Monahan 01 Options (11 page)

“Top of the mornin’ to ya Irish,” I said.

She looked up from the computer terminal. “And the rest of the day to you,” she sang back. I stood in front of the desk.

“Harold said you needed my help.”

“Sit down and I’ll fill you in.”

I sat on the edge of the guest chair. It didn’t feel right to be in Ev’s office and I felt myself getting a little edgy.

“I was sorry to hear about Evelyn. We’re going to miss her. Can you let me know when the funeral is so I can make sure I’m around?”

“Sure. Nothing’s been set yet but I’ll let you know. Let’s get a coffee and go down to my office. You can fill me in there.”

She nodded and I knew she understood. Grace stood up and came around the front of the desk. She slung her arm over my shoulder and the two of us jammed our way through the door. She had on dungarees. Yes, dungarees. I know they went out of style in the fifties, but Grace still had an original pair. Dark blue jeans, wide legs, cuff rolled up three times. She was wearing a plaid, flannel shirt which was unbuttoned and showed a man’s sleeveless undershirt underneath. What a fashion statement. A woman after my own heart. She probably wore white gym socks too. Grace had thick hair as white as snow and she wore it cropped short. I think she cut it herself.

She turned her head and smiled at me. “So, what’s three miles long and has an IQ of thirty-seven?” she asked. The jokes were starting.

I smiled back. “I don’t know.”

“A St. Patrick’s Day Parade.” We both laughed. Grace was a lot like me and she laughed the hardest at her own jokes. She had toned the jokes down a bit to take into consideration people’s feelings in the new millennium. Her only politically incorrect jokes now were aimed at her own heritage, the Irish.

We bumped into the kitchenette door and I let Grace go in first. “Age before beauty,” I joked.

We caught up on old times while we waited for a fresh pot of coffee to brew. When I opened the fridge to get some cream for the coffee, I noticed there was still an awful lot of leftover food in the fridge from the Thursday party. I plugged my nose in disgust.

“Disgusting,” I said. “Why doesn’t anyone ever clean this fridge out?” I felt sorry for the person who had to do it. It wasn’t so long ago that it had been one of my jobs but now that I was among the high and mighty, I felt the task was below me. I slammed the door and handed Grace the cream.

“Still smoking?” Grace asked me.

“Hardly at all,” I replied and started craving a cigarette. “Have you started up again?” Grace was forever quitting and starting. She said the reason she quit was to save money so she only smoked OP’s. Other people’s.

“I quit last week. But I’ll have one of yours. Come on.” We headed back to my office.

When we were settled in my office puffing away, I popped the question.

“So. What’s the dirt? What’s going on?”

Grace took her feet off my desk, put her cigarette out and put on her serious face. The joking time was over. Down to business.

“There’s a slight problem with the stock option system. As you know, because Harold told me you pointed it out, the information on Evelyn’s system doesn’t jive with the numbers that were approved by the board.”

“Right,” I agreed. “Evelyn obviously input the wrong information. You know how these guys work. Nothing’s final. They fuck around with the numbers so much I’m surprised anything in Ev’s system is right.”

“Tell me what the procedure is. What information do you give Ev?” she asked.

“Okay. After a board meeting, Didrickson gives me the lists of numbers that have been approved.”

Grace interrupted me. “Bear with me here. Where does Harold get the lists?”

“Rick Cox has responsibility for producing the recommendations to the board. When he hands out the papers at the board meetings to the directors, those are the numbers they approve.”

“What do the lists usually contain?” Grace asked.

“They have the names, the number of options to be granted, the exercise date and the expiry date.” I turned around to open my file cabinet. “I’ll show you what they look like.”

“Yeah, I know what they look like. Harold gave me the copies you gave him.”

I shut the file drawer.

“Grace, I’m not sure how much you know or how much detail you want,” I said.

“I’m just trying to get in my mind a step by step procedure. So, Rick Cox presents the numbers and board approves them. Then what?” she asked. I wondered if she had asked Harold these questions.

Before I could answer, Grace said, “I’ve asked Harold, I’m just checking for your understanding of the process.” Jesus, she was scary. She could read my mind. I better not think too much about those dungarees.

“Then what? Um, after the board meeting Harold gives me the approved list with his initials on it. If it’s initialled, it’s the official list, as far as I’m concerned.”

Grace thought for a moment. “How soon after the board meeting does he give you the list?”

“Depends. If the meetings are held out of town, he might give me the lists at the meeting because I end up carrying all the papers back to Toronto. If the meetings are held here, I usually get the list the next day or so when he does the minutes.”

“What do you do with the lists?” she asked me.

“A couple of things. I’ll make a copy and give it to Ev so she can enter the information in the system. I make a copy for myself because I have to get stock exchange approval for all options granted and I use it as my working copy. The original I keep on the file for the specific board meeting.”

“In your experience, did Ev enter the information on the system in a timely manner?”

Whoa. In my experience. Grace was starting to sound like a prosecuting attorney.

“In my experience,” I mimicked her, “Ev did her work as fast as you could give it to her.”

“Listen Grace,” I continued. “I’m sure there’s a reasonable explanation for what’s happened here. If we could get into Ev’s paper files, I’m sure we’d find that the information on the system matches up to some paper. Ev just got a wrong list. One that Rick had created and then changed his mind.”

“Kathleen, we opened Ev’s files this morning. There’s no paper back-up for the information on the system.”

“So her filing abilities were like mine. Non-existent,” I stated. “Big deal.”

“Her files appear to be immaculate. She notes on each list the date and time she’s entered the information. Her last paper back up is the same one you have on file.”

I digested this little tidbit and wondered how much more Grace was going to share with me.

“So? What happened?” I asked and waited to see if she’d answer. There were a lot of things that Grace didn’t share with me and rightly so. I usually figured it out though but I wondered if she’d help me along this time.

“The computer log shows that those correct entries were made the day after the last board meeting,” she blurted out.

“And?”

“And the computer log shows that the more recent entries making the changes were made on the night Ev died.”

Wow, I was impressed. Our computer system had a log? And it had information? Technology at its finest. But I started to get indigestion as I digested this tidbit.

“Is our computer log smart enough to show who made the entries?” I asked. I was treading gingerly here.

“Yes,” she said slowly.

“Are you going to share that with me?” I asked.

“No. Sorry. I have to finish my investigation. Can you grab all your files relating to stock option grants and bring them down to Ev’s office? I’d like to compare your lists to the ones in Evelyn’s files. I think we should do a complete check.”

Yuck, I thought. One of my favourite things, going through files. Especially my files which were always in a mess. I think I’d rather clip my nails in the Cuisinart than go through files.

“Sure,” I said. “Give me a few minutes, I’ll meet you down there.” Grace stood up and grabbed another cigarette from the pack on the desk before making her exit.

“This should be fun,” she said and grinned. Sadist, I thought.

chapter fifteen

The next couple of hours were very painful. Painful in the sense that Grace, thorough by nature and career choice, showed her true colours about “checking” my files against Ev’s. She had her auditor’s hat on and was all business. Because my files contain a jumble of papers in no particular order we decided to use Ev’s as the starting point.

Evelyn’s files were neat and orderly with all the papers ordered by date with the most recent information on top. All documents in the files were neatly punched with two holes in the top of each page and secured in the file with metal clips. I never believed in using those metal clips because I considered them a hazard. When a clip caught you under the fingernail and gouged out a hunk of skin, your files ended up with blood all over the papers. Not a pretty sight.

Grace was methodically taking each sheet of information from Evelyn’s files and matching it to one in mine. This was time consuming because I had to rifle through at least three inches of paper each time to find the matching sheet. Grace would then check the computer system to see if the information was the same. A simple three-step process but because of the shape of my files it was taking too long. And it was embarrassing. Thankfully Grace didn’t comment.

By six-thirty Grace was satisfied that the process I had described could be proven. I got the final numbers from Didrickson, gave them to Ev, and she entered it in the system. Easy. Grace was also satisfied that all stock option grants that had been approved by the board of directors over the last three years were safely entered in the computer.

“Good, good,” Grace was mumbling to herself. She was scrolling through the information on the computer on a final check.

“We’re finished?” I asked. She kept her attention on the computer screen and nodded. I lit a cigarette and took a deep drag. I was leaning back in my chair stretching my neck when I heard a light tapping on the door behind me. I turned around and Ray was standing there with a bunch of papers in his hands.

“Raymond,” I said. “To what do we owe this pleasure? Good to see you up and about at this time of day.”

“Ha ha,” he deadpanned. “I’ve been up since eight when Grace called me. All these early morning wake-up calls are ruining my beauty sleep.”

“Ah, the important life of a system administrator. Doesn’t it feel good to be needed?” I joked.

“Yeah, just great. At least the system wasn’t down this morning,” he said.

I looked over at Grace who was still staring at the computer screen. “Grace,” I said to get her attention. Boy, could she focus. She took a couple of more seconds and then looked up.

“You’ve got that information for me?” she asked Ray.

“All right here,” he said as he passed her the papers. I held out my hand to take the papers but he passed them directly to Grace. Damn.

Grace started flipping through the sheets of paper which were stapled in the corner. “Educate me,” she said. “What is all this?”

Ray walked around to the other side of the desk and I made myself small in the chair. After the last couple of painful hours I felt I deserved some compensation. If I sat here quietly I might be lucky enough to pick up some information.

Grace ignored me and started firing questions at Ray.

“This indicates what?” she asked and pointed to a line of text on the page. I thought about leaning forward and trying my reading upside-down trick but thought better of it. I had to keep myself invisible.

“That’s the user i.d.,” Ray said. “The numbers beside it indicate the date and time the user was on the system and the line underneath shows how long their session lasted.”

“What’s this?” Grace asked.

Ray studied the information beside Grace’s finger on the piece of paper. “That shows which part of the system the user was logged onto.”

“For example?” Grace asked.

“For example, if the user was using the accounting part of the system or the employee information system, these numbers indicate that,” Ray said. “So, this information shows Ev was logged onto the computer, the date and time, and here it shows that she was using the stock option system.”

“How far back does this information go?” she asked.

“The current system keeps it for a year. We have information stored off site for all the previous years.”

“So you can tell every time a person uses the system?” Grace asked Ray.

“Of course. There’s all sorts of information in the background that’s transparent to the user. If I needed to, I could find out exactly what keys they punched while they used the computer.”

“Good. That’s what I needed to know. You told me this morning on the phone that the system showed that Rick Cox was on the system on Thursday night. Show me where the log confirms that.”

Ooh. So the culprit was Rick Cox. I didn’t know what to make of this little tidbit. First of all, I thought, Rick Cox using a computer was totally unbelievable. Out of the question. We may be a high tech company, but none of our executives were users. Well, maybe they used scotch but they certainly didn’t use computers. In fact, one of the biggest laughs we had was when Chris Oakes was interviewed for the Globe & Mail business section and the picture that went along with the story showed him sitting in front of his computer, supposedly working away. The only keys he punched were on his telephone to use voice mail. Oakes could talk good computer. Cox on the other hand was a total technophobe. He had respect for computers because they meant money and money was his business. But to actually use a computer was beneath him. And probably rightly so. Unless you were a secretary or a finance type, using computers to generate information or gather information was below an executive. They had people to do that for them. Rick Cox using our internal computer system was totally unbelievable. He would have a user i.d. because everyone in the company did. But Rick actually logging on and creating or generating information? No way. He’d call someone at home and get them out of bed before he did that. I wonder if Grace understood this.