Death in a Funhouse Mirror (20 page)

"Of course, Mr. Hillyer. I didn't come here to upset you. But Valeria is doing the same thing to us, and I wouldn't be surprised if she did it to the employer before you. She'll go on doing it as long as people let her get away with it. She's threatened us with a harassment action, and we'd be in a position to get things resolved at a very early stage if we could show that this sort of thing is a pattern with her, something she does whenever her competence is challenged."

"I'm afraid you're mistaken, Ms. Kozak. I don't know what you're talking about."

"I can just see her sitting here," I said, "staring through her hair, right past you at that picture of your family, and saying in her girlish voice, 'I'm not sure that's what you want to do, Mr. Hillyer. I know my rights under the law. I know that this is a retaliatory firing, and you can't do that to me.' And I can imagine your reply, too. 'Retaliatory firing, Ms. Davie? An employer is entitled to fire an incompetent employee.' And dear Valeria looking you square in the eye and saying that you were firing her because you'd made sexual advances and she'd rejected them, and wouldn't your wife be pleased when she learned about that."

He stared at me in astonishment. "That's practically word for word," he said. "How did you know that?"

"I told you. Because I saw her do it."

"She was so inept and pathetic," he said. "I felt sorry for her at first. Tried to help her out, be nice to her, you know, in a kindly sort of way, so when she accused me of harassment I thought she might have just misunderstood. I tried to explain that to her. She just smirked and told me to tell that to the judge, and after she'd let me squirm a little, she suggested her alternative. The reference letter and a month's salary. She even had the letter all prepared. The only competent thing she wrote while she was here. I just wanted to get rid of her as quickly as possible, it was so sordid, you know, so I signed it and paid her and she left. It never occurred to me that she might have done it to someone else."

"Well, now we know, don't we. I wonder whether there's the same story behind this," I said, pulling out another letter and handing it to him.

He took it and read it through. "This is the one that hooked me. I think we should ask." He picked up the phone and dialed the number on the letterhead. "Mr. Kramer, please. Bob Hillyer calling." There was the usual pause while the call passed through the dragons. He drummed his fingers impatiently on the desk. "Joey? Yeah, Bob Hillyer. How's the old backhand? Still having trouble with the follow through? Is that right? Great. Yeah, that new pro really knows her stuff, doesn't she? Born to wear tennis skirts, too. Yeah. My wife says it's all that lateral movement. Look, sorry to bother you, but I had a question I hoped you could help me with. Yeah, right. No, it's not about my backhand. I'm still working on getting it over the net, you know?"

I've never been much good at the old chitchat. Hillyer's bonhomie was probably the right approach with Kramer, but it made me want to drum
my
fingers impatiently on the desk. Finally he got to the point. "It's about a former employee of yours that we hired. Girl named Valeria Davie. Yeah. Yeah. That's the one. Smallish, wore a lot of mustard-colored clothes. Yeah. You gave her a great reference. Greatest thing since sliced bread. I was wondering why she left."

He listened, nodding and mumbling. "Is that right? Well, look, I might as well be blunt here. She was an incompetent with an attitude, so I fired her, and she came back at me with a threat and a proposition. Give her a chunk of change and sign the reference she'd written for herself, or get slapped with a sexual harassment complaint. I bought her off, of course. A lot less hassle, but now I've got her next employer sitting here telling me the same thing's happened again. So tell me honestly, Joey. She do the same thing to you?"

Now I was sitting on the edge of my chair, watching his face, trying to read the answer, while he listened and nodded and hummed. Finally he said, "Exactly. And I think it's time we stopped the little bitch before she does it to someone else." His voice dropped into a series of mmms and yeahs. "Okay, yeah Joey, if you'd be willing to do that it would be great. Yeah. Umm. Look, why wait, you can just fax it over, shouldn't take you long. Right. Advotech. Sure. Terrific. I'll be watching for it. See you round the club."

He gave his fax number and hung up, then turned back to me. "And you make number three. Unless there are more we don't know about. Astounding, isn't it?"

"If she'd put half that amount of creativity and effort into her work, none of us would have had to fire her."

"Right," he said. "Joey's going to write up a little something and fax it over pronto, and I'll do the same. You want to wait for them?" I nodded. "Shouldn't be long, but I need to do my composing alone. I feel like a bit of a fool, being taken in like that, even if I'm not the only one. You mind waiting outside? We've got lots of exciting magazines, like
Laser Technology, and Silicon Signals
and
Business Week."

I settled down in the waiting room, passing on his offer of high-tech magazines. Across the room, the receptionist had assembled her own range of high-tech equipment and was reinstalling the dislodged nail. I pulled out Yanita Emery's resume, which Suzanne had given me yesterday, and looked it over. Yanita was in her late twenties, had studied education and management at BU, and was presently working as an assistant dean of students at a small women's college. Before that she had done some teaching and worked at a real estate management firm. On the surface, she looked great, but Valeria had made me wary. I was also concerned that what we had to offer might, quite frankly, be beneath her. I scribbled a few questions in the margins and stuffed her resume back in my briefcase.

I was in the middle of a memo about my meeting with Cliff Paris, when I became aware that I was being watched. Hillyer was standing across the room, papers in hand, staring at me. "You're a real workaholic, aren't you," he said.

"People have suggested that," I told him, holding out my hand for the papers. He surrendered them with an amused smile. The top sheet was a simplified affidavit, setting out the details of his experience when he tried to fire Valeria for incompetence. It was well organized, coherent and very honest. Hillyer hadn't spared himself in describing the event. "This is great," I said. "Thank you so much for doing this. Do you mind if our lawyer contacts you if he has further questions?"

"Not at all. And I'm sure Joe Kramer won't mind either. His statement is so much like mine we sound like Siamese twins." I shifted the papers and read Kramer's account. Hillyer was right. Their experiences were nearly identical, the only difference was writing style. Kramer had bludgeoned the language into shape and Hillyer had twisted it deftly to fit.

"I see what you mean," I said. I tucked the papers into my briefcase and held out my hand. What I felt like doing was jumping up and down and shouting hooray. I couldn't wait to shove copies of their statements in Valeria's mean little face. "I was playing a hunch when I came here. Your frankness and cooperation are going to make my life a whole lot easier."

He took my hand, and his grip was warm and enthusiastic. "No problem. Actually it was fun. Made me feel like one of the good guys for a change, writing the truth instead of just promo stuff."

"Don't put yourself down, Mr. Hillyer. I get the impression that you are very good at what you do."

"Thanks." He turned and headed for his office, but paused halfway across the room and came back. "I don't want to sound too dramatic, but be careful, okay? I have the feeling Valeria isn't going to take this very well."

"I know what you mean. Don't worry. I'll only confront her in well-lit rooms full of witnesses."

"Good idea," he said, disappearing from view. I took my briefcase and left.

 

 

 

Chapter 12

 

Sarah just shook her head when I gave her the affidavits and asked her to make six copies of each of them and six copies of the reference letters right away. "Copier's busted," she said, "and Louie says don't count on using it again before two." She pointed at the legs and feet of a person whose torso and head appeared to have been swallowed by the machine.

"It's demanding human sacrifices now?"

"I guess so," she said, shrugging her shoulders. She tapped the papers with an unmanicured nail. A real, live human fingernail. It was one of the reasons I liked Sarah. "This an emergency, a real emergency, or a really, truly serious emergency?"

"See for yourself. This is dynamite designed to blow Miss Valeria Davie right out of the water."

"You're kidding. What'd you do, break into her psychiatrist's office?"

"Only Republicans do that."

"Well, Lucy next door will let me make some copies. We've helped them out when their copier was broken. That guy Florio wants you to call him and so does everyone else in the western world. If the guy who invented the telephone had realized what he was letting us all in for, he would have shot himself in the head." She handed me a fat stack of pink slips and went next door to make the copies.

I kicked off my shoes, sat down and finished dictating the memo I'd begun in Hillyer's office. Recalling yesterday's meeting had the unfortunate side effect of also making me recall my uncomfortable encounter with Rowan Ansel. In my own office, and when I wasn't being treated like a shock victim, his behavior seemed more annoying than disturbing. Perhaps, like Cliff, he was shocked by Helene's death. A shock like that, as I well knew, can make people behave strangely. Put in perspective, he no longer seemed like such an obstacle to working with Cliff. I followed the memo with two assignments for Bobby, follow-ups to yesterday's meetings. If things heated up like they appeared to be doing, we would need a replacement for Valeria quickly. Maybe Yanita would solve that problem.

I carried the tape out and put it in the middle of Sarah's desk with a note indicating that I needed it ASAP and went back to sort my pink slips. A call from Cliff Paris, apologizing for his inexcusable conduct and asking me how quickly I could put together a proposal to present to his board. Then there were a bunch of other business calls. Florio's message was intriguing. Sarah had written, "Rosie says 'thank you' and will you come to breakfast on Sunday?" At the bottom of the stack were two messages from Eve, asking me to call her at work, and a message to call Norah McCarty, Cliff Paris's housekeeper.

I checked my watch. Almost eleven. I had just time to call Eve and give her a piece of my mind. After being shuffled around a few times, a helpful person informed me that she was out and could probably be reached after three. I left a message for her to call me and hung up, disgruntled. Now I'd committed myself to a round of telephone tag, and it's a game that I hate.

I called Dom Florio, who was out, and left a message accepting his breakfast invitation. I figured Saturday I'd be busy with the wedding but by Sunday I'd need some distractions to keep me from dwelling on Andre's absence. I did fine during our separations when I knew it was just a matter of time until I saw him again. Now that things were up in the air and I didn't even know if I would see him again, the other half of my bed seemed vast and lonely. Staying busy was the only way I knew to stave off a bad case of the "poor me's." Staying very busy.

I tried Eve again, but she was still out, and so was Norah McCarty, so I stopped worrying about Helene Streeter and solving the mystery of her death and immersed myself in my own work.

At one Sarah brought me a stack of typed memos, some mail and a sandwich. "Sorry I was grouchy," she said. "When I'm mad at Brad I take it out on everyone, and I'm real mad at him today."

"No problem. I'd forgive anything for this sandwich."

"That's what I was hoping," she said. "Brad better come home tonight with a heck of a lot more than a sandwich. He won't though." Sarah is tough and bright and pretty, with a generous ration of good humor and common sense, and is vastly unappreciated. Brad, her husband, is so distressed that she's a size twelve instead of size eight that he can't see around that to enjoy what she is. If he were mine, I'd be tempted to hit him over the head with a cast-iron frying pan, but he's not, so I try to keep my opinions to myself.

I flowed around the sandwich like a hungry amoeba, made it a part of me in a matter of seconds, and went back to work. Sometime in the middle of the afternoon I met the blushing bride-to-be in the ladies' room. "Great news," she said, "Lisa is coming back. Says she finds unadulterated motherhood unbearable and wants to know if she can work thirty hours a week."

"No kidding. When did you talk to her?"

"Just now." Suzanne smiled. "Someone up there likes us, I guess. I'm glad some thing is going right for a change."

"Speaking of things going right, what did you think of the affidavits?"

But Suzanne wasn't listening. She was staring at my face. "What happened to you?"

"Ran into a door."

"Right," she said, "that's what they all say. What really happened?"