Chapter 55 #2
Letha gave a sad smile. She sat erect on the edge of the sofa, shoulders back, hands folded in her lap, almost like she was on a witness stand.
“Did you notice a change in Mama, like over the year or so before she died?” Therese asked.
“Oh yes. It was kinda gradual like. After she retired from the drugstore, she didn’t have to make deposits and do your uncle’s banking no more, but she still kept coming in on Fridays.
She didn’t believe in direct deposit, so she’d bring in her social security check herself, and she didn’t like ATM machines either, so she’d withdraw whatever cash she wanted, like for what she called her ‘fun money.’
“But then, over that last year or so, she’d come in on other days, and she was withdrawing more cash than I’d ever known her to take out. I kinda teased her about it a little bit, but she said she was sending money to a preacher who was doing the Lord’s work out in Texas.”
Scotty spoke up, showing her the printout of Mary Helen’s banking transactions for the prior two years. “It looks like she almost always banked with you, is that right?”
“Yes, sir. She was kinda particular about who knew her business. If I was out sick, or like when I had foot surgery year before last, she’d try to wait until I was back at work.”
“Did you ever tell her you were concerned about the frequency or amounts of her withdrawals?” he asked.
“I surely did. That was against bank policy, but I was that worried about her drawing down her retirement nest egg,” Letha said.
“It wasn’t like Mary Helen at all, or the Mary Helen I’d been knowing.
She was always a saver, not a spender. Because she was a widow, and had been a single mom for so long, like me. We had that in common.”
“What did Mama say when you told her you were worried?” Therese asked.
“Oh, she’d kinda giggle and tell me that Texas preacher told her she would receive showers of blessings for all the good works she was helping him do.
One time she brought in this little ceramic praying hands statue thing he’d sent her.
She wanted me to have it and said I should watch his programs like she was doing. ”
Arletha rolled her eyes. “I told her my money was staying right here in Savannah, Georgia, where it could bring blessings to my own community.”
“Ms. Carter, did you express your concerns to any of your supervisors at the bank?” Scott asked.
“Just call me Letha. And yes. I told Brenda Windham, she was our head teller. I showed her the amounts and frequency of Mary Helen’s withdrawals, and how worried I was about that.”
“What did she say?”
“Well, she suggested I write a memo with my concerns and email it over to our assistant branch manager. Which I did. But she never did respond. Which I later found out was because she was getting a promotion and going to work at our branch out by the mall.”
Scott’s expression brightened at Letha’s mention of an email.
“Do you have a copy of that correspondence?”
“I have a file folder of the emails I sent that woman,” she said. “And the ones she sent back, which I didn’t like the tone of.” She turned to Therese.
“That lady talked to me like I was a kid right outta high school. Condescending, that’s the only word for it. She talked down to me, and I don’t mind telling you it rubbed me all kinds of wrong.”
“We only found out about all this bank business after one of my uncle’s customers, who also works at the bank, tipped off Uncle Keith,” Therese said. “Phil Garner? Do you know him?”
“I did know Mr. Garner. He was a senior vice president and a nice gentleman,” Letha said. “But he’s gone from the bank now. Saw the handwriting on the wall and took early retirement. Talk is the bank is fixin’ to get acquired by some big outfit from North Carolina.”
“I’ve heard that talk around town too,” Scotty said. “Did you talk to any other supervisors at the bank about Mary Helen?”
“I tried,” Letha said, her voice crackling with agitation.
“But Brenda took me aside and told me it would be best for my career if I just let it go. I asked her what she meant by that, and she said because we were fixin’ to get acquired, management would be looking at what she called ‘redundancies.’ And employees who made waves would be the first to get the axe.
Sure enough, I got laid off not long after that. ”
“That sucks,” Therese said. “But do you think your getting laid off had anything to do with letting your supervisors know about Mom’s medical issues?”
“No. I think they decided to cut loose all us old-timers so they could get some young kids in there who would work for cheaper and who wouldn’t ask questions or rock the boat,” Letha said. “My daughter says all of us should file a lawsuit for age discrimination, but my nerves can’t take that.”
“Were you working the day Mary Helen came in to talk about taking out a new mortgage on this house?” Scott asked.
“Oh yes. It wasn’t long before Mary Helen got too sick to get out. She came in one day and told me she was wanting to take out a new mortgage on her house.”
Letha clasped and unclasped her hands. “She was so proud about paying off the note on this house. Worked and scrimped and saved because she didn’t want that mortgage hanging over her head, or her daughters’ heads, after she was gone.”
“We burned the mortgage in the grill, right in this backyard,” Therese said sadly.
“I know that’s right. ‘Free and clear,’ she told me. ‘I own my house free and clear. It’s mine now, not the bank’s.’”
“Did you try to warn her against taking out a new mortgage?” Scott asked.
“Yes, sir, I did. I even sent her over to see Mr. Garner, because she knew him from him being a customer at the drugstore, but he couldn’t talk her out of it. Her mind was that made up.”
Scott had been making notes on his yellow legal pad. He looked up at Arletha Carter.
“Did you think Mary Helen’s mental capacity was declining?”
“Yeahhh.” Letha sighed. “I did. It made me so sad to see her like that. Tell the truth, it scared me some too, because she wasn’t that much older than me.”
“Did you specifically mention that you thought her mental capacity was impaired when you wrote those emails to your supervisors?” Scott asked.
“I think I did. I printed out all my emails to and from my bosses, before my last day of work,” Letha said. “I figured as soon as I was gone, they’d delete everything from the system.”
Therese felt her spirits rise. “You said you have a file folder full of that correspondence?”
“At home. Yeah, I do.”
“How about Hoot Wooten, the bank president,” Therese asked. “Did he see your emails about my mom?”
“Now that I don’t know,” Letha said. “To tell the truth, Mr. Wooten doesn’t really get into day-to-day bank business these days. I think he’s more like public relations.”
She looked from Therese to Scotty Childress. “Are y’all fixin’ to sue the bank over this mess?”
Scotty chose his words carefully. “Right now we’re looking to see what our options are. Ideally, we’d go see Wooten and let him know that we believe the bank was negligent in allowing a woman with cognitive impairment to take out a three-hundred-twenty-five-thousand-dollar loan.”
“Those emails you sent to your supervisors, warning them about what Mama was doing, would you be willing to share those with us?” Therese asked.
Letha chewed on her lower lip for a moment.
“That bank was my family for over forty years. And then they cut me loose with no warning. Not even a going-away lunch on my last day. Yeah, you can have copies of those emails. I would ask you to keep my name out of it, but now I think of it, go ahead on. Right is right, and they did Mary Helen Dunagin wrong. Just like they did me wrong.”