Chapter 5 : There was a second signature. There was a president who had known it for eleven weeks. There was a form in the board copy with a field retyped and a form in the membership office with the field intact. There was a chit in the plastic bin
What there was not, by Monday morning at 8:15, as she pulled into the Willow Bend parking lot and took the members' row spot for the first time in three years, was a reason for Hollis Ellison to be at the club at all.
She learned that in the hallway outside the boardroom, from Serena Downing, who was standing by the water cooler with her phone in both hands.
"He's not coming," Serena said. "His wife called the desk at seven this morning and said he has a doctor's appointment and won't be in."
"A doctor's appointment."
"His name is on the agenda. Mr. Whitfield told me to write down that he was notified. I've got the timestamp."
"Okay."
Mara stood in the hallway of Willow Bend and looked through the glass door at the boardroom. The chairs were set. The folders were on the table. Renata Cole was at the side of the table, standing, reading something. Finton Whitfield was in his chair at the head of the table. Thomas Ashby — she recognized him from the Christmas party, the golf-tan, the weathered face, the tall thin frame — was seated at the far end of the table, hands folded on the table, looking, she thought, at the empty chair where Hollis Ellison was supposed to be sitting.
The door opened.
"Ms. Ellison," Whitfield said. "Ms. Downing. Please come in."
She sat where he indicated — beside Renata, not at the table proper. Dee took a chair by the door.
"Ms. Ellison," Whitfield said, "this is Mr. Ashby. Mr. Ashby, Ms. Ellison."
Mr. Ashby looked at her for a moment. He did not say anything. He stood up halfway and gave her a small bow — old fashioned — and sat back down.
"Mr. Ashby," Whitfield said, "has asked to speak first."
Ashby cleared his throat. He looked at the empty chair. He looked at Mara. Then he looked at the table.
"I signed the counter-approval on Friday," he said. "Friday afternoon. Renata called me and told me the board's copy of the void had no counter-approval field on it, and that the original in the office did, and that she didn't know whose initials were on it. I told her to fax me the original. I read it. I put my signature on it. And then I called Mr. Whitfield and asked him to keep it in his office until today."
He looked at Mara.
"That counter-approval, Ms. Ellison, is only invoked when a void leaves a credit on the books. There is no other reason to use it. I've been on the membership board nineteen years, and I have used it twice. Both times, the question was the same: who gets the credit. It is a real signature, on a real form, for a real purpose. It is not a courtesy. It is a check."
"So when the board's copy doesn't have it—" Mara said.
"Someone at the club made a copy of the form without it," Ashby said. "Retyped it, actually. The board's copy is not a photocopy of the original. It's a fresh page. Same wording, same date, no counter-approval field."
"Who had access to the form between Friday and this morning?"
"That is the question, Ms. Ellison," Ashby said. "That is the question Whitfield here is going to spend the next month answering."
The empty chair sat in the middle of the boardroom.
"Mr. Ashby," Whitfield said. "I have asked Ms. Ellison to attend this morning because she is the member whose seat was voided. Under the bylaws, a member whose seat is under review has the right to be present for the review, and the right to speak before the vote. I have also asked her to be here because I want her to hear the vote."
"What's the vote?" Mara said.
"The vote this morning is on whether to suspend Mr. Hollis Ellison from his seat on the membership board," Whitfield said. "The vote is a simple majority of the sitting board. There are five of us. Two are absent — Mr. Ellison, and Mr. Devereux, who is out of town. Of the three present, three of us need to agree."
"Devereux is out of town," Ashby said. "Convenient, if you ask me. He's been at Hollis's elbow for eleven years."
"Mr. Ashby," Whitfield said, "the vote."
Ashby looked at Mara. He looked at Renata. He looked at Whitfield.
"I vote to suspend," he said. "Pending review. I want every void that crossed his desk in the last two years pulled and read. I want the membership office's shared drive gone over by an outside IT person. I want Ms. Ellison's credit refunded this morning, not tonight. And I want a letter of apology to Ms. Ellison drafted by this board and signed by all three of us."
"Mr. Cole," Whitfield said, and Mara realized for the first time that Renata's last name was the same as a board member's and that she'd never once in twelve years let on — "I vote to suspend. I vote to refund. I vote the letter."
Whitfield nodded once. He wrote something down on the pad in front of him. Then he looked up.
"Three votes," he said. "Mr. Ashby, Mr. Cole, and me. Mr. Ellison is suspended from his seat on the membership board effective this morning at nine fourteen. The board review will convene on the first Monday of next month. Ms. Ellison, your card has been restored. Your seat is active. Mr. Ashby and I have both reviewed the form. Mr. Ashby has agreed to keep the original in his personal files rather than at the club, so that the question of who made the altered copy is not the question of who has the form."
Ashby nodded.
Mara sat very still.
"Is there anything else, Ms. Ellison?" Whitfield said.
She looked at the empty chair where Hollis Ellison was supposed to be sitting. She looked at Renata. She looked at Dee, who was still writing.
"Yes," she said. "I'd like to say something for the minutes."
Whitfield nodded.
"You're recording this?"
"Ms. Downing is taking minutes," Whitfield said. "They will be read into the board minutes tomorrow morning."
Mara looked at the empty chair.
"I want the board to know," she said, "that my brother Daniel Ellison was a member of this club from the age of nine. He spent four summers working grill and cart barn before he was fourteen. He paid his own dues for eight quarters after our mother died, out of a part-time job bagging groceries, because he did not want to lose the family number. He died two years ago. The last thing he signed in this building was a chit in the grill room, in his own hand, under his own number, at age nineteen."
She paused.
"I want the board to know that I have been paying my own dues, from my own checking account, for the two quarters my uncle told the family the club had revoked my seat. And that my uncle applied my money to his own dues, and told his own brother that the seat was gone, and told the family that I was a thief of a number that was already gone. And that at Sunday lunch, in this building, in front of the grill room, he slapped my face and called me that, in front of his board."
She looked up.
"I want it in the minutes," she said, "that the empty chair is empty because he chose not to come."
Whitfield wrote something down.
"Recorded," he said.
===
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All 8 chapters
- 1The palm landed before the words did.
- 2The parking lot at Willow Bend was laid out like everything else about the club — deliberately. There was the members' row, shaded, close to the door, with brass plaques for the old families. There was the guests' row, in the sun. And the
- 3Serena Downing's email arrived at 4:12. Mara opened it at the red light at the corner of Route 12 and Sunset Boulevard and had to pull into the church parking lot on the far side to actually read it, because there was an attachment, and t
- 4She called Dee.
- 5There was a second signature. There was a president who had known it for eleven weeks. There was a form in the board copy with a field retyped and a form in the membership office with the field intact. There was a chit in the plastic bin
- 6By nine-forty she was outside on the brick path between the clubhouse and the parking lot, standing under the shade of the porte-cochère with Dee beside her and both of them not saying anything.
- 7She did not call her father from the break room. She finished her shift. She drove home. She fed the cat that wasn't really hers — the one that had adopted the duplex — and she sat at her kitchen table with her laptop open and the screens
- 8Tuesday morning at eight forty, Mara pulled into the Willow Bend members' row parking lot and parked in the second spot from the door.
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