Woman in Black (11 page)

He shrugged, spreading his fat-fingered hands in a helpless gesture. “It was an accident. What more is there to say?”

As she leaned toward him, she had the small satisfaction of watching him shrink from her. “The fire might have been an accident, but my daughter's death was not.
You
are responsible, Perez.” She jabbed a finger in his direction. “You and the Señora, whose praises you are so quick to sing. You had us penned in like cattle, with no regard for our welfare. No, even cattle are treated more humanely.”

He sighed heavily, reaching into his pocket for a handkerchief with which to mop his perspiring brow. “Whatever mistakes were made, they weren't intentional,” he hedged by way of apology. “What good would it do to bring more trouble when there has already been so much?”

“In other words, I should just keep my mouth shut,” she said.

“No one is suggesting you don't have a right to be upset. But—”

“I would like the Señora to look me in the eye” she said scornfully, not letting him finish, “and tell me how sorry she is for my loss.”

“Be reasonable,” Perez cajoled. “She's a busy woman. You can't possibly expect her to come all this way. Besides, if you stir up trouble, you'll only make it worse for us all. Our people depend on the Señora to put food on the table. Think what a disaster it would be if you forced her to rebuild somewhere else.”

But Concepción wasn't swayed. She knew he was only playing on her sympathies in order to protect himself. “In that case, you leave me no choice but to go to her.” With a determination that gave her renewed strength, she rose to her feet, letting him know he was dismissed. “Now, if you'll excuse me, Señor Perez, I have business to attend to.”

4

The woman was giving her the Look—the one that said,
Don't I know you from somewhere?
Recognition would click in next:
Oh
, that's
Lila DeVries
. Widow of the infamous Gordon DeVries. Lila had been down this road with so many prospective employers these past weeks that she was steeling herself against yet another rejection even as Ms. Scordato of the Sterling Employment Agency went through the motions of interviewing her.

“Do you have any computer experience, Mrs. DeVries?”

“Some,” Lila answered. She had found that when gilding the lily, it was best not to elaborate. Especially when one's only computer experience was e-mail and online shopping.

“Are you familiar with Quicken and Excel?”

“No, but I've signed up for a course.”
Attitude is everything
, she'd read in one of the self-help books she'd checked out of the library. “I should be up to speed before too long.”

Ms. Scordato frowned at her application. “It says here that you type sixty words a minute. Would you say that's fairly accurate?” A large woman in her early fifties, with sculpted blond hair, she bore an uncanny resemblance to Lila's sixth grade teacher, Mrs. Lentini (who'd specialized in a particular form of sadism that had involved forcing the offending party to write their crime on the blackboard fifty times, in front of the other students). Lila stared at the brooch, the size of a door knocker, pinned to the lapel of the employment agency director's kelly-green jacket, which was complemented by—
accessorize! accessorize!
—the requisite Hermès knockoff scarf swirled around her neck. Ms. Scordato seemed impatient for this charade to be over so she could get on with her
real
business.

Lila felt herself reddening. “It's just a rough guess. I've never really timed myself.”

Ms. Scordato peered at her dubiously over the rims of her reading glasses. “Any bookkeeping experience? Double-entry systems, et cetera?”

“Um … no, actually.” Did balancing one's own checkbook count?

The woman studied her application, frowning, before she seized upon something that caused her to brighten unexpectedly.

“Ah, I see you worked for the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts.”

“Not
for
Lincoln Center exactly.” Lila was careful to set her straight. “I chaired a committee that raised money for the jazz festival. Last year alone, we raised more than three hundred thousand—”

“So it was volunteer work?” The spark in Ms. Scordato's eyes went out.

Lila felt a familiar ooze in her armpits. She had thought it would be easier getting her foot in the door at an employment agency after having failed miserably with a number of companies and firms, but apparently she'd been wrong.

As she had been about so many other things.

“Yes, but you see …” She aimed for an upbeat tone—
attitude is everything!
—while keeping her smile epoxied in place. “I never really needed to … that is, my husband … well, I'm on my own now. It's just me and my son. So even though I know I'm getting a late start, I'm a hard worker, and I'm willing to learn.”

She would have laughed at the irony if it weren't so painful: the idea that they'd hit rock bottom with Gordon being sentenced to prison. Now that ordeal seemed like relatively halcyon days compared to the hell she'd been through in the weeks since Gordon's death. Back then, at least she'd had the comfort of knowing her husband would return to her one day. Also, there had been the cushion of his IRA. Or so she'd thought until she'd been horrified to discover, in going through her husband's papers, that the account had been cleaned out: No doubt in some last-ditch attempt to spare himself a prison sentence. But what difference did it make how it had been spent? The money was gone. There would be no umbrella for the rainy day that had become a downpour. She'd had to give up the rented house in Hopewell, and there was no question of her being able to make next semester's tuition bill: Neal would have to drop out of college at the end of this semester. Partly his choice, yes—she'd urged him to apply for a student loan, but he'd insisted on looking for work instead so he could contribute financially. Still, that didn't make it any easier. In some ways, it made it worse: She now had to feel guilty for being dependent on her son, when it should have been the other way around, she taking care of him.

But even with whatever Neal could contribute, the fact was they'd be homeless if she didn't find a job, and soon. She'd known it wouldn't be easy, but she hadn't been prepared for just
how
hard it would be: a quest that had become a daily exercise in humiliation. In addition to being a social pariah, she was a modern-day Rip Van Winkle, it seemed, too late to the game, at forty-one, to compete with eager beavers half her age and three times as qualified.

She couldn't rely, either, on the few friends she had left. There had been no shortage of helpful suggestions, but no one had gone so far as to offer her a job. Not that she blamed them. The vast majority of her and Gordon's social circle had been made up of those either in the financial world or with ties to it, and as far as they were concerned, the widow of the late Gordon DeVries was radioactive. The only one who'd offered anything substantive had been Birdie Caldwell, whom Lila had known since Neal and Birdie's son, Wade, had been best friends at Buckley. Early on, Birdie had given her the name and number of a friend of hers in human resources at Bergdorf Goodman. Unfortunately, when it came time for the interview, Lila had learned that the only openings available were in sales, so she'd demurred. Most of the women she knew shopped at Bergdorf's, and she hadn't been able to bear the idea of waiting on those with whom she'd once socialized.

Now, after weeks of fruitless job hunting, she regretted that lost opportunity. Pride, like so many other things she'd once taken for granted, was a luxury she could no longer afford. And now time was running out. Birdie and her husband had generously allowed Lila the use of their Carnegie Hill apartment while they were in Europe, but they would be returning at the end of the month. If Lila didn't find other accommodations, she'd be literally out on the street. She couldn't ask her brother for any more money, though he'd gladly have lent it to her. Already she was so deeply in debt to Vaughn, she didn't know how she'd ever be able to repay him. Besides, he was far from wealthy. The only reason he had money socked away was because he spent so little on himself.

“Have you ever worked in retail?” Ms. Scordato inquired hopefully.

“The summer after my freshman year in college, I clerked in a dress shop,” Lila informed her somewhat reluctantly. A job she'd gotten through her roommate, a girl named Irina Kolinsky whose family owned a string of upscale fashion boutiques in Atlanta. It wasn't on her résumé because she'd thought it would look pathetic that her one and only paying job had been a summer job back in college. It was so long ago, bar scanners hadn't even been invented; she'd worked an old-fashioned cash register, and that alone classified her as antediluvian.

Not surprisingly, Ms. Scordato appeared unimpressed. “Nothing since?”

Lila shook her head. “Not unless you count volunteer work. I was in charge of the annual book fair at Buckley during the years my son was in school there. It was a fair amount of responsibility, and believe me, I wasn't shy about rolling up my sleeves. So you see, even though I may not be experienced … well,
technically
, that is …” Lila faltered, taking note of the woman's tight expression. At once, she realized her error: She might have been boasting not that she was a hard worker but that her son had gone to an exclusive private school, one the likes of Ms. Scordato could ill afford.

It was no surprise when Ms. Scordato abruptly concluded the interview. “Unfortunately, Mrs. DeVries, I don't have anything for you at the moment. And even if you were to get up to speed …” She paused before continuing, more frankly, “Needless to say, any company that hired you would be subjecting itself to a fair bit of media scrutiny. Perhaps if you wait a bit for the smoke to clear, you'll find people more receptive.”

Lila felt herself stiffen. Yet wasn't Ms. Scordato only stating what the politically correct drones of human resources, fearful of a lawsuit, were careful not to voice? That given the bad press she'd generate, she'd be more of a liability to them than an asset? Let's face it, to the ruined shareholders of Vertex, she was Marie Antoinette and Imelda Marcos rolled into one.

“I'm afraid I can't wait that long.” Lila swallowed what was left of her pride to level with Mrs. Scordato. “I need a job
now
. Any job.” She tried to sound highly motivated rather than hard up, but it was no good. She felt her eyes well with tears.

Ms. Scordato's expression softened somewhat. “I'll tell you what, why don't you brush up on your computer skills and check back with us in a few weeks? Maybe we'll have something for you then,” she said a bit more kindly.

Lila rose to her feet and politely shook Ms. Scordato's hand, thanking her for her time. But she knew that if she were to come back in two weeks … a month … a year … the answer would be the same.

Making her way out of the office, she felt the full weight of her circumstances settle over her. She'd been so thoroughly stripped of her identity, there was almost nothing left of the old Lila. Amnesia would have been a welcome alternative at this point. At least there would have been no regrets, no memories. None of this creeping sense of failure.

In the subway on her way back to the Caldwells' apartment at Madison and 92nd, she was leafing idly through a back issue of
New York
magazine that someone had left on the seat next to her when she came across an ad for an escort service. She thought,
I wouldn't even cut it as a call girl
. Not that she wasn't desperate enough to try almost anything at this point, but who wanted a call girl with crow's-feet and stretch marks?

No, she thought, there was only one thing left to do. She'd put it off as long as she could, not so much out of pride as out of shame, but she'd run out of other options. She would have to make the call she'd been dreading, to the one person who had the power to make this happen for her … to turn Lila's life around with a mere snap of her fingers … and who, among all the people she knew, would be the least inclined to do so.

Abigail.

“
That's why rich
people have secretaries and unlisted numbers, to screen out all the so-called friends hitting them up for favors.” Vaughn's voice crackled over the satellite phone. He was calling from somewhere in Namibia, where he was filming the movements of a herd of rare desert elephant.

“I wouldn't be doing this if I weren't desperate,” she told him. “Anyway, it's not as if I'm looking for a handout.”

“Look, Sis, I know you see this as the last chopper out of 'Nam, but don't you think Abby might be a tad, shall we say, bitter?”

It wasn't just speculation on her brother's part: He and Abigail had corresponded for years. Vaughn had never shared the contents of those letters with Lila, but she didn't need him to tell her that Abigail had every reason to be bitter.

“You're right. I owe her an apology,” she was quick to admit. “And the way I see it, this is my chance to do what I should have done years ago.” She was well aware of how disingenuous that must sound, given the fact that, as far as Vaughn knew, she hadn't made the slightest attempt to get in touch with Abigail before this. He didn't know about all the letters she'd started and never finished. But what did it matter now? It was so long ago, and the fact was, she'd never sent a single one of those letters—they'd only ended up crumpled in her wastebasket. Bottom line, Lila had abandoned Abigail when the chips were down. And now their situations were reversed. So, yes, she supposed any attempt to make amends would come across as self-serving, but that was a risk she was going to have to take. What other choice did she have?

“Anyway, this could be good for Abby, too,” she went on with a conviction that sounded forced even to her own ears. “I may not be your typical applicant, but I
do
have something to offer. It doesn't have to be a one-way street.”