“I won’t do it again. Things just got a little out of control.”
“Do what you want.” She pushed the stool out and stood up. “I’m not your mother.”
“You’re right.” He tried to block her retreat. “But you’re my sister.” He held her by the shoulders. She wouldn’t meet his eyes. “Ellie. I said I’m sorry. I shouldn’t stay out so late. It isn’t right.”
She pulled away. “I, I have to get ready for school.”
“But we’ll do something later, okay? I don’t have class.”
“Carlos’s mother invited us to dinner.”
“Tonight?”
“Yeah.”
“Do you want to go? Or we can do something else. Maybe go out for sushi and see a movie.”
“I said I’d go. I didn’t know about you.”
“That’s fine,” Jeremy said. “We’ll have dinner at the Castillos’. Then you and I can go to a movie afterward. Okay?”
“Whatever.” She started toward the stairs. “Oh, and Dwight called.”
“Last night?”
“Last night. This morning. Basically every hour on the hour until I told him at three a.m. that I was disconnecting the phone. That I had to get some sleep.”
“I’m sorry, Ellie. Why didn’t you give him my cell number?”
She raised an eyebrow. “Did you really want me to do that?”
“No. Of course not. Thanks for covering for me.”
She shrugged.
“Did he say what he wanted?”
“I think he was just excited you weren’t home. He got that stupid tone in his voice. ‘Your brother still isn’t home?’” she mimicked.
“Where did you say I was?”
“Studying. I said you were studying.” She pushed her hair out of her eyes. “Isn’t that what you told me?”
Chapter 17
The auditorium that served as the firm’s training room was filled with young men in dry-cleaned white shirts and women in silky blouses or still wearing their suit jackets. All appeared to Jeremy to be alert and attentive, periodically calling out to ask the trainer a question. The room was carpeted and had acoustical wall coverings that made Jeremy feel as though he were sitting in a sound booth of a high-end audio store.
He tried to pay attention to the balding man with the wide butt who was up at the podium, but the voice was so monotonous Jeremy felt his eyelids close. He could see Marina’s face inches from his own. Her hair falling across his chest. He was certain he smelled her scent on his own skin, as though a cat had marked its territory.
He had gotten no sleep. After he’d arrived home from Marina’s and tried to right things with Elise, Jeremy had showered, dressed in a fresh shirt and suit, had a cup of coffee, and driven to PCM’s downtown headquarters.
The audit manager was discussing some recent changes in accounting practices and how the firm’s audit procedures would be affected. He’d been droning on for hours. The idea that people made a living auditing and reporting on the financial condition of businesses made no sense to him. Who really cared? And so what if they capitalized certain expenses instead of writing them off? Did anyone ever die from an improperly recorded leasehold improvement?
People were straightening up in their seats, as though they’d been called to attention. The wide-butted speaker was gone from the podium. Heads turned toward the back of the room. Bud McNally, wearing a white shirt, red tie, and no jacket, was bounding down the carpeted aisle, energy and purpose apparent in every step of his shiny alligator wingtips.
He detached the mike from its stand on the podium and turned toward his audience. “How y’all doing?”
“Fine.” “Great.”
Bud cupped his ear. “I can’t hear you.”
“Great,” everyone shouted.
“Better. Much better.” He smoothed the front of his shirt. The light bounced off his diamond pinkie ring. “What a great group. I feel like a gourd in a cotton field.”
Everyone laughed.
“I mean it. This is one of the smartest groups our firm has ever had the privilege to hire. Did you know that? You are the best and the brightest.” He made a pained face. “Oh come on, guys. Don’t look so coy. Give yourselves a hand.”
His claps were amplified by the mike and reverberated in the room over the general applause. “That’s better. Much better. Now, take a good look at each other. That’s right. Have a look at your neighbors. What do you see? Do you see a mover and shaker sitting next to you? A rainmaker?” He raised his voice. “A future partner with Piedmont Coleridge Miller? A future partner with one of the top regional firms in the country that’s on its way to becoming
the
top regional firm in the country?”
Everyone in the room broke into applause.
“Because that’s what we’re looking for at PCM. We’re not one of those dinosaur firms with old-fangled accountants who always have their heads buried in the books. We’re not content to say the past is good enough for us. Are we?”
“No,” everyone said.
“What was that?”
“No,” everyone shouted.
“We want the future, that’s what we want. And we’re on our way to getting it. This year PCM has moved from the twenty-seventh largest firm in the country to—” he stopped. Everyone in the room leaned in. Bud smiled. “To number twenty. That’s right, numero twenty.”
Everyone applauded and there were a couple of shrill whistles.
“Is that good enough for you?” He waited while people shifted in their seats. “Because it sure ain’t good enough for me. What’s to stop us from becoming number fifteen? Or number ten? Or even one of the Big Four?”
The room erupted in applause.
“We’re going up and we’re never coming down, do you hear me?”
“Yes,” the group said.
Bud cupped his ear.
“Yes,” everyone shouted.
He smiled with his lips closed. “That’s what I like to hear.”
People around Jeremy stood up and moved toward the door. Everyone eager to get back to their audit clients. The movers and shakers. Future partners. How easily they were inspired. He noticed Robbie at the front of the room. Their eyes met, but she turned away.
The elevator bank was filled with auditors on their way down and partners on their way up. He’d overheard someone say the partners had a lunch meeting at the Osprey Club. Probably to celebrate the firm’s ascension to number twenty while the slugs went back to work trying to make enough rain to get it into the top ten.
The offices would be practically deserted. Jeremy backed away from the elevators and out of sight until the congestion had cleared.
Then he slipped down the hallway where the partners’ offices were. There was no sign of anyone. The alcove outside his mother’s office was empty. He pushed open the door to her office, then quickly closed it behind him. It had been almost a month since she had been killed. He supposed the room would be empty, or perhaps filled with cartons with her personal belongings. No one had invited him to go through her things, so he assumed Dwight had already made his rounds.
But when Jeremy turned toward his mother’s desk, his breath caught in his chest. Everything was exactly as it had been the last time she was here. The plants that hung in front of the windows were green. Her credenza was covered with family photos, a porcelain teapot and a set of delicate matching teacups on a tray. No dust— someone had been caring for her things. There was a computer docking station on the desk. His mother, like his father, hadn’t kept a separate desktop computer at the office, just used a laptop and plugged it into docking stations at work and at home. Jeremy opened the desk drawers, then the credenza. There were books, magazines, and company annual reports. No work-related papers. But there wouldn’t have been. Someone would have cleared out any papers that belonged to the firm.
Jeremy picked up a stack of directories and brochures held together by a rubber band.
Top 100 Luxury Hotels, World Class Resorts, Small Luxury Hotels— International Series.
A yellow sticky note in her handwriting dropped out. “Not listed?” it said.
His attention was drawn to the framed photos on his mother’s credenza. Looking at them still hurt. Regardless of whether his or Elise’s baby teeth were missing, if they were wearing braces or had perfect smiles, one thing remained the same. The photos were always of the four of them. The complete family. That had always been the rule.
He picked up one, taken not long before he’d dropped out of school and left for Europe. His father, mother, and Elise huddled together, while Jeremy, arms folded across his chest, stood apart. His confusion and isolation were so apparent to him now, he flinched and put the photo back on the credenza.
Jeremy sat down in her leather chair. It was set too high for him and his knees touched the underside of the desk. A plaid woolen shawl was draped over the back of the chair. He ran it between his fingers. She’d bought it in Edinburgh, and another for Elise with a different pattern. It had been summer, but it was cold. They’d all been underdressed for the weather. “Are you sure you don’t want me to buy you a sweater, Jeremy?” she’d asked.
He’d been shivering in his shorts and tee shirt. But no, he didn’t want anything. He was fourteen. He didn’t like being treated like a child. He walked a distance ahead of his family, hoping no one would think he was with them.
He brought the shawl up to his nose; he could smell her perfume. He wished he had let her buy him a sweater, had let her put her arm around him for warmth.
He didn’t hear the door to his mother’s office open— only close.
Robbie stood with her back against it. What was she doing here? Was she going to call security? Tell the partners?
“Are you surprised?” she said.
“Surprised?”
“That everything’s the way she left it.”
“I guess.” Jeremy hung the shawl on the back of the chair. Robbie didn’t appear to be upset with him. He wondered at the change in her since yesterday. She acted almost human, but he remained on his guard.
Robbie picked up one of the teacups on the credenza. “You
know, I hate when the firm hires people who don’t have the skills or inclination to work, just because of some misguided sense of paternalism.”
Her tone was non confrontational, but Jeremy became defensive. “Is that why you think Mr. McNally hired me— because of my mom?”
“Seems like the logical explanation. I figured someone was putting pressure on you to get a job. Maybe your grandfather, maybe there’s some stipulation in the will.”
“And you decided I’m a slacker.”
“Sure looked that way.” She ran her finger around the rim of the teacup. “It really irritated me when you breezed into the conference room late, not interested in working. How should I have reacted? I mean, if Bud wants to play Good Samaritan, that’s his business, but I’m afraid I’m not very good with the pity stuff.”
“I’m sorry I was late, but I really didn’t want your pity. Civility would have been nice.”
“Maybe everyone else is bending over backward to be nice to you, Jeremy. And I know it’s a terrible thing to have lost your parents. But I hate to say this, your casual attitude made me ashamed for your mother.”
His face got hot. “I’m sorry I gave you that impression.” He stood up from his mother’s chair and took a couple of steps toward the door.
“And then I started thinking about it,” Robbie said. “And it didn’t make sense.”
“What didn’t make sense?”
“Your coming to work here. Your chattiness yesterday morning.”
Jeremy waited.
“So I realized you probably had other reasons for taking a job here.”
“And what are my reasons?”
She turned the teacup over in her hands. “She used to invite a few of us to her office for tea,” she said as though she hadn’t heard Jeremy’s question. “Three or four at a time, so it could be intimate. Usually just women. She felt we needed special attention to help break through the glass ceiling.”
“You didn’t answer me. What are my reasons?”
“Maybe you’re hoping to understand your mother a little better. Trying to make sense of what happened to her.” Robbie seemed to be studying the teacup, lost in her own thoughts. “You know, it’s funny,” she said. “There were people who said Rachel just liked being with the men, but it wasn’t true. Her partners were all men and most of her clients, so of course, it looked like she was always surrounded by men. I think there was a jealousy thing going on with her. So there always seemed to be rumors about her.”
“Like what? That she was involved with someone?”
“They were mean-spirited rumors. Rachel ignored them.”
“But there were people who you say were jealous of her. Who?”
“Hard to say where rumors start. Most of the women on the staff seemed to adore her. Rachel really wanted to help us. Not that she was a big-time feminist or anything. She believed individuals should rise on the basis of their own merit. But she also acknowledged there was still a good-ol’-boys network, and if you weren’t a member of their special club, you were at a disadvantage.”
“So she started her own special club? I guess you don’t consider that paternalistic.”
“It wasn’t a club.” Robbie put the cup down and leaned against the credenza. She was wearing a light gray suit with a skirt that showed her legs. She had muscular calves like a runner or dancer. “We’d talk about career issues. But she had no patience for whining or for anyone complaining the guys got privileges the women on the staff didn’t.” She began playing with an emerald ring on her finger. Her nails were short and even, not torn like Marina’s. “Rachel would
say, ‘If you want a better audit client or a promotion or more money, then go out and do such a spectacular job that you’re the one who’s calling the shots.’”
“Do you think my mom called the shots?”
“You mean with her partners?” She brought her fingertip up to her mouth. Her blue eyes were unusually large and had thick dark lashes. “Rachel was tremendously respected.”
“But was she in charge? I know Bud and Irv and my mom were the three senior partners, but did any of them have more clout than the others?” He was putting her on the spot with his direct questions. Trying to assess if she was his ally. “Like today,” he said. “Bud certainly acted like he’s the man. Was Irv even there?”
“Irv doesn’t go to staff meetings.”