CHAPTER fourteen
The parking lot was surprisingly full when I arrived at the office. It never ceases to amaze me the number of people who actually work on a Saturday. Ninety percent of them were probably executives from our company who flee their homes to avoid their family duties. I’ve never seen them actually working on the few Saturdays I’ve been in the office. They seem to hang out and schmooze. And tell war stories.
I smiled at the security guard who stared back at me. He was wearing glasses that were so thick I think the bottoms were made from old Coke bottles. He looked old enough to have been a drummer boy in the civil war.
"How’s it going?" I asked as I signed the security register. As he worked his lips into an answer I ran my finger down the sign-in ledger and noticed that Grace O’Grady had signed in at seven fifty-five a.m. I looked further down the list and saw that Didrickson had come and gone - in at eight-ten and out by nine fifty-five.
I held out my security pass with my picture on it so the old-timer could get a good look. It was turned upside down - I wanted to see if he was really on the ball.
"Fine, fine," he mumbled. The drool on the left side of his mouth was particularly attractive. I wondered if he had been taking personal grooming tips from Chris Oakes.
"13th floor please," I said. He stared back and I realized he must be deaf too. I tried to figure out how to hold up 13 fingers and gave up.
"13th floor," I shouted. He nodded and pushed a button on the console. He was asleep before I turned around.
The corridor had an eerie silence about it when I got off the elevator. Creepy. The reception area was dark and locked up tight so I turned down the hall to go in the back entrance. The smell of cigar smoke hit me as soon as I opened the door. Lovely, just lovely. Chris Oakes was on the premises. Well, at least I’ll be able to smoke with my door open. I made a mental note to check that there was a fire extinguisher handy. Chris had a habit of leaving burning cigars wherever he felt like it. He had once fallen asleep and started a fire in his bed in one of the poshest hotels in San Francisco. The cause, of course, was his cigar. He blamed the hotel. His ranting and raving in the lobby of the hotel almost made the front page of the newspaper. The hotel was very nice when they let us know that they didn’t want him back. Ever.
I took a shortcut to my office so I could avoid executive row because the last person I wanted to see on my day off was Chris Oakes. I stripped off my windbreaker and tossed it on the guest chair and sat down in my chair. I swivelled around to turn on my computer and swivelled back to check my voice messages. I was getting dizzy. There were no notes on my desk from Didrickson with instructions or information so I figured he’d left me a voice message. The voice mail system told me I had two messages, both of which were hang ups. Love it, love it. Two less phone calls I had to return.
The only other place Harold would have left me anything was in his out-basket on his desk so I rummaged around in my desk for the keys to his office. The man was so paranoid about confidentiality he kept his office locked whenever he wasn’t in. The cleaning staff were not allowed to clean his office in the evenings and the furniture in his office was always dusty. Every couple of days or so he would put his wastebasket out in the hall for the cleaners and every couple of months we’d have them in during the day to dust and vacuum.
One of my favourite jobs was shredding all his waste paper. I’d have to schlep the paper in boxes down to the photocopier room and stand in front of the shredder feeding it paper. The dust from the machine was incredible and typically, I would be wearing a black suit. I was waiting for the day that he asked me to eat the paper, rather than shred it to make sure it was properly disposed of. He caught me one day getting one of the secretaries to do the shredding and I almost lost my job. For his next birthday, I was going to buy him a personal Ollie North desktop shredder to save my lungs.
There was nothing of any importance in his out-basket so I locked his office and thought about where I might find Grace.
Grace O’Grady was our internal auditor and she was my hero. Capital H. When I grew up, I wanted to be just like Grace. She was one of the smartest, toughest and funniest women I had ever met. Grace told it like it was and didn’t care who she was telling it to. She had been hired out of retirement by the Chairman of our company’s Audit Committee of the Board of Directors and she reported directly to him, and no-one else. Grace knew the dirt on everyone in the company and knew what closet every skeleton was in.
Her job was to make sure financial controls were followed, procedures were implemented, the i’s were dotted and the t’s were crossed. As a public company we had legal and financial obligations to our shareholders and Grace made sure we followed the rules. Her only disappointment was that the Chairman of the Audit Committee rarely acted on her recommendations. But she kept at it and took her job very seriously.
Grace was rarely seen around the head office because she was on the road most of the time visiting our regional offices and auditing their books and contracts. When she did make an appearance at our place, tongues started wagging and speculation on her presence was the main topic of discussion. She appeared for every board of directors meeting to make her reports but her presence today signalled to me that Didrickson needed her forensic abilities.
In the past Harold has asked for her assistance on some particularly sticky matters. Something sticky had obviously come up and that’s why she was here. I couldn’t wait to find out.
I stuck my head in a few of the offices to see where she had parked herself and was surprised to find her working at Ev’s desk.
"Top of the mornin’ to ya Irish," I said.
She looked up from the computer terminal. "And the rest of the day to you," she sang back. I stood in front of the desk.
"Harold said you needed my help."
"Sit down and I’ll fill you in."
I sat on the edge of the guest chair. It didn’t feel right to be in Ev’s office and I felt myself getting a little edgy.
"I was sorry to hear about Evelyn. We’re going to miss her. Can you let me know when the funeral is so I can make sure I’m around?"
"Sure. Nothing’s been set yet but I’ll let you know. Let’s get a coffee and go down to my office. You can fill me in there."
She nodded and I knew she understood. Grace stood up and came around the front of the desk. She slung her arm over my shoulder and the two of us jammed our way through the door. She had on dungarees. Yes, dungarees. I know they went out of style in the fifties, but Grace still had an original pair. Dark blue jeans, wide legs, cuff rolled up three times. She was wearing a plaid, flannel shirt which was unbuttoned and showed a man’s sleeveless undershirt underneath. What a fashion statement. A woman after my own heart. She probably wore white gym socks too. Grace had thick hair as white as snow and she wore it cropped short. I think she cut it herself.
She turned her head and smiled at me. "So, what’s three miles long and has an IQ of thirty-seven?" she asked. The jokes were starting.
I smiled back. "I don’t know."
"A St. Patrick’s Day Parade." We both laughed. Grace was a lot like me and she laughed the hardest at her own jokes. She had toned the jokes down a bit to take into consideration people’s feelings in the new millennium. Her only politically incorrect jokes now were aimed at her own heritage, the Irish.
We bumped into the kitchenette door and I let Grace go in first. "Age before beauty," I joked.
We caught up on old times while we waited for a fresh pot of coffee to brew. When I opened the fridge to get some cream for the coffee, I noticed there was still an awful lot of leftover food in the fridge from the Thursday party. I plugged my nose in disgust.
"Disgusting," I said. "Why doesn’t anyone ever clean this fridge out?" I felt sorry for the person who had to do it. It wasn’t so long ago that it had been one of my jobs but now that I was among the high and mighty, I felt the task was b
elow me. I slammed the door and handed Grace the cream.
"Still smoking?" Grace asked me.
"Hardly at all," I replied and started craving a cigarette. "Have you started up again?" Grace was forever quitting and starting. She said the reason she quit was to save money so she only smoked OP’s. Other people’s.
"I quit last week. But I’ll have one of yours. Come on." We headed back to my office.
When we were settled in my office puffing away, I popped the question.
"So. What’s the dirt? What’s going on?"
Grace took her feet off my desk, put her cigarette out and put on her serious face. The joking time was over. Down to business.
"There’s a slight problem with the stock option system. As you know, because Harold told me you pointed it out, the information on Evelyn’s system doesn’t jive with the numbers that were approved by the board."
"Right," I agreed. "Evelyn obviously input the wrong information. You know how these guys work. Nothing’s final. They fuck around with the numbers so much I’m surprised anything in Ev’s system is right."
"Tell me what the procedure is. What information do you give Ev?" she asked.
"Okay. After a board meeting, Didrickson gives me the lists of numbers that have been approved."
Grace interrupted me. "Bear with me here. Where does Harold get the lists?"
"Rick Cox has responsibility for producing the recommendations to the board. When he hands out the papers at the board meetings to the directors, those are the numbers they approve."
"What do the lists usually contain?" Grace asked.
"They have the names, the number of options to be granted, the exercise date and the expiry date." I turned around to open my file cabinet. "I’ll show you what they look like."
"Yeah, I know what they look like. Harold gave me the copies you gave him."
I shut the file drawer.
"Grace, I’m not sure how much you know or how much detail you want," I said.
"I’m just trying to get in my mind a step by step procedure. So, Rick Cox presents the numbers and board approves them. Then what?" she asked. I wondered if she had asked Harold these questions.
Before I could answer, Grace said, "I’ve asked Harold, I’m just checking for your understanding of the process." Jesus, she was scary. She could read my mind. I better not think too much about those dungarees.
"Then what? Um, after the board meeting Harold gives me the approved list with his initials on it. If it’s initialled, it’s the official list, as far as I’m concerned."
Grace thought for a moment. "How soon after the board meeting does he give you the list?"
"Depends. If the meetings are held out of town, he might give me the lists at the meeting because I end up carrying all the papers back to Toronto. If the meetings are held here, I usually get the list the next day or so when he does the minutes."
"What do you do with the lists?" she asked me.
"A couple of things. I’ll make a copy and give it to Ev so she can enter the information in the system. I make a copy for myself because I have to get stock exchange approval for all options granted and I use it as my working copy. The original I keep on the file for the specific board meeting."
"In your experience, did Ev enter the information on the system in a timely manner?"
Whoa. In my experience. Grace was starting to sound like a prosecuting attorney.
"In my experience," I mimicked her, "Ev did her work as fast as you could give it to her."
"Listen Grace," I continued. "I’m sure there’s a reasonable explanation for what’s happened here. If we could get into Ev’s paper files, I’m sure we’d find that the information on the system matches up to some paper. Ev just got a wrong list. One that Rick had created and then changed his mind."
"Kathleen, we opened Ev’s files this morning. There’s no paper back-up for the information on the system."
"So her filing abilities were like mine. Non-existent," I stated. "Big deal."
"Her files appear to be immaculate. She notes on each list the date and time she’s entered the information. Her last paper back up is the same one you have on file."
I digested this little tidbit and wondered how much more Grace was going to share with me.
"So? What happened?" I asked and waited to see if she’d answer. There were a lot of things that Grace didn’t share with me and rightly so. I usually figured it out though but I wondered if she’d help me along this time.
"The computer log shows that those correct entries were made the day after the last board meeting," she blurted out.
"And?"
"And the computer log shows that the more recent entries making the changes were made on the night Ev died."
Wow, I was impressed. Our computer system had a log? And it had information? Technology at its finest. But I started to get indigestion as I digested this tidbit.
"Is our computer log smart enough to show who made the entries?" I asked. I was treading gingerly here.
"Yes," she said slowly.
"Are you going to share that with me?" I asked.
"No. Sorry. I have to finish my investigation. Can you grab all your files relating to stock option grants and bring them down to Ev’s office? I’d like to compare your lists to the ones in Evelyn’s files. I think we should do a complete check."
Yuck, I thought. One of my favourite things, going through files. Especially my files which were always in a mess. I think I’d rather clip my nails in the Cuisinart than go through files.
"Sure," I said. "Give me a few minutes, I’ll meet you down there." Grace stood up and grabbed another cigarette from the pack on the desk before making her exit.
"This should be fun," she said and grinned. Sadist, I thought.