Minerva's Ghost (8 page)

“You didn’t resist me.” Gabe said. “I tried not to want you, but after the accident I was … overwrought. I couldn’t fight the attraction.”

“But you were careful and gentle and you made me feel so much pleasure.” Amanda said.

He shivered. She saw him. “Don’t talk about it, what you feel,” he said. “I’m having trouble keeping myself under control as it is.” He looked around, seemingly a little confused. ”Where is the stuff Minnie was working on?”

“Here, next to her desk.” Amanda said.

What Gabe saw was two years worth of historical general ledgers for Au Naturel. There were scores and scores of pages of computer printouts for each month of the two-year period, all the raw data that was available. There were no summaries, no management reports or statistical reports. It was all raw data, something a company officer would not normally want to see, something most operating managers were not even able to utilize until the data was refined down by analysts into less cumbersome summaries.

Minnie had been good with numbers. It was a rare talent that she and Gabe shared. It was one thing to spot an error or discrepancy in one’s own checkbook, but it was something else entirely to spot anomalies or trends through vast pages of computer reports. Few CPA’s could do it. Auditors were looking for books that balanced, not why some obscure financial trend was occurring in some barely perceptible manner over a long period of time. It was much more a scientific interest than an accounting problem. It took patient investigation through the scientific method to discover whether an accounting trend was the result of increasing costs, a growing company …or sadly all too often, out right fraud.

“It will take quite a while for me to go through all this.” Gabe told Amanda. “I’ll have to block out some time every day to wade through this much data.”

“Minnie put different colored dots on a lot of entries.” Amanda told him. “I don’t know what they mean, but I’m sure they’re no accident.”

He was standing behind her. He put his hands on her shoulders and pulled her back against his body. It was not an overtly sexual touch. He was not aroused but the thought went through her mind anyway. As soon as it did he seemed to sense her thoughts and responded.

He got hard and then his whole body stiffened and he stepped away.

“I can’t keep my mind on things when I’m close to you.” he said. “I’m no sexual athlete except with you. I’m usually the most rational and controlled man in the world. I can’t touch you again until we get some protection. It isn’t just sex. I want a long term thing.”

“How can we have long term?” she asked. “You live one place. I live another. We don’t know each other well. You may find you hate me by next week.”

“I know you through Minnie, better surely than you know me. But we will work it out, if you’ll try and I try. It’s worth the effort.” he assured her.

She had no ready response to his statement.

“We need to pay attention to the matter at hand.” he said. It made her smile and he saw it.

“Most of my friends think I’m like a robot, I’m so logical. I was actually starting to believe it myself. I just learned I’m as human as anyone ” he said with a self- deprecating grin. He was so cute she could hardly stand it and she grinned, too.

“On to business?” he suggested.

She nodded in agreement.

“Minnie obviously started adding some things up. If I run some totals from the color key we'll know what she was thinking.” Gabe said. “I’m intrigued. She obviously had her suspicions. I’ll stay up tonight so I’ll be less tempted to be with you. We’ll go to your meeting tomorrow and then I can get back to it.”

“You don’t need to go to the meeting with me. I can handle it myself ” she told him.

“I need to meet the other players. The business decisions are yours to make, but the mystery is mine or ours together. Someone’s been pretty tricky and just the possibility of murder is too much risk for one person, man or woman. There is safety in numbers in this kind of situation. If only one person knows there is a problem, that person is always at risk.”

“Go on to bed.” he suggested. “I’ll nap here if I get too drowsy. The more we understand about what’s happening the faster we can find the problem.”

“O.K.” she agreed. “Good night.” she said with a smile over her shoulder as she left the room.

Amanda went up to her room after getting her purse from the kitchen. She needed to read Minnie’s letter. She got into bed before she opened it. Her bedside lamps cast a warm glow in the room. She had bathed and blessed herself and was as prepared as she could be to read what Minnie had left her. The letter was on Minnie’s pale peach stationery.

“Amanda,

You are the child of my heart. I want to assure of my love and trust. If you are reading this, I am gone. Do not mourn me. I have been happy. You and Michael have been my babies, though you and I were closer. Michael has had a very difficult life, but he’s reaching a level of maturity where he can accept that his mother will never give him what he wants. She will push him to the realization and probably sooner than later. He’ll be saddened, but not destroyed. In the meantime he won’t be much help to you. That brings me to my friend Gabriel. He can help you.

You must pay attention to each other and guard the purity and integrity of my business. If those things end, then so should Au Naturel. If you and Michael don't want to run the business the way I would, then just close it down. I have made financial provisions for you and Michael. I have concerns for our employees but they are some of the people who would threaten the purity of my vision if they had the say so. I will not allow it. You must not, either. There is more to life than expediency and profits.

Always remember to do what you want to do. I loved my business, but your path does not have to be the same as mine. Choose your own way.

Love always,

Minnie

Amanda cried for a while but then slept surprisingly well. Gabe had breakfast ready the next morning when she came downstairs. He wore the same clothing he had worn the day before, but obviously freshly washed and pressed and he had found a razor for his heavy beard. He looked wonderful. He walked over to her and kissed her good morning. It was lovely.

“Minnie left us a lot of data. It’s going to save us a lot of time. I think she was convinced the problem was in payroll. The most likely scenario is fictional employees, people who are being paid, but don’t actually work.” Gabe told her without beating around the bush. Amanda would have been grateful if she had not been so irritated.

“So what do you want to do?” she asked.

“Nothing until we get a fix on the culprits. I can e-mail data for verification to all your departments and see if they coincide with the checks generated from Corporate. Someone may tell us what we need to know. Eat a little something and then we’ll go,” he suggested, placing little butterfly kisses all over her face. He seated her in a chair and then sat across from her. He had coffee and she had tea. They both ate the muffins he’d made from brown bananas that were all that was left in the fruit bowl.

“Tell me who I’ll meet today.” He came close and touched her as though he couldn’t resist. She liked it, unlike the attentions of most men she knew. He touched her … lovingly. It just felt different.

“We have an operating manager, John Wilder. He’s been with us for years and he and his family have made a home here, though he’s originally from Illinois. We have a US sales manager named Dana Toles. She grew up here. Lydia Beaumont, our international sales manager went to school with Dana. She is a multi-lingual black woman who was Dana’s roommate at college. She is here just for the meeting. She lives in Paris normally. Justin Hart is our VP of Finance. He has a ‘Harvard MBA with Big Five Experience’. His wife does not like Alabama at all. Our personnel manager, Martha Collins hired him. She said he was what we had to have because the company is getting so big. Martha’s only been with us for a couple of years. She is an aggressive, unfeminine feminist. David Benton is distribution manager. He’s from here, too and has a family. I suppose they all have their faults, but they have also all contributed to our success.”

“Who is the most ambitious?” Greg asked.

“Martha and Justin would be more restless than the others. I think the rest are pretty content where they are for various reasons. They are all well paid and get good bonuses and perks. Justin is more used to a business model that rewards higher stock price, not the bottom line profitability we expect from our privately owned company. He’s had trouble with the differences. He tried to patronize Minnie, but she ignored him. She told me he was full of manure.”

Gabe grinned and asked, “Is that a direct quote?”

“Yes,” Amanda confirmed with an answering grin. “That’s exactly what she said. I think she was annoyed with him fairly often. She said it was like trying to restrain a freight train. He didn’t know about listening or about how to build a business by actually doing business. He’s big on financial finagling, but Minnie said he could fool us right out of business if she let him.”

“Martha and Justin are pretty obvious conspirators if the problem is in personnel.” Gabe said. “It would set off alarms in any financial department that was paying attention.”

“I’m pretty sure Justin has left Minnie’s controls in place. ” Amanda was as sure as she could be, considering the disarray in accounting.

“What about Michael’s Allison?” Gabe asked. “How does she fit into the picture?”

“She prepares and submits Michael’s payroll reports, but she does not prepare or distribute checks. They all come out of payroll at the main building. She’s really Michael’s link to the world other than farming. He’s a born farmer. He gets along well with the outside people, but every time he comes over to the office side of the operation he seems lost and frustrated. He hates Martha. She’s not good at hiring his people. He has certain requirements and she just looks for strong backs and no education for his group. I just ordered that Allison do all his hiring last week. I didn’t think the situation could wait until after this meeting. Minnie viewed Michael’s operation as vital to our success, but some of the ‘staffies’ see it as no better than an anachronism. They view their jobs as ‘Important and Big’ and his job as both uneducated and unsophisticated. John Wilder went to the University of Illinois where there is a school of agriculture that’s well respected. He gets along well with Michael, but he’s the only person who does. Michael deserves respect. He has a degree in horticulture and a minor in business and he’s a great farmer. He has trouble getting along with people. He doesn’t want to waste time on interpersonal skills. Allison plans to hire people with a genuine interest in growing plants. If they share his interests, he’ll get along with them better. We also use some migrant workers who seem to do a good job. Allison also plans to hire more women and look for people who are trained in horticulture.”

Gabe glanced at his watch. “We’d better go.”

Minnie’s factory and business offices were nearby in an old spinning mill. Amanda drove Minnie’s Cadillac. As soon as she cranked the car Gabe turned to her and growled, “Wow, what a machine.”

She laughed and gunned the engine a couple of times just for the fun of hearing it roar.

“Why did Minnie keep Justin around?” Gabe asked.

“I think she was considering dumping him.” Amanda admitted. “Minnie said something about being worried about his emotional stability, although he always seemed fine to me, if a little hyper and pushy. It wasn’t like Minnie to be indecisive in this context. I can’t figure it out and it’s got me worried about whatever it is that I don’t know. If Minnie didn’t know what to do with all her years of experience, how can I figure it out?”

“When I get the facts, all of them, it will be easier for you to decide what to do.” Gabe told her. “I can find them. It’s what I do.”

Minnie’s factory and corporate offices were only a few miles away from her home. The farms and factory together employed about 500 people, all now either reporting to Michael or Amanda. The factory was a rather lovely antebellum brick building on the outside. It was once a spinning mill but now looked like a laboratory or a very clean food operation on the inside. Minnie was frankly and unapologetically obsessed with cleanliness and purity in her business. Although many of her products were ‘natural’, she had reminded her employees many times that ‘natural’ products could kill and/or poison. “What we make must be beneficial for the majority of potential users. Some individuals will be allergic to certain substances. We will give them all the data they need to use a product safely or choose something else. We will never tell anyone we cannot help. We can always help people feel pampered and better about themselves.”