Chapter 5
Frank looked up from pouring Cassie’s drink to see her enter the sitting area dressed in a navy blue sweatshirt with Rideau in large gold letters and coordinating sleep shorts. Her bare legs seemed impossibly long and he could see a few fine white hairs glistening on her legs in the light of the setting sun as she curled up on the end of the sofa. He took a deep breath and reminded himself that he promised to wait.
But he did lean down to kiss her cheek as he handed her the glass of ginger ale. “Good evening, my lovely wife.”
Cassie’s eyes widened in alarm but she recovered quickly and said, “Good evening, my handsome husband,” in what she hoped was an affectionate tone.
He went to the desk and picked up a thick stack of file folders and his coffee cup. Not trusting that he could keep his hands off her legs if he sat next to her, he took the armchair that was set at right angles to the sofa. He let out a sigh. “You asked me what I was worried about. It’s this.” He pointed at the pile of papers on the coffee table.
“As mentioned before, I’m a professional accountant. I trained with Deloitte in Halifax, but I left them two years ago because I felt that if I was going to be useful to the family business, I needed to get experience doing more than just financial audits and reviews. On top of that, I had a manager who didn’t like me. He gave me all the most difficult clients and mocked me for being a Christian and I got tired of it. Dad offered me a job, again, and I refused, again, but he made a couple of calls and set up an interview for me with Reg Mackinnon at Alawen. I’d heard good things about them and even if it meant I owed Dad a favour, I went to the interview. So I was pleased when they offered me a job.”
He took a sip of his decaf. “Six months ago, Reg had a heart attack and I was promoted over the objections of both Alawen’s president and the Menzies Chief Financial Officer. They both wanted to recruit a new CFO for Alawen but Mr. Menzies wouldn’t authorize it because he believes in promoting from within and I’d developed some management reports that he liked.”
“Alawen is a wholly owned subsidiary of Menzies Custom Fabrication here in Ottawa. Menzies owns about a dozen small and mid-sized companies across Canada that do custom steel work – bridges, oil rigs, static cranes, docks, just about anything you can build with steel. In turn, because the work isn’t steady, Alawen uses a large number of subcontractors to do much of the work – engineers, architects, independent tradesmen like electricians and welders and so on.”
Frank paused while he thought. Cassie folded her hands and waited for him to speak. “The first two months I was so busy doing both my old job and my new job that I didn’t have time to think. Everyone thought that Reg would be back after he recovered but instead he retired to the Bahamas, which is where his daughter’s family lives. Tony seemed disappointed that he wouldn’t be back.”
“Tony Leonidas, the Menzies CFO, is long-time associate of my father’s but he doesn’t like me much, especially since I told his daughter that I wasn’t interested in being her third husband.”
Cassie did comment at that. “Because she wasn’t the injured party in the divorces?”
“Exactly. And she’s still married to her second husband because she can’t afford to pay for the divorce.”
“So she wanted your money, too?”
“I would have had an ironclad prenuptial agreement if I married one of my parents’ favourites.”
Cassie tilted her head to examine Frank’s face. “So why didn’t you get me to sign one?”
Frank looked at her with admiration. He thought, Because the Holy Spirit picked you for me, but smiled and said, “Because I trust you, Cassie. I don’t trust most of Father’s acquaintances. I think you have integrity – Cecilia doesn’t.”
Cassie blushed at the compliment and murmured her thanks.
Frank looked at her and said, “I don’t think I’m going to encourage you to play poker. For some things you’re too easy to read.”
She stuck her chin out at him and said, “Oh really, Mr. Ellis?”
“Really, Mrs. Ellis. You have a pretty blush when I give you compliments.” He turned his attention back to the folder. “Anyway, Cecilia took the name of her second husband because he’s some sort of German nobility and she likes being Lady Cecilia.” He held up a finger. “I’ll get back to that in a second because it gets complicated from here. I spent my third month being even busier because I had to train my replacement while still doing both jobs. Then I spent most of May cleaning up my in-basket and learning my new job properly.”
“When I got some time to breathe I began to review the numbers so I could do a project by project profit analysis. No one asked me to do it but I thought it would be one of those value added exercises that J. David, Alawen’s president, or Mr. Menzies would appreciate.”
Cassie asked, “Because you might learn a better way of doing something?”
“Not really. I was expecting the analysis would tell me if we were in trouble on any of the projects early enough that we could make some course corrections.”
“You found something.”
“A small pile of somethings. What caught my eye first was the name of one of the suppliers on one of Jacquie`s projects, Von Hatzbach Consulting. Cecilia is Baroness von Hatzbach. There was another supplier on the books, Steinhausen Enterprises. Steinhausen is where the von Hatzbach estate is, according to my sister Lita. And there was a third supplier, Demedieros Enterprises, which was Cecilia’s first husband’s surname although she didn’t ever use it, as far as I know. The direct deposit information was the same bank account for all three suppliers.” He took a sip of his decaf to wet his throat. “So I checked to see if there were any matches between employee bank accounts and supplier bank accounts. I got several matches, including J. David.”
“Because I’m certain that Tony is in on the scheme, I need to speak with Mr. Menzies directly and lay all this out for him without going through the normal channels. So I decided to take three weeks’ vacation and come to Ottawa. I know where Mr. Menzies goes to church and that he’s not on vacation until August. So I went to his church the past two Sundays to meet him, which I did, but I didn’t work up the courage to tell him.”
Cassie sighed and shook her head. “Frank, you still haven’t explained what the problem is. I mean, I think I can guess but you’ll need to be clearer if you want me to understand.”
Frank reviewed what he’d said so far and gave her an embarrassed smile. “Right. What I found was a big fraud scheme with false contracts, ghosts on the payroll and a big pile of company assets I can’t locate.”
“Okay. That’s clearer. Who’s doing what?”
Frank looked at her with furrowed brows. “Are you sure you’re only seventeen?”
She smiled impishly. “Almost eighteen, remember?” Then, more seriously, she said, “I took a writing and communication course last semester with a teacher who was an absolute dragon when we did the journalism section. She was tough but I enjoyed it. It sounds like you need a refresher course on report writing.”
Frank laughed. “You may be right.”
“Of course I’m right. You might do well to remember that.”
He looked up to see the teasing look on her face. “It’s genetic isn’t it?”
“What?”
“The ability women have to deflate their man’s ego at will.”
“Are you my man?” Cassie gave him a skeptical look.
With deep sincerity he looked into her eyes and replied, “For as long as you want me to be.”
Flustered, Cassie swallowed then repeated her question. “So, who’s doing what? Start with the false contracts.”
Frank turned his attention back to his portfolio and opened it to a long list of speaking points. “It looks like there could be more than a dozen people involved, although it’s possible that only Reg, Tony, J. David and Jacquie, one of the operations managers, are implicated. I suspect that Phil in accounts payable is in on it, too, because he’d ha
ve to prepare the cheques and he isn’t clueless enough to miss all of the red flags.”
“What happens is that every three months new consulting contracts are signed for around thirty thousand dollars for each of the supposed consultants. There is a new contract each quarter because if a contract is under fifty thousand J. David can sign it himself – it doesn’t have to be countersigned by Mr. Menzies. We get a nice report every month with the invoice but the report isn’t dated or signed. There are invoices that go back several years but it’s the exact same three page report attached to each invoice with only the date changed. It amounts to something like $160,000 per month going out the door. It looks like Tony, or someone with an Ottawa bank account gets eighty thousand, Reg and J. David get thirty thousand each and Jacquie gets twenty thousand. And there might be a few more that I missed.”
Cassie asked, “Every month?”
“Every month, and all of the associated costs are buried in head office overheads or in Jacquie’s projects which are the least profitable projects that Alawen runs. It’s how I found the problem.”
“And the ghosts on the payroll? I assume that means that someone gets paid without ever showing up for work.”
Frank nodded. “Exactly. I reviewed the payroll and HR records to confirm names from the life insurance registrations and it turns out that all four of my suspects have relatives being paid for working at Alawen that I can’t ever remember showing up for work. Reg and J. David’s wives are stay at home mothers but are on payroll as full time employees. Jacquie Allan’s husband is on the payroll, too, even though he has a full time job in downtown Halifax somewhere. Five older children are in full time university and they are all collecting salaries between fifty and seventy thousand per year. Apparently Tony’s youngest son George, who Mother says is in fourth year university at Michigan State on a full ride athletic scholarship, works for me full time as a financial reporting specialist. If I could, I’d fire him for absenteeism, promote Marie-Ève and hire a recent college or university grad to do the receivables. It would certainly reduce the amount of overtime if we had five people to do five people’s worth of work.”
“And the company assets?” Cassie’s frown deepened as she contemplated how Frank needed to report all this.
“I can’t locate twenty-two very nice laptops and seventeen printers, although each of the nine ghosts is apparently assigned a set. We pay for six more company cars than I can locate including the fuel, insurance and repairs for them. I’m pretty sure that the BMW two-seater on the books is being used by Tony’s son because the repair bills came in from a dealer in Sarnia. There are thirty or so smart phones with unlimited voice and data plans that I can’t locate either and only the first pages of the bills are in the files so I don`t know who anyone is calling. We’re also missing some high end leather furniture and a couple of home theatre systems. One of those invoices shows delivery to an address for J. David’s sister`s summer home near Musquodoboit Harbour. I only know it’s her address because I was invited out there for a barbeque. She was trying to tap me and my father for a big donation to build some change rooms near the local ball diamond and soccer field.” He held up a finger and made another bullet at the bottom of his list. “We’ll have to refile the income tax returns once we figure out what the impact of the diversion is. And we’ll have to review who is doing the audits for us. Tony or Reg might have played games with the standard statement of work or given the auditors the run around. The auditors should have spotted something this big.”
“That’s the proof?” Cassie pointed to the folder.
“Yes… Well, copies.”
“Where are the originals?”
Frank got a smug smile. “I put all of the prior years’ originals in the engineering records room in an empty security cabinet. I bought a new padlock that matches the ones they normally use and I have the only keys. I had to leave the current year invoices in place though.”
Cassie was silent for a moment but Frank knew she was thinking through what she wanted to say. After a moment she said, “If we can’t convince Mr. Menzies on Sunday, are you out of a job?”
“I’d have to say yes. I can’t continue to work for a thief like Tony.”
“And you could still afford to buy this for me?” She held up her left hand.
“Easily. It’s why Cecilia threw herself at me. And why Mother has no shortage of women in ‘our class’ to introduce me to.”
“If you’re that rich why are you working?”
Frank got a serious look. “Grandfather left the real estate and the voting shares in Ellis to Dad and split the most of the rest of his fortune among the grand-kids. It wasn’t well done of us but the eight of us were feeling pretty cocky when we found out that the money was coming directly to us and not our parents, but that’s the way the family normally structures things anyway. Then we heard the conditions.”
“Grandfather died eight years ago but the condition is that we get only the income from the trust and then only if we’ve had a full time job or been in full time school for at least six months of the year. If we don’t work we only get a quarter of the income and the rest goes to charity. Actually the girls, like my sister Bonnie and my cousin Chelsea, have an out if they are stay at home mothers but they need to be actually looking after their children and married to a husband who works or studies. After ten qualifying years, we get control of the principal.”
“So you’re working because you didn’t want to give up three quarters of the trust income?”
“That’s not the reason anymore, but I’ll admit it was my motivation at first. I was in my last semester at UNB when Grandfather died so I was covered for that year and the next because I’d already been accepted for a post-graduate degree at the École des Haut Études in Montreal for accounting.”
Frank grimaced. “But Tiffany, the girl I was seeing seriously at the time, also heard about the conditions. She told me she wasn’t about to wait around and live on only the income from the trust for ten years and dumped me for someone richer. I found out later that the trust pays me almost million a year before taxes. She’d have been better off sticking with me.” Cassie’s eyes widened at the amount of money and the casual way Frank spoke about it.
“I just managed to keep it together well enough to get through my exams. One of my classmates was a committed Christian and invited me to church with him when he saw how depressed I looked.”
“So to make a long story short, over the next couple of years I became an observant Christian and reading the Bible convinced me that man is made for work not idleness. As Solomon said in Ecclesiastes: ‘Every man to whom God has given riches and wealth, and has given him power to eat thereof, and to take his portion, and to rejoice in his labour; this is the gift of God.’ So regardless of my bank balance, which is very healthy and growing faster than I can spend it, I need to work, to rejoice in my work, if I want to keep on an even keel. But maybe I don’t need to work as hard as I do now.”
He tapped the file folder. “I hope that I can convince Mr. Menzies that there is something very wrong at Alawen and that he will actually care. He might be in on the scheme, too, although I very much doubt it, given his reputation. I’m sure that Tony is the mastermind. I also suspect that Tony’s running the same scheme at some of the other Menzies subsidiaries.”
“He’d run out of relatives for the ghost payroll.” Cassie commented.
“I think that’s why he gets the lion’s share of the false invoicing scheme. But he has, until recently, gotten his way when appointing CFOs for the subsidiaries.”
Cassie got up to perch on the arm of Frank’s chair and draped an arm around his tense shoulders. “Well, whatever you need to do, I’ll do my best to support you.”
Frank leaned his head against Cassie’s shoulder. “I owe you an apology.”
“For what?”
“For assuming that people who don’t know accounting can’t follow along.”
Cassie snickered. ?
??Meghan mentioned that when we were talking at the restaurant. She said that a lot of people in your circle will assume I’m stupid because I don’t know as much as they do or because I’m so young.”
“Evgeni mentioned that, too. I think you’re already better at communicating things to other people than I am.” Frank yawned. “Will it be okay if we skip the movie? It was a long night yesterday and a very early morning.”
Cassie stood and stretched before echoing the yawn. “Not much of a wedding night, eh?”
Frank stood and gathered Cassie gently into his arms. “I can wait. But don’t assume that I’m going to let you walk away next May.”
Cassie rested her head on his chest and drew comfort from his presence. “Maybe I’ll believe that before too long.” She looked up into his eyes.
Frank lowered his head to hers. “Then maybe you’ll believe this.” He tried to make the gentle almost-chaste kiss a promise and an invitation. As he raised his head, he said, “Good night, Cassie.”
Then, as he felt her stiffen in panic, he let her shove him away and moved back another pace to give her an escape route.
Cassie looked at him in frightened confusion. “Why?”
“Because I wanted to kiss you for real when no one else was looking at us so you’d understand that I’m not pretending.”
She took a deep breath to calm down. “Why me?”
“I don’t really know but it feels exactly right to be married to you. Maybe we can figure it out together.”
“Okay.” She took a deep breath for courage then moved forward to give him a quick peck on the cheek. “Good night, Frank.”
He watched as she raced quickly to her bedroom and shut the door.
Frank sat at the coffee table and put the files back in order. He put his head down and said, in a very soft voice, “Thank you Lord for sending Cassie to me. Please help me find the words to convince her that she really is special to me and that I would never deliberately hurt her. Please help me remember to water those seeds of love that you plant in all of us. And finally, give me patience and the grace and wisdom to discern your will through this troubled time that all I do will serve and please you. In Jesus’ name. Amen.”
Cassie pushed a makeshift wedge under her door and got ready for bed. She said some brief prayers but couldn’t find much comfort in them. She had to keep her distance from Frank. She was certain that this was only a marriage of convenience until she turned eighteen. She couldn’t afford to give her heart to Frank but it felt so good to lean on him – at least when she wasn’t panicking. She considered getting up and unblocking the door but she couldn’t make herself do it. She felt her eyes moisten as she gave in to the frustration of not allowing herself to fully trust Frank.
She looked at her rings again and tried to believe that she was really married. Turning out the light, she raised her hand to her lips and smiled in wonder. The goodnight kiss he gave her was still making her heart race so she replayed the kiss and Frank saying, “I’m not pretending,” about a hundred times before she finally fell asleep praying that he was being truthful.
Frank had an easier time of it except that he replayed the feel of her too hard slender body against his over and over. Before he’d accepted Jesus he’d had more than his share of women, trading on his good looks and the promise of riches to take what he wanted. All of those women had been close to his height and curvy armfuls rather than petite and bony. But he’d never been as strongly affected by anyone as he was by Cassie’s uncertain responses, even if it had ended with her pushing him away in panic. He prayed once more for the strength to wait for her and a sense of peace came over him as he fell into a restful sleep.