Falcon Song: A love story (13 page)

The next day, she got on-line and dug through the division of corporations at the state and found the name of the principle owner. It was actually a corporation owned by a corporation and it took her more than an hour to actually find a name and an address to where tax information was being sent. She wrote a short note, explaining what she’d found and what she believed was going on, included her cell phone number in case this Mr. John Garland had questions and the print outs she’d gotten the night before, and sent them overnight to the address listed.

She knew she’d lose her new job, but she had to blow the whistle on this. She’d never be able to live with herself if she didn’t.

That morning, she was uptight and worked out for longer than usual to try to calm herself. She went in to work and tried to act as normally as possible, but it was hard to treat Kerri like the same, respectable boss she’d thought her yesterday, and Kate kept wondering if Kerri had somehow found that Kate had gotten into her secret information. By the time she got back to the hotel that night, her nerves were shot and she wished she hadn’t worked out for such a long time earlier.

When she opened her eyes the next morning, she was still tired and knew from experience that it was stress that had worn her out and not physical activity. The one good thing about worrying about what was going to happen at work was that she hadn’t been so lonely and homesick last night.

She had exercised and was headed to the shower so she could go get some lunch when her cell phone rang. Wondering how things were at home, she answered it and was surprised it wasn’t her family. A man’s voice with a strong touch of South Texas to it she didn’t recognize said, “Yes, I’m calling for Kate Birch please.”

Thinking it must have been one of the other restaurants she’d applied to, she answered, “This is she.”

Without preamble, the confident, business like voice continued, “Kate, this is John Garland. I own the restaurant you work at. I got an express letter from you this morning. Tell me, do you have any time I could meet with you this afternoon?”

Kate swallowed. “Yes, certainly. I need to be to work at five thirty, but anytime before that I’m free. When did you have in mind?”

“Well, I’m in a plane headed your way. How would say one thirty be?”

“One thirty is fine. Just at the restaurant?”

“No, actually. I’d like to get to the bottom of this before going there and I’m hoping to keep the management there from knowing how I found this out if I can. It might save you some grief. Pick a restaurant near where you are and I’ll meet you. Nothing too elegant. I’d hate to be recognized at someone else’s restaurant.”

“How about the Hojo’s on Seventh and Cavalcade Street?”

“That’ll be fine. One thirty then. I’m mid forties, dark hair and in navy slacks and a white shirt.”

“And I’m nineteen, five eight and have short, dark, curly hair.”

“That young? Fine then, I’ll see you shortly. Thank you for sending this to me, by the way. I appreciate it.”

“No problem, sir. Have a good day.”

“I plan to. See you in an hour or two.”

                                          ***

Jason dropped into a booth across from Cody and took his sunglasses off and tossed them on the table beside his keys. He wasn’t in a good mood, but he had to smile when Cody commented mildly, “You look like hell, Jase. How’s it goin’?”

“It’s goin’. Where’s Scotty?”

“Taking a phone call in the Jeep. How’s it going really?”

“Why do you think I look like hell? Has Scotty heard from her?”

“No. That’s why his phone is glued to his ear. He’s gonna get brain cancer from that thing. We’re going to have to hire him two assistants so he can get half of what Kate got done started. You haven’t heard from her either?”

Jason shook his head and looked away to rub his eyes. The waitress came and Cody ordered for him and Scotty and then waited while Jason ordered and she moved off before he asked, “She still not taking any e-mails?”

“No. Let’s talk about something else. Who’d we get to open for us in Phoenix?”

With an exaggerated drawl, Cody said, “Y’all gotta talk about it sometime, Jase. And you gotta shave and start eating too or you’re gonna dah and we’ll be left hah and drah without a lead guitar.”

“There’s not much to say, Rawlings. She’s been gone for sixteen days without a word.”

Cody didn’t say anything, just looked at him with sadness in his eyes. Finally, he said, “I’m sorry, man.” Jason didn’t answer.

                                          ***

Kate wasn’t sure whether to be thoroughly nervous or not as she waited in the corner of the Hojo’s across the parking lot from her hotel. She didn’t have to wait long to find out. John Garland came in just a minute or two behind her and she decided he wasn’t nervousing in the least. He was probably six feet tall, still slim, handsome and wearing expensive, but conservative clothing.

He came in and sat down around the corner of the table from her and opened a briefcase to take a file out. A server brought water and Kate ordered a chef salad and John simply asked for whatever the special was and a diet Coke and turned back to the folder in front of him. Again without preamble, he asked, “Now, how did you come to find the information you sent me, Kate?”

She explained about coming to work there recently and how she both waited and did books because of her schooling and experience. When he seemed skeptical, she told him about her parents’ restaurant and how her dad had been injured and she’d had to take over.

Their food came, and over the course of the meal, he asked her questions about both what she knew about the goings on at his restaurant and how things were run at the one back home. Eventually, he asked if she thought there were ways to improve the management other than just eliminating the theft and he truly had been respectful and attentive enough that she came right out and told him that yes, there were improvements that could be made and what some of the most pressing were.

They’d been sitting there talking for more than two and a half hours, their dishes long taken away when he finally asked, “Kate, would you be willing to stay on there, working for me, instead of the restaurant without anyone else knowing, and helping me first to get to the bottom of this and then tuning the place up? I’ll pay you well.”

She nodded. “Sure. It needs to be done.”

“Things might get ugly. From just what you’ve sent me there’s more than fifty thousand dollars missing. Somebody’s going to prison and maybe several somebodies. The police will be involved. In fact, I’ve already contacted them. Are you sure?”

She met his eyes. “Mr. Garland, these people are stealing huge amounts of money. Whether I’m involved or not, it has to end. And I’m already there, in a position to garner information. Why wouldn’t I help? Isn’t it my duty as a citizen?”

That made him pause and then smile. “Yes. I guess you’re right. I guess as citizens we should all be trying to rid the world of corruption. Please, call me John.” He put out his hand. “Welcome aboard.”

After another forty minutes of discussing what he wanted her to do and exchanging contact numbers, she happily rushed out to go get ready to go to work. She’d been worrying about losing her job by becoming involved, but it looked like things were going to work out okay after all.

Chapter 13

At first Jason had been sad, and then penitent, but after three weeks of no contact with her, he finally got ticked off. They had another concert that night. A smaller one in a club in Shreveport and Jason fairly raged through the concert with an unbelievable amount of energy, but not a whole lot of real smiling. Cody kept looking at him like he was wondering what was going on, but frankly, Jason didn’t give a damn. After the show, he was still angry and when somebody shoved him outside the restaurant in the lobby of their hotel, Cody caught his arm just in time as Jason went to plow the guy.

That only made Jason angrier and it took Cody hissing in his face, “Can you say lawsuit?” before he finally calmed down and stalked off. He went up to his room, locked himself in and then picked up his guitar and began to play. By two o’clock the next morning, when Cody finally knocked on his door to check on him, he’d written a bitter break up song with a pounding back beat that would probably be an instant hit.

He played it for Cody, who loved it, in spite of the fact he was too full of Jose’ Quervo to really know if he loved it, and then Jason kicked Cody out and spent the next hour writing a ballad about how sorry he was. By the time they hit the road the next morning, Cody was hung over and Jason was too tired to even admit how lonely he was.

                                          ***

It only took four more days of snooping around at night while she was working to find the previous records of the mystery account, and with a few innocent questions to Ben, and some good deductive logic, Kate and the police investigator were able to find that Kerri and one of the cooks both had bank deposits to match the embezzled funds.

The next day, the police came and arrested the two of them and took a ton of evidence. As that all came down, John and his accountant showed up and once the police were gone, John had a meeting with the other employees. After explaining what had happened, he gave the remaining staff a pep talk and then sent them all home except Kate and closed the restaurant for the night.

With the establishment closed, Kate helped the accountant find several different types of financial records to go over with a fine toothed comb and then she and John went around the whole of the restaurant going over policies and practices and even the location of some things that needed changing. When the restaurant opened up the next morning, Kate was in control and there was a brand new set of registers that were programmed to prevent the kind of graft that had been occurring there.

Part of the changes Kate made was to shuffle a couple of the employees around. She promoted a hostess to assistant manager, let one cook go and changed the policy for how tips were shared to be more rewarding across the board. She also streamlined the walkways in the kitchen and reorganized the produce delivery schedule and then tweaked several smaller things. Over the next two weeks, the profitability of that restaurant increased by forty three percent. The only problem was she’d been too busy to get settled into an apartment.

At that point, she had another lunch meeting with John, whom she had come to have the utmost respect for. He was savvy and intelligent, as well as being polite and respectful to his employees. This time the meeting was at his own restaurant in a private banquet room and with his accountant present.

After giving her a firm hand shake, sincere praise, and a ridiculously large check, he revealed that he had seven more restaurants in Texas and Oklahoma and one in California and asked her if she would consider doing this same type of thing in all of the others. Almost in a stupor, she agreed. After all, she didn’t have any roots just at the moment and she had done some honest good here.

She spent another week in Dallas, working out a few more kinks and shipped some of her things home, and then she headed south to Galveston to the next one.

It was a six hour drive across Texas and that was far too much time to think about her life and everyone back home. She tried to listen to the radio, but it seemed like every ten minutes one of Aerie’s songs would come on. She would change the channel every time, but she still spent an inordinate amount of time thinking about Jason. Finally, her song came on and she couldn’t do it. She couldn’t turn it off and she listened to it all the way through and then spent the next hour wiping at her tears and remembering how many good times they had had. By the time she got to Galveston, she had a headache and all the headway she’d made in Dallas as far as trying to get over him was gone with the car exhaust over east Texas.

This time, she moved into a Marriot Courtyard so that at least she could have a bit of a kitchen. That would help when she needed food at odd hours and didn’t want to be out at night, alone, in a town she wasn’t familiar with.

Later, it felt like the gods had conspired against her as she saw Jason on the cover of two different magazines at the grocery store when she went to buy groceries. It took her a long, long time that night to fall asleep, and then she dreamed of him. Of that good day, out by the lake, when that pinky promise had been the sweetest memory of her life. By morning, her heart hurt every bit as much as it had hurt that first morning after Lubbock. She decided to throw herself into her work here, just as she’d done in Dallas to help her forget.

Because she and John didn’t want to have anyone know she was working for him if possible, she put in an application and resume’ at this restaurant just like she had at the last one and then waited to hear back from them.

The day after she got there, for the first time, she had to go and buy bigger clothes. She was almost fourteen weeks along from what she could figure and there was now a small, smooth, rounded bulge where her usually pretty, flat tummy had been. After doing some research on-line, she also made an appointment with a local OB/GYN for a prenatal check up. It made everything seem so much more real and she cried herself to sleep again that night, devastated about what could have been.

After waiting for four days to hear back from the restaurant, she worried that their plan wasn’t going to work and she wouldn’t be hired. She called back to talk to the manager just in case and was relieved when he did, in fact, offer her a job over the phone.

This time, she was only offered a position with the wait staff, and she had to begin working just lunch, but it was enough to get started. This location was better managed than the last one, and she didn’t have access to the financials like she’d had so she had to go with what her gut was telling her as she tried to compare what she was seeing at the restaurant with what she was seeing from the numbers John’s accountant supplied her. At first glance, she didn’t think there was any level of embezzlement going on like there had been in Dallas, but there were a number of things that could be done to improve productivity and cut costs. She also had to wait for almost three weeks to be asked to work the evening shift so she could assess what went on during the dinner rush and after.

Her first prenatal appointment brought mixed emotions. It was incredible to hear her baby’s heart beating so strongly, and talking with the physician about a baby was awesome, but seeing the other women who were there with their husbands made her feel incredibly lonely. For years she had dreamed of having children with Jason and had always imagined it would be such a happy time. To have it come to pass and not have Jason there beside her, even when that had been her decision, was completely depressing.

One night at the hotel, as she came in, the night clerk handed her a package that had come for her that day. It was addressed in Kiersten’s handwriting and as she went up the elevator, she tried to tear through the tape to open it, but had to wait until she got into her kitchen to get a knife. Inside was a note from Kiersten that read. “Hey, y’all. How’s TX? Jason brought me this and asked me to forward it to you. I hope that’s okay. Call me and tell me how Galveston is. I’ve never been there and I’m jealous. Happy birthday. Love you, K”

Her knees were suddenly so weak she had to sit down before she could carefully slide the knife through the tape on the inner box.

There was no note, no jewelry or chocolates, just a tiny glass figurine of a pair of Falcons in flight beside one another. She held it and looked at it almost reverently, until the tears obscured her vision and she pulled the little birds to her heart with a cry of utter anguish.
Oh, Jason, how could you? I’ve tried so hard to forget you.

She’d known her birthday was coming, but she’d tried to ignore it so she wouldn’t be so homesick. Her mother had e-mailed her to ask if she would like her and Kiersten to come down, but Kate had encouraged them not to. Her mother would worry the whole time and would get Jason’s parents to come and check on her dad.

They had settled on sending Kate a care package and honestly, Kate wished she wouldn’t even do that. This year she’d just like forget about her birthday. Her mother’s package would arrive tomorrow like clockwork. There would be no question about it. And she’d cry but she’d feel loved. Jason’s birds made her feel loved, but more than that they made her feel so sad and lonely and full of regret.

At the end of the three and a half weeks, John had her let the manager know what she had been doing and then she and a slightly offended manager spent another week going over her suggestions and making changes. The manager felt somewhat better about her when she explained what had happened to the manager in Dallas and told him she thought he was a great manager after all and had passed that on to John.

By the time the new profit and loss figures came in, she was in San Antonio, but John met with her and gave her another big check. And a report that although it wasn’t as huge a margin, the Galveston restaurant had become fourteen percent more profitable.

John’s home was between San Antonio and Austin and he had two restaurants in each town. Rather than have long conference calls between her and the accountant, they all just met in John’s home office several times while she investigated. She had come to be incredibly comfortable with these two men over the past several weeks and slowly, she was getting to know them and them her.

Mark, the accountant, was married and had three grown children and his wife had MS. He was a Christian and, in fact, when he found out that Kate was wondering where to go to church, he invited her to go with him and his wife to his, which Kate loved. For just that few weeks, she almost felt like part of the congregation.

John wasn’t married, but he had been. He didn’t come right out and say it, but Kate got the impression it had ended early and long ago and that they were not amicable. He had two grown children he hadn’t seen in years and he also didn’t say that he wasn’t very happy with them, but Kate got that impression too.

It was here in San Antonio, before Mark arrived one morning that John asked her casually where her family was. She calmly told him they were in Wye, Oklahoma and then he casually asked why she’d left. For several seconds she wondered what to tell him and finally decided he had earned complete honesty from her. Still trying to sound calm, she said, “I, uh, I had a romance there that went incredibly south and decided it would be better to leave.”

At that, John looked up and met her eyes and then said sadly, “South bound romances can be hell. I learned that the hard way.” He went back to what he was doing and then asked, “Why don’t you ever go back and visit your family? You haven’t been back, have you?”

Kate was mortified when tears filled her eyes, but she still felt like John deserved to know the truth and she turned to him and painfully told her worst secret, “I’m twenty one weeks pregnant, John. I hate to have to admit that I made some really poor decisions, but I did. I also made a decision not to tell the father because I think he’s gotten onto a slippery slope in a really bad direction and I don’t want my child to have to be dragged through the mess I think he’s headed into. That being said, he’d never walk away if he knew he had a child.” She shrugged and wiped at a stray tear. “I had to leave. I had to hide the fact that I’m expecting. And I’m going to have to keep hiding it. Otherwise this child will be forced to deal with the world at its worldliest. It may not have been very honest, but I felt like I had to leave.”

After a long moment, he said, “Well, Kate. Sometimes it isn’t very fun, but we all have to do what we feel is best. Especially if there’s a child involved. How are you doing? Are you hanging in there?”

She nodded and gulped back a sob. When she could speak, she said, “When I’m busy. If I get too much time to think, I’m a wreck, but working for you has helped.”

“Good. Because I owe you big. If you need something, let me know.”

“Thanks.”

That’s all that was said at the time, but a couple days later, John handed her an insurance application with her name filled into the top and said, “I added health insurance to your employee benefits. You and the baby will be covered. Finish filling that in and give it to Gwen. She’ll see it gets processed.”

Kate was surprised and didn’t know what to say so she simply said, “Thank you, John. I appreciate that.”

“Well, you’ve earned it. And children are precious. They need to be taken good care of.” He sat back down at his big desk and muttered, “I failed miserably with my two. The least I can do is insure yours.”

To this Kate said, “I’m sure you didn’t fail, John. As good a man as you are, I’ll bet they turned out fine.”

John shook his head and sighed. “You’d lose Kate. A good father can’t overcome a bad mother. Not in this world. They’ve both turned out to be as shallow and selfish and lazy as… Let’s just leave it that they were never very well disciplined. I tried. But I did fail. They’re not very respectable people.”