Chapter 11 #2
He chuckled, warm and indulgent. “Now, Bonnie here’s done a fine job keeping the chairs warm while Lucas is poorly.
Nobody’s saying she hasn’t. But there’s a difference between a secretary opening the mail and a man running a town.
We don’t need a little lady taking the reins of our town, Folks.
We need a leader.” He spread his big hands and smiled around at all of them then looked at Bonnie behind her podium.
“Tell you what, Missy—when this is over, you can keep pouring the coffee, and I’ll see you’re paid fair for it. ”
The room laughed. Not all of it. But enough of it.
And Sunny was on her feet before the laughter had faded.
Heads turned. She felt every one of them, and the part of her that had learned to make herself small screamed at her to sit back down. She didn’t.
“My name is Sunny Carter. Most of you don’t know me.
” Her voice came out level, which surprised her.
It was the voice she kept for bad news. “I’m the forensic accountant Mrs. Watson hired recently to audit the town’s financial records, which makes me the one person in this room who’s actually read what it takes to run Cobbler Cove, line by line, for the last twelve years that your current mayor has held the job. ”
She let that settle. The room had gone still as if it wasn’t sure yet whether to be embarrassed or not.
“Mr. Tolliver just called Bonnie Watson a glorified coffee pourer. I’d like to correct the record because correcting fake, fraudulent, and incorrect records is my whole job.” She turned, not to Tolliver, but to the rows of tired faces that now looked cautious and faintly alarmed.
“Since Lucas Shoemacher has been sick, this secretary made every payroll on time. And that’s in spite of the town’s money being scattered across multiple bank accounts, not being properly documented, and not accessible by anyone but the mayor, which is a clear violation of your own town’s charter and of state law. ”
That caused some eyebrows to raise.
“The moment Bonnie was named acting mayor, she chased down where all the money was, figured out how to get access to enough of it so the town could continue to operate, and called me in to audit the town’s books for the entire duration of your current mayor’s tenure in office.”
She had everyone’s undivided attention now.
“In short, the town’s finances were a criminally negligent mess and in violation of numerous statutory requirements for accounting, reporting, and reconciliation.
I’m sure Ms. Watson will be happy to share a copy of my final report to her with any citizen who’s interested.
But the upshot of it is your mayor ran this town with at a minimum gross negligence and at a maximum outright fraudulently. ”
Tolliver blustered, “Here, now. Let’s not be tearing down the name of a fine man . . .”
Sunny rounded on him and cut him off in an acidly polite voice.
“Your fine man who, to quote you, knew everybody and their people, who kept a steady hand on the wheel, and who . . .” she made air quotes with her fingers, “. . . let everybody get on with living,” she paused just long enough to be sure every single person in the room was hanging on her next words, “never once, in twelve years as mayor, got around to paying the town’s licensing fees, municipal loan payments, or pension fund contributions to the state. ”
The more financially savvy people in the room gasped. Everyone else stared questioningly at those who’d reacted with alarm.
Sunny finished with, “Had Bonnie Watson not asked me to officially audit the town’s books the second she got her hands on them and had she not made a series of emergency filings with the state as quickly as she did, this town would’ve been subject to penalties and fines that would have bankrupted Cobbler Cove. ”
Shocked silence filled the room.
Sunny continued, “It was only Bonnie Watson’s swift and transparent action to rectify over a decade of gross financial dereliction by Lucas Shoemacher that saved all of you from a whole lot more folks in windbreakers descending upon this town.”
That sent a number of eyebrows upward.
Sunny continued implacably, “And while she was saving all your hides, she kept your water clean, your roads graded and potholes fixed, and she found the money to staff your new fire station. She did all of it with no ‘man-in-office leader’ to tell her what to do or how to do it, and with no thanks from a soul.”
Sunny looked around at the crowd with her disappointed mother expression and a number of people squirmed uncomfortably in their seats.
She continued, “I’ve examined the ledgers in depth.
The lights you all like having on and electricity for your TV’s, she’s the reason you have power.
The water that comes out of your faucet when you turn the tap is because of Ms. Watson.
The ambulance that comes now when you call 911 exists because she found a way to fund it.
The fire department you’ve finally got back was paid for by Bonnie Watson spending hours on the phone with the county and state, begging for emergency grants and scraping together every extra penny she could find in the mess Lucas Shoemacher made of this town’s finances. ”
Into the heavy silence, Sunny said quietly, “I guarantee she hasn’t done all that just by pouring coffee and opening the mail. She has singlehandedly held this whole town together with her own two hands.”
She felt the mood in the room beginning to shift and decided to go ahead with the part of her speech she’d been unsure of actually saying out loud to a bunch of hostile locals. “And as for not digging up the past . . .”
She turned around to look at Tolliver scowling at her from his podium in the front of the room.
She smiled at him the way she smiled at account ledgers with something to hide.
“I’ve learned something in my line of work, Mr. Tolliver.
When a man tells me the very last thing I ought to do is look too closely at anything, when he calls peace and quiet preferable to revealing hidden truths, the question I am trained always, always to ask next is what he’d rather I didn’t find. ”
She held his angry gaze. “I’ve no idea whether you’ve got anything to hide.
But I do know your good friend whose job you’re trying to take had a great deal to hide.
Lucas Shoemacher was at best grossly negligent as mayor, and possibly, criminally fraudulent.
I’ll need permission from the town council you sit on to request a subpoena for the full records of the various private accounts Mayor Shoemacher opened and illegally ran the town out of. ”
Voices called out from behind her, “Let’s see the full records!” and “What are hiding for Lucas, Dale?”
Tolliver blustered a bit, and Sunny turned her back on him to address the crowd again.
“I’m speaking tonight not to point the finger of accusation at your mayor but to make the point that Dale Tolliver is trying to tell all of you not to look closely at anything.
That’s there’s nothing to see here. That all of you should bury your heads in the sand and not question anything that’s happened in this town. ”
She felt a tide of angry energy rising in the room. As much as they all wanted peace and quiet, and no matter how tired they were, they also realized they’d been hoodwinked by Lucas Shoemacher, and that Dale was trying to pull more of the same wool over their eyes.
Sunny said evenly, “I’ve spent my whole life around men who told me not to ask any questions and not to look for the truth.
” She took a deep breath and said honestly, her voice raw even to her own ears, “And it cost me everything to believe them. Trust me when I say it will end up costing all of you much more than you’re willing to pay if you believe people who tell you that. ”
A fair number of people in the crowd nodded knowingly at her confession.
She said with a sad smile, “I get it. You’re tired of grieving. You’re tired of the genuinely heavy burden this town has carried together for the past five years. Heck, you’re tired of being tired.”
That got some smiles.
“But don’t let your exhaustion blind you. Do you really want to hand over the keys to this city to anyone who’s promising never to tell you the truth? You’ve had a mayor for the past twelve years who hasn’t told you the truth, and he darned near bankrupted this town.”
“That’s lies! Every bit of it!” Tolliver bellowed.
Sunny spun around to face him. “I’ll send you a copy of my auditor’s report as soon as I get home tonight. And while I’m at it, with the acting mayor’s permission, I’ll send it to the Cobbler Cove newspaper to publish for everyone in town to see for themselves.”
She looked over at Bonnie whose eyes twinkled, but her voice was even when she said, “That’s an excellent idea. As acting mayor, I authorize release of your full audit.”
Dale’s jaw sagged.
Sunny looked back at him. “You called her a little lady before.” Sunny’s voice didn’t rise.
It dropped, which her children could have warned the room was far scarier.
“I’ve been called worse by better men than you, and I’ll tell you the one thing it taught me.
Little lady is the language a man reaches for when he’s run out of good arguments to make.
It’s the white flag waved by a man who wishes women would just smile and not use the brains God gave them. ”
That got a laugh and a few amens from women in the room.
Sunny squared her shoulders and looked Tolliver dead in the eyes.
“Bonnie Watson does not need to pour your coffee. What she needs is for the citizens of this town to stop being tired and self-absorbed long enough to notice she’s been silently carrying this entire town on her back the whole time you’ve been strutting around telling everyone a woman isn’t capable of doing it. ”
For one heartbeat the hall held its breath.