sound. Give us any trouble, and I promise you, we'll deep-six you before we take off."
"You'll be caught," Adele insisted as she slid out Marsha's side of the car at the insistence of the older woman.
"We have it all worked out, honey," Marsha insisted. "No one's going to catch us. like I said, keep calm, cool, and collected, and you won't get hurt. Go inside."
She gestured to the door in the garage that Charlie, the mean-faced man, had opened. As Adele entered the large barroom in the basement of the house, she heard Marsha say to the other man, "Manny, you count up what we've taken and let me know. Today was payday for a lot of guys, and we kept a huge supply of cash on hand. Those drawers should have yielded better than two hundred-thousand."
The barroom was musty, not having been used in some time. It was obvious the house had been rented by these people and the automatic garage door-opener installed for just this reason.
As she moved upstairs to the main floor, Adele saw all the windows were covered with steel shutters from the outside, as were the doors. The house looked abandoned. Even the garage entrance was on a deserted street, and none of the neighbors would have seen them come in.
Though the electricity was on in the house, because of all the shutters no lights would be seen outside. Adele realized there was no way she would be able to break out, and she felt terrified.
She was shivering, partly from her experience, but partly from the chill in the March air. If she didn't warm up quickly, she might catch a cold. Marsha, seeing her shiver, decided it might be best for Adele to take a hot shower.