He Let Her Wear His Shirt, So I Froze the Club's Money novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Article Six

Hallie takes the treasurer's seat at an all-male table and wins a vote: payroll is paid, the operating account stays frozen for her audit, and Tawny is barred from the bar. In the books she finds four years of payments she never entered, initialed G.H.

Church was held in the back room of the clubhouse at a long oak table that had been a bowling lane.

Women did not sit at it.

I walked in at one minute to nine with a banker's box on my hip, and thirteen men stopped talking.

The sergeant at arms, a big man with a grey ponytail, stood up and put a hand on the chair at the far end.

"Hallie," he said. "Church is patched members."

"Article six," I said.

He blinked.

"The treasurer holds a seat on any vote that touches club money. I typed those bylaws in 2017, and every man at this table signed them."

I set the box on the table and sat in the empty chair beside Boone.

Boone was staring at the wood in front of him.

Gus sat at the head with his glasses on and his hands folded, and he did not look surprised.

"She's right," he said mildly. "Let her sit."

Nobody argued.

I noticed that. When Gus said let her sit, nobody argued.

"All right," Gus said. "Here's where we are. The operating account is frozen. Friday is payroll. Boone has something to say to the table before we vote."

He nodded at my husband.

Boone stood.

He was wearing his vest with the VP patch over a clean shirt, and he put both hands on the back of his chair.

"Gus wants me to ask Hallie to unlock the account," he said. "I'm not going to."

The room shifted.

"I spent club money on a room in Tulsa," Boone said. "Eleven nights. I let my wife find out in front of everybody, and I lied to her face about it in front of everybody. I don't get to ask her for anything."

"Boone," Gus said gently.

"Let me finish." He looked down the table, man by man. "The card was mine to pay back, and I'll pay it back. Every cent. That's on the record."

I had not expected that.

I kept my face still, because there were thirteen men watching me for a crack.

"Thank you," I said, and I meant exactly that and nothing more.

Then I stood too.

"I'm going to make a motion," I said. "There are three parts."

I took a sheet out of the box.

I had written it at four that morning at my kitchen table, in my own handwriting, with a pencil.

"First. Payroll is paid on Friday, from the payroll account, which the freeze doesn't touch. Nobody's check is late because of this."

A prospect in the corner slumped back.

"Second. The operating account stays frozen until I finish an audit of every card and every transfer since March. I will do it myself, in the garage office, and no one else goes through those files."

"That's a lot of weeks," the sergeant said.

"Then it's a lot of weeks."

"Third," I said. "Tawny Pratt doesn't work the clubhouse bar, and she doesn't wear a club shirt on club property, until the audit is closed."

That one landed hardest.

A few men looked at Boone. A few looked at their boots.

Gus took off his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose.

"Hallie, honey, she's got rent."

"Then pay it from your bar till, Gus. You hired her out of it."

Somebody coughed to hide a laugh.

Gus put his glasses back on.

"Is there a second?"

"Second," said the man beside the sergeant, and I did not know why until I saw him glance at Boone, and I understood he was one of the few men who liked him.

"All in favor."

Hands went up around the table.

Nine. Then ten.

Boone's hand was up too, and I hated that I noticed.

"Opposed," Gus said, and raised his own, almost kindly, and two others followed.

Ten to three.

"Motion carries," Gus said, and tapped the table twice with his knuckles. "Hallie, the garage office is yours. Thank you for keeping this civil."

He smiled at me.

It was the same smile he had given me at my wedding, and for the first time it did not make me feel safe.

I did not know why.

I carried the box out through the clubhouse and across the lot to the garage.

The office had a steel desk, a space heater, and a wall calendar from a tire company.

I locked the door behind me, opened the ledger on my laptop, and started with March.

For three hours I did the work I had always done and thanked nobody for.

I matched cards to receipts and receipts to jobs.

Everything lined up, line after line.

At twelve-forty, I found a line I had never entered.

It was a recurring payment on the first of every month, for twenty-one hundred dollars, to a place called Meadow Pines Care.

It went back four years.

I did not know what Meadow Pines was.

I had never typed that name into this system.

In the corner of the scanned approval, in blue ink, were two small initials that I had seen ten thousand times on ten thousand pages.

G.H.

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