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Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781458211750 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Abbott Press |
| Publication date: | 10/11/2013 |
| Pages: | 234 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.53(d) |
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DEATH RIDES BAREBACK
By J. A. Lordi
Abbott Press
Copyright © 2013 J. A. LordiAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4582-1175-0
CHAPTER 1
The Lemon Orchard
It Looked Extremely Rocky for The Mudville Nine That Day, The Score Was 2 to 4 With But One Inning Left to Play.... A straggling few got up to go, leaving there the rest, with but what hope that springs eternal, within the human breast.... Excerpt from Casey at the Bat-by Ernst Thayer (This is not the original version of this poem ...)
Each of us has places in our lives that harbor 'shambles', a time when we got over the rough ground too quickly and left a muddle on our back trail. We all have a relationship, (or two!), gone wrong, or small, haunting mistakes we failed to correct or mitigate. We have future problems we might see coming, but don't know how to prepare for, nor to avoid. We stumble along with these small shambles dangling from tiny chains on our rearview mirror, or cluttering our emotional closets.
A "shambles" was historically, a place of destruction, like a battlefield or a slaughterhouse, a broken devastation. But to me, it meant an unpleasant stain, an area of mute reproach, something broken, which, unrepaired, promised baleful repercussions. I needed to find solutions, or a way to make lemonade from the lemon trees I had grown in my life's orchard!
Sometimes, one can bundle the shambles into a closet or a file drawer, or a grown child's empty room, and shut it away ... but usually, it sits on the fl oor like a reproachful dog, who doesn't like his dinner, but cannot tell you what to feed him. You know you can ignore him and eventually he will eat. But neither of you is going to be very happy.
On this balmy, mid-April morning, I seemed to have reached a point where my "life orchard" was producing too many lemon trees. Where I had hoped to harvest apples and oranges, sweet and nourishing fruit from my family and my work, what I found was bitter and pithy. I had broken too many promises—to myself and to others. Now at 46, not only did I have cupboards full of a messy divorce and irate children, but also file drawers full of overextended deadlines, annoyed boss and partners, and unhappy clients. And now, my mirror showed me another tasteless fruit,—a partial view of my aging and unfit body.
I, Jessica Charles Lennox, the woman who had been set to conquer the worlds of accountancy, wifely domesticity, and motherhood, stood in my misty bathroom on a spring morning observing this living, breathing shambles with startling clarity. How could I have "let myself go" like this?
After Max and Sassy were born, I had stopped riding competitively, and eventually, completely. The strong, lean rider's body had now turned to flab, which seemed to be bulging and drooping with self-satisfied abandon. My once glossy auburn hair was graying and lusterless, appearing as dispirited as the rest of me. Where had it all gone? My partnership in the accounting firm was hanging by a thread, the comfortable marriage was ended, and the frenzied, exciting strategies of raising a pair of super teenagers had been dashed by their flight to uncle and grandmother.
It was too easy to blame the fl ailing economy,—or the pernicious Caroline, a petite redhead, who had insinuated herself into Eric's midlife crisis, offering the promise of a second youth. Too easy to blame my preoccupation with lawyers, loud arguments with Eric, and the rigors of tax season for the abrupt departures of Max to his uncle's farm on the Eastern Shore and Sassy to her paternal grandmother in New York. Both of whom were now refusing to return home from their visits at Christmas vacation.
Yesterday, Eric had called to tell me that he and Caroline had returned from their "honeymoon" and he would be available "if needed". I hadn't even known he had married the sneaky little bitch!
I could just see him sitting there, lounging back in his favorite, beat-up old office chair, his long, skinny legs stretched out to prop his LL Bean boots on the desk. The yard, full of tractors and other heavy equipment, would be visible through the window over his shoulder, while he was telling me things I didn't want to hear. I was sure that errant hank of hair was falling across his forehead, and that goofy, happy-go-lucky smile crinkled his slightly weather-beaten face,—which I felt like punching!
"Have you told the children yet?" I had asked him. "Or am I going to have to break it to them that they have a stepmother?"
"Well, they DID know that I intended to marry her." he had muttered into the phone.
"Oh, great!" I had retorted, not really surprised at his oversight, "But did they know you were going to do so right this minute? I'm not sure the ink on the divorce decree is dry yet!" "Okay, okay! Calm down," he had remonstrated. "I'll call them both today and tell them."
"It would have been so much better if you had given them some warning!" I had replied tartly. "It's going to be a heck of a shock to them this way!—And please try to convince them that Caroline's permanent presence in your life is not going to detract from your love for them! Or your interest in them." I had finished, lamely. No wonder our children didn't want to be here! How could I convince Max and Sassy that this house was no longer a battlefield, when I was still seething with barely contained anger, which alternated with a miasma of hopeless rejection and despair? With the briefest of goodbyes, I had stuck the receiver into the cradle and returned to my worksheets.
Now, brushing my hair rather vehemently before my still foggy bathroom mirror, I regretted that I had not at least wished him well, or congratulated him, or something more elegant and sophisticated.... ("Mom, you're just not kewl," Max would have said!)
And now today, Harry Bower, our senior partner, was calling a meeting to discuss the firm's future, he said. I was almost positive it was to discuss my removal as a partner, if not to fire me from the firm. My performance through most of tax season had been hurried and inefficient. If the other three partners decided to get rid of me, I could hardly blame them. These shambles were all my fault, for not being able to cope, to resolve peacefully, to "get 'er done"! Somehow, I must grasp my shortcomings and deal with them!
I paused before the mirror, with my hair-brush mid-stroke, and wondered just how I would deal with the disorder, and where I should start.... The mirror wasn't talking, but the phone rang.
I let the answering machine on the downstairs hall table take it. I could hear my mother's voice, muted but cheerful, asking if she could stop by the office to get a copy of her tax returns for the last three years. No hurry, she said, she wouldn't be coming downtown till tomorrow.
She must be going to take out another mortgage, I thought, but what in the world for? Had my stepfather's medical problems resurfaced? My mind shied away from the idea like a nervous horse.
If I stood here much longer, I would be late for the office. I forced some order to the mess of my graying locks and fl ed into the bedroom to finish donning my armor for the day. All else could wait until I heard the reason for Harry's meeting, which he had announced just before closing yesterday. Today promised to be confrontational and unpleasant.
It was, but not exactly in the way I had expected.
At the end of the day, behind the beautiful freeform slab of mahogany I treasured as my desk, I sat in dejected silence, too worn down to face the rush hour. I'll just stay here, I decided, for a couple of hours, and sort those clients I would keep (if I could), and those I must abandon. Harry Bower, Rosemary Stanton, Frank Sutton and I had been in disbelieving and recriminating conference most of the day. I was exhausted and I knew it.
Pam, one of the two shared secretaries, had returned my mother's call to assure her the copies would be waiting for her. I still didn't know what possible catastrophe might have occurred in my mother's life. No doubt she would enlighten me in time. But the size of today's disclosures left little room for my parent's concerns.
I was fully preoccupied with Harry's insistence that someone had been playing fast and loose with the firm's finances. Apparently, whoever it was had covered their tracks well, and our year's profits had vanished. Harry announced that he thought it best to dissolve the firm and save what we could, instead of attempting to track down the culprit, or the money. He had stared right at me, as he said it.
Harry Bower, stocky and adamant, our firm's central core, had been awaiting us in the client conference room, ensconced in the chairman's seat, facing the door down the length of the table. He stood up as we had seated ourselves around the long oval. "I built this firm," he said, by way of preamble," With my expertise and hard work. And, as it grew, I brought you three in as partners.... to share the workload and the benefits." he waved his hand at us, and continued his preface. "Now one—or all of you," he shrugged as if not caring which it was, "has chosen treachery, and probably outright theft, as my reward."
"Jessie," he said, looking, not at me, but down at the notes he had brought with him, "you have been making errors and oversights in your work, and probably omissions in your billing the last four months," he pronounced accusingly. "Over a third of your clients are in extensions. I put it down to the distractions caused by your divorce," he grimaced as he spoke, his own acrimonious divorce not many years in the past, "But I cannot see where your errors can be responsible for the large sums which have vanished."
His gaze swept the faces staring at him around the conference table, then continued, "When I looked more closely, there have been discrepancies from all of you.... but as yet I cannot find where the money has gone!" He sat down abruptly. His jowls shook as he leaned forward, pressing his pudgy body against the table almost threateningly.
"Money that should have been in the escrow account" he looked directly at me again, as I had the responsibility of reviewing that, "and in the working account," here he shifted his glare to Rosemary, as that was her area to oversee, "—are just not there! Though I cannot really believe that any of you would intentionally torpedo us, the damage is done. We have commitments for those monies, and payroll to meet. Frankly, I don't see how we can. The firm is going down, and I, for one, want out!"
Frank had reared back in his chair in protest, his lean body, still tanned from his New Year's trip with his mousey wife, Peggy, to the sunny beaches of St. Croix, radiating rejection. "My books are in perfect order!" he insisted stridently, "You cannot say I have discrepancies!" But he looked assailed by doubt confronted by the curbed anger and certainty in Harry's face and posture.
Rosemary's look of protest and affront at the accusations was accompanied by "Ridiculous!" but she, too, was visibly searching her memory for possible action on her part which might have precipitated the firm's problems. She heaved her over-blown curvaceous bulk out of the chair and strode the length of the table, her thoughts clicking away behind a frown. From time to time, as she paced, she peered out from under her fl uffy blonde coif at each of us, suspiciously.
"Are you sure it is malicious and not just that we have been billing insufficiently?" She queried Harry. "How much is missing, anyway?"
"It's not really that large a sum," he admitted. "I found only about $175,000. worth of shortfall over the last year. $125 thousand from the escrow account (here he fixed me with the angry glare again) and about $50k in recorded receipts, which don't seem to be in the working account (again it was Rosemary's turn to receive that fixed stare!) But it's enough to break us, and broke we are!" Harry asserted.
"B&A was a fat calf which has been neatly gutted in just the last four or five months! Though I have found evidence going back into previous years—You three can continue together if you want, but I cannot stomach this insidious betrayal, nor take on the effort to uncover this embezzlement and rectify it. I want out!" He reiterated firmly.
Rosemary stopped her pacing back and forth and subsided into the closest chair. Pole-axed would have been a good description of our mutual expressions. Almost two hundred thousand? Was it possible that I hadn't properly checked the statements and transactions in the trial balances of the escrow account that Pam had brought me for review? How could I have missed $125, 000.00 in discrepancies? We kept a fair amount in CDs, but surely those lists were checked regularly? How had Harry picked it up when I hadn't? The firm's tax return had gone in more than 4 weeks ago ... Had Harry been stewing over this since then, or had he just become aware of the problem?
"I have been unable to pinpoint who is responsible," he continued, "nor to prove how it was really done. Certain errors and omissions point to each of you in turn, and even to ME! Duplications have been made, errors in partners' draws, seemingly corrected. One, or all, of you is being extremely canny and adept! But I will give you a hint—there were monies paid into, and paid out again, from the escrow funds for clients we don't have, or haven't had for years." His hot eyes focused on me again. "Who and how, no longer matters to me. I find that I am too old and too tired...." He turned to stare bitterly at the crisp spring sunshine and budding trees outside the wide windows, as though blaming the burgeoning season for his defeat.
"I can no longer continue to work with unscrupulous people! Whether the firm can recover from this loss will be up to the three of you.... I will disassociate myself and my clients from you all as rapidly as possible—and do NOT come to me for funds to help make up these losses, whether or not you can ascertain the culprit!" He turned from the window to glare forbiddingly at the three of us, still seated around the table.
"I have already transferred those funds pertaining to MY clients, out of the firm's escrow fund and into an escrow account for my new practice. Here is a list of those clients, and a spreadsheet on their escrow monies, as well as billed time due me,—which money I have removed from the working fund! The capital account and the securities accounts have always been mine and my clients.... the CDs are mostly NOT THERE." He thrust carefully stapled pages at each of us. Harry had well and truly burnt our bridges and the three of us were liable to go up in the conflagration.
"You can use what's left of the working account and the unpaid receivables," he nodded to Frank, "to keep going while you salvage what remains of this firm and its clients, either as a continuing partnership or splitting into your own practices."
I flicked quickly through my set and found copies of Harry's worksheets at the back, showing the discrepancies he had found. He watched me as I studied them blankly.
"Those are certainly not all you'll find in the next few weeks, but they were enough for me," he muttered dolefully, his anger and accusations sliding away into muted frustration and disappointment at the loss of status he had built with his own hard work and competence. "One,—or all—of you has trashed this firm we have built in the last 15 years, and since I can't prove who, I'm just walking away ..." I looked up quickly to see a ghost of satisfaction cross his face as he saw our acknowledgement of the grim situation. He had extricated himself, and we would have no recourse to his help or experience in solving the firm's woes.
Harry slumped back in his chair, now looking only at the small pile of papers on the desk in front of him. He roused briefly, from the brown study into which he had sunk, while we were still avidly scanning the papers he had given us. "It was not Irene, or one of the girls, either," he added, forestalling those questions, "And I am VERY doubtful that it could be Lance or Tiffany or Rodd, as none can sign on the accounts, nor has the expertise— well, maybe Lance,—to perpetrate this." He paused, considering, "It had to be one of you three, who were able to sign the checks for the firm, and had oversight of the bank accounts. Had it been one of them, the money might have been juggled around and pilfered away with petty checks, but it had to be one of us to embezzle to the magnitude with which it has been done in just a few months!"—There it was again, that ugly word, spat out onto the polished table between us.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from DEATH RIDES BAREBACK by J. A. Lordi. Copyright © 2013 J. A. Lordi. Excerpted by permission of Abbott Press.
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