Chapter 25

Sometime in October my Dad contacted me, by phone, late in the evening. He had been at home, going over some of the Coinmark files that we had taken from their Chicago office, after buying up their assets.

"I think I've found out where our account information leak to Coinmark was coming from. It was Biddy Walters."

"Really? How did she get the information?"

"She handled all the account reconciliations. She had access to all the necessary information, including when contracts were expiring. She sold us out for a five thousand dollar payment. She's been with the company for over twenty years. I need someone else to interview her. I wouldn't trust myself to speak to her. We need to find out if there was anything else she did that might come back to cause us problems. Do you think Joyce could come up some afternoon to speak with her?" The way my Dad was speaking, I could tell how distasteful all of this was for him. He took it personally, that one of his own people would turn against the company like Biddy had.

"We'll both come over on Friday. We get out of our last class at one, but Shirley won't be home until three. We'll leave early, and should be at the company by three, at the latest. Do you have any reason to suspect she did more than we already know about?"

"Only that it doesn't make any sense for her to have done it for that little bit of money. She stands to lose a lot more than that by forfeiting her pension rights. In three more years, she'd have been fully vested under our plan. By dismissing her for cause now, she'll lose any retirement benefits she would have otherwise been entitled to. If she wasn't doing it just for the money, there's no telling what she might have done with Coinmark, or with some of our other competitors."

"Do you want Joyce and I to terminate her?"

"No. I'm going to have our attorneys do that. You have to be very careful with these types of situations. Biddy still knows an awful lot about our internal operations. She could cause us a number of problems, if she were so inclined. We need to make certain she won't be any future problem to us."

"Do we have enough proof to prosecute?"

"We have a canceled check with her signature on the back, and nine pages of printouts of information, covering forty six of our best accounts. We could probably prove they were printed on her office printer. I had Aaron remove her computer, and replace it with a new upgrade. He's having a friend of his search for any stored information on it, anything that might help us prove her guilty of doing this. I'm more than satisfied that she's the source of our leaks to Coinmark."

"I was afraid it might have been Ellen."

"I thought of her as well. That's one of the worst consequences of a betrayal like this one. You stop trusting people. I even worried about Myra. Even when you do learn the actual culprit, there is a guilty sadness that remains from having mistrusted loyal employees."

After I got off the telephone, I went and told Joyce about my father's phone call. I expected her to be upset with Biddy, but relieved it hadn't been someone we were closer to, like Ellen. Joyce's reaction was anger, bordering on rage. The way she thought, none of the problems would have occurred if it hadn't been for Biddy's betrayal. Like me, Joyce couldn't get the image of those eight plastic dolls placed side by side in the driveway, on the night arsonists burned Uncle Bunny's house down.

"Dad wants the two of us to go talk to her, to find out if there was anything else that she did that we don't already know about. Someone from the company has to interview her, before Dad sends in the lawyers to terminate her."

"Can you do it alone, Kenny? I don't trust myself to be in her presence now. She could have been responsible for something bad happening to our babies."

I told Joyce that I'd handle it. For the next two days, I was able to think of little else. I didn't know Biddy that well, but, it was a surprise to me that she would do anything like that against the company. I had taken her loyalty for granted. Everything I'd ever seen from her had made me think she could be trusted by us. I wasn't looking forward to conducting that exit interview.

On Friday, I drove to Bolling after my final class, arriving at the company just before a quarter 'til three. I went up to my old office and saw Ellen.

I don't know how these things happen in a company, but Ellen already knew that something was up, and that it somehow concerned Biddy Walters. It was one of the first comments she made to me after we had exchanged hellos.

"What's happening with Biddy?" Ellen tried to sound casual when she asked, but it was pretty easy to see that she was deeply interested in hearing my response.

"Biddy Walters? What made you ask about her?"

"Just rumors all over the place. That's all. One of the guys from maintenance told me that she was probably going to get the axe today. Myra told Sylvia Reynolds that Biddy was going to be fired. They took all her personnel files and pay records into your dad's office yesterday. Someone from the company lawyer's office came by to pick them up later that afternoon. The guy in maintenance told me it had something to do with you, and here you are, when no one even knew you'd be coming here today."

"Well, I don't know how all these rumors get started, but this is a pretty wild one, especially with so little actual information for all of you to go on. Maybe we're thinking about promoting Biddy to be our new corporate treasurer? You've got me curious though, so I think I'll go down the hall now and find out what's really going on. Would you like to join me for that?"

"Not me. You know how much my mother hates Biddy. If I went with you, and it was a promotion, my mom would blame me for it. You aren't really going to promote her though, are you?"

"Ellen, I didn't know anything about any of this, until I came up here and spoke with you. I didn't even stop off to say hello to my Dad yet. I'm going to go see Biddy and find out if she's heard any of these rumors yet. Maybe she can tell me what it's all about."

I walked out into the hallway and moved the four or five doors down to Biddy's office. I was already uncomfortable with the task I had before me. Talking to Ellen hadn't helped to settle my nerves. I knocked on Biddy's door, opening it as soon as I heard her ask who it was. As soon as she saw me, her facial expression fell, and her composure disappeared. I guess Biddy had heard some of the rumors as well.

"Can I please explain, Kenny?" Her words came out choked with the emotional stress she was obviously under. I could see that she was nearly panicked already, and I had yet to say a single word to her. I closed the door behind me and moved over to a chair set beside her desk.

"Hi, Miss Walters. My Dad asked me to come see you about this problem we've uncovered. I want you to explain to me what happened, and why. Tell me everything, and when you're done, we'll see what we can do to make the best of a bad situation." I tried hard to keep my voice neutral, to not add any of my emotion to the highly charged situation we found ourselves in already. My heart was already beating faster than I would have liked. One of the first things I'd noticed when I saw Biddy again, was the way she'd aged a lot since I'd last seen her. It was apparent that she no longer took care of her appearance like she used to do before. She was made up like she'd been in a big hurry, not at all like the meticulous grooming I'd come to expect from her.

"Am I going to be sent to prison?" She sounded afraid that she might be. I didn't think that was a very real possibility for her. Crimes such as the ones we knew she had committed, they weren't usually punished with prison time, especially if the perpetrator was a woman.

"You should just tell me what you know, Biddy. After you do that, we can talk about what the most appropriate action for us to take would be. Right now, I need to understand what really happened."

When I stopped talking, she began. It all came rushing out from her. The words tumbled from her lips, telling a pretty sordid tale of a lonely woman, seduced and betrayed, by a much younger lover. That the whole thing had been a set up, orchestrated by either Terry or his father, I had no doubts about.

The five thousand dollars hadn't been Biddy's idea, it had come about because of her boyfriend's greed. She said she turned all of the money over to him. There were pictures taken of Biddy in compromising, intimate, poses with her too young lover.

She showed me an envelope containing the pictures she'd been sent. I wasn't shocked to learn that Terry was the young man with her in those pictures. It didn't surprise me that he would take an opportunity to steal that extra five thousand dollars from his own father either.

All told, I ended up spending an hour with Biddy Walters. I found out that we already were aware of everything she had handed over to Coinmark to suppress the publication of those pictures among her friends and family. When we were all done with our interview, I told her that I would speak with my father. I told her to keep working on what she was currently doing, and we'd let her know what had been decided. I left her in her office, going over to my Dad's office to speak with him.

"Hi, Dad. I just got finished speaking to Biddy Walters. I found out what happened, and why it happened." I had taken the pictures with me, explaining to Biddy that I needed them to explain things to my father, but promising to return them to her before I left the building that evening. "The boy in those pictures is Terry Gorsen. It looks like he set this whole thing up by himself. You should see Biddy. This whole thing has been really hard on her. She looks like she's aged fifteen years in the past year."

"What she did was unforgivable."

"Who says? Aren't we the ones who get to decide that? You said yourself that she's a valuable employee who does a great job. I prefer to think she was a victim of a very cruel attack. She was used, and she knows it. She was given a choice between two bad options. The way I'm seeing it, she's already been punished enough. It isn't very likely that anything like this would ever happen again. Why don't we forgive her? It would be in our interest too. Who else are we going to get that can work in the kind of isolation Biddy does? This thing has already cost us enough, why make it worse for ourselves?"

"You can't be serious, Kenny? They stole our accounts, burned down your house, threatened your children, attacked us at the plant in Omaha, and nearly killed two of our drivers. She was responsible for a lot of that."

"They did it, not Biddy. They took a lonely, middle aged, woman, and played to her weakness, to get what they wanted. I could see punishing her, if she were a willing conspirator with Terry, but she wasn't. If she was willing, then I guess I was too, because I'm the one who discussed our vending operation with Terry in the first place. He got his whole idea for doing this from me. I'm at least as guilty as she is in this."

"That's ridiculous. You had no way of anticipating he'd do something like he did. Biddy has been around this business for many years. She understood what giving them this account information would mean. She owed us better loyalty than she gave. I can't forgive this."

"Dad, we owe her better loyalty than you're prepared to give. Twenty one years she's given us. Offset that service against this one terrible breach. A breach that came not because she wanted to commit it, but because she found herself looking at an alternative that was even less welcome to her. If I leave here today, and we end up having our lawyers terminate her employment, who is going to gain? No one. On the other hand, if we decide to accept this moment of weakness from her, and to weigh it against all those years of loyal service, Biddy will come out of this better off, right away, and we'll end up the winner in the long run, because she will know that we stood up for her when most employers wouldn't have. We'll have earned the loyalty that I'm sure she will do her utmost to show us."

"I don't see it that way."

"I understand. It's your decision, but if it were up to me, that's what I'd do. We can't change what already happened. Giving her a break this time won't expose us to any risk, other than not getting the revenge we might otherwise feel entitled to."

"Kenny, you have to think ahead. If this ever gets out, that we let her get away with something like this, what effect will it have on the other employees? Will they decide to stay loyal?"

"I don't know. How many employees has Biddy kept honest over the past years she's been auditing accounts? How much money has she saved us? Even with Coinmark, if you consider how we ended up making out on the deal in the end, we made out pretty well overall. If you need to punish her to make her an example for the other employees, then there is something wrong with the way we're operating the company. I think most of our employees are already loyal to us."

My father placed the pictures back inside the envelope, handing it back to me. I took it from him, and then waited for him to tell me what he'd decided to do. I could see he was troubled about the decision. I had pretty much talked myself into my decision while I was talking to him. I hadn't started out feeling that way. After presenting the case for it though, I believed it was probably the best course of action for us to take.

"You make a good point, Kenny, but it doesn't sit well with me to allow her to get off without any punishment at all. This wasn't some minor mistake she made."

"Come take a look at her with me, Dad. After you do that, I won't object to any punishment you decide she needs. She's already suffered. What she needs is another chance."

"I don't want to see her." I could see my Dad was nearing a final decision. His face was concentrated, and he had his brow and forehead furrowed in a way I'd seen before when he was trying to decide something difficult. "Very well. I'll accept your conclusion here. When you tell her though, I want you to be careful to explain that it was her many years of loyal service that we are honoring by this second chance. If it hadn't been for that argument, I'd never have been swayed to accepting this outcome."

"I think you're making a good decision, Dad."

"I wish I shared your ability to empathize, Kenny. This isn't how I'd have handled things at all. Now though, after the decision has been made, I feel comfortable with it. I guess that means you've persuaded me."

"I don't think so. I think it means I helped to show you a choice you hadn't considered yourself, but one that makes good business sense for us, and helps someone else at the same time." I stood up and left. I was as surprised as my father about the way our meeting had ended. I too felt good when I retraced my steps to Biddy's office.

If I'd had any doubts about whether we were making a good decision in giving Biddy a pass for her conduct, they were immediately dispelled by her reaction to my telling her of our decision. I did as my father requested, telling her as directly as I knew how that it was her twenty plus years of sterling service that tipped the scales in her favor. It was after five thirty when I left the building and walked out to my car. The easy part was done. The hard part was still in front of me. I had to find a way to explain what we'd done, to Joyce, and to Mama.

Anne Coulter phoned me from San Diego, asking me to allow her to return home. As I'd feared, from the time that Mildred told me that Anne and Captain Webb were having an affair, something was going to happen to make it necessary for me to have to assist Anne in securing a different living situation for herself.

The next morning, I received a telephone call from Captain Webb, inquiring about whether I'd managed to make other arrangements for Anne. I found out that his wife had finally tumbled to the fact that more than golf and lunch was going on between her husband and Anne. I told him that I was making immediate plans to fly Anne back to Kansas, and that her sister would be coming out to assist her with all the details of making the journey.

Aunt Clara wasn't that excited at the prospect of being reunited with Anne, but I reminded her that half the house belonged to Anne, and that it would only be for long enough for me to arrange a different living situation for her.

In the end, Aunt Clara flew out to California and got her sister back to Ridgeline, without too much difficulty. Anne's looks had improved in the time she'd been living in California. She wasn't as jumpy, for one thing, and her face didn't look as pinched as it had been. She'd put on a little weight, and it looked good on her. She had a healthier look to her. It was a lot easier to see the family resemblance between her and her sister now. Her hair had been allowed to grow out, and it was now one of her best features.

I wasn't the only one who thought she had gotten better looking. Walt Connor started finding all sorts of reasons to go over to Aunt Clara's house in the evenings. After about two weeks of being back in Kansas, Walt and Anne decided to go out to dinner together. I didn't think too much about it. For one thing, I stopped getting daily phone calls from Anne, asking me when I was going to find her a better place to live.

Walt and Aunt Clara had been working extremely well together. From what I'd been able to see, Walt was a tireless worker. He didn't have that much else going on in his life, so he spent a lot of what should have been his off time, going around and making deliveries, or putting things in grocery bags back at the warehouse. What had started out as creating a job as a family accommodation, had ended up being a brilliant hire on my part. The developing situation with Anne and Walt was jeopardizing that good working relationship that had previously existed.