Page 43 of My One and Only

“No problem. I get it.” Don pushed away from Cam’s desk. “Give me a buzz when you’re ready to discuss them.”

“Will do. I’ll take notes as I go.”

“Great.” Don slapped his hand on Cam’s desk. “See you later.”

“Yeah. Later,” Cam said, pressing his fingers to the left side of his head.

As soon as Don left the office, Cam pulled a notebook out of a desk drawer and began reading the first application. He took notes as he read, then put that application aside and reached for the next one.

After he’d examined all the applications, he leaned back in his chair and stared at them, frowning. He glanced over at Jo and saw her scribbling something in her own notebook. Then she tapped a number into her phone and waited. She murmured something into the phone, listened for a moment, then said, “Thanks,” and hung up.

Once she was off the phone, he opened his mouth to ask her opinion. Closed it again. She was his bodyguard, not his business consultant. But Jo had a good head on her shoulders. She’d been one of the smartest kids in their high school class.

So he cleared his throat. Waited until Jo looked up at him, her brow furled with concern. “You need something, Cam?”

Drawing in a breath, he said, “Yeah. I do. Can I ask you for a favor?”

“Of course,” she said, swiveling her chair to face him. “What do you need?”

“These are job applications that Don wants me to look at. He’s the one in charge of hiring, but he asked me to look them over. I think the problems with our new construction have freaked him out and he wants to make sure we don’t make the same mistake with new hires. Can you tell me what you think of these applications?”

“Sure,” she said, standing up and walking to his desk. “You have specific questions, or do you want me to look at the applications and tell you what I think.”

“I’d like you to take a look at them. See if you see what I did.”

“Okay.” She tapped the manila folder. “They in here?”

“Yeah.” He handed her the folder. “Take a look.”

Jo carried the folder over to her desk, sat down and opened it. She read the first application. Set it aside and read the second one. Frowned and set it aside. There were six applications in the folder, and she read through all of them. Finally she swiveled in her chair to face him.

“All six of these people worked for the same company. Had the same foreman. Why are they all leaving at once? That was the first thing that I noticed.”

Cam nodded. “I noticed that, too.”

“I know you didn’t call the company. Do you think Don did?”

“No clue. He should have, but I have no idea if he actually did.”

Jo tapped the folder. “Does it seem unusual that six people from the same company would be fired at the same time? Or resigned at the same time?”

“Yeah, that’s what I noticed. Questioned.”

“You gonna call them?”Jo asked.

Cam stared down at the folder. “I don’t think so. They all reported to the same person. I’m gonna call him. Get his take.”

“He may not give you a straight answer,” she said. “If any of them were fired for cause, the guy in charge might not want to say anything. He could be worried about a lawsuit.”

“I think I can get around that,” Cam said. “We’ve had our own problems. If it sounds like the guy’s giving me the runaround, I’ll tell him what happened here. That might make him more comfortable telling me the truth.”

Jo nodded. “Good plan. Give him a call.”

Cam noted the name of the supervisor of two of the men and called him. “Johnson,” a gruff male voice said.

“Hi, Mr.Johnson,” Cam said. “This is Cameron Pierce at PK Builders. I have applications on my desk for two of your former employees.” He gave Johnson the names, then added, “As well as four other men that worked for your company. I’m wondering if you could give me some details about why your two men left your company. The rest of them, too, if you know. We’ve had some problems with our own workers, and I don’t want to get into the same kind of bad situation with new hires.”

There was a long beat of silence on the line. Finally, Johnson said, “We usually don’t give out information on why we let a worker go. But this situation…” His voice trailed off. “I don’t want to damage their abilities to get another job, but we had serious issues with a number of men. They were fired. Sloppy work. Materials that weren’t up to our specifications. And we’re pretty sure someone was getting kickbacks for the difference in price of materials with our specifications and the specs of the material that was actually used.”

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