Page 47 of Forgotten Path
“I think you do. I got your message last night, and I spoke to Ralph this morning.”
“I didn’t write ….” She started to deny writing the note but trailed off to look down at her desk. After a moment, she inhaled and raised her head. “What did Ralph say?”
“He told me Dr. Ashland had been out to the worksite multiple times.”
“And?”
“And that Joel was upset about repeated fish kills that may have been localized near the site.”
“Fish and other aquatic life—whelks, oysters, clams, to name just a few of the die-offs,” she clarified in a small voice.
“He also told me he confiscated Joel’s most recent samples.”
She didn’t try to hide her surprise. “When was this?”
“Thursday evening.”
“He must’ve gone over there as soon as he got into town.”
“Likely. What I’m wondering is why?”
She squared her shoulders and placed her hands flat on her desk. “He probably wanted to confront me with them when I met with him on Friday morning.”
He also made no effort to hide his surprise. He leaned back and cocked his head to the side. For some reason, his expression and body language made her think of a bright bird.
“It was you? You called him Friday morning to discuss making a donation to the clinic?”
“Wait, what?” She shook her head. “No. I didn’t call him. We’d already agreed to meet before he opened the clinic for the weekend.”
“Why?”
She gave him a level look and an honest answer. “To talk about what he thought Glazier might be dumping in the water.”
“Did you?”
“Briefly. He was apologetic. He’d said he’d hoped to have evidence—the dead specimens, I’m guessing—but that he didn’t have them.”
“What did you say?”
“I assured him that Gulf Paper takes seriously its obligations to comply with all regulations and to ensure our employees and contractors do as well.” She cringed at the rote, dispassionate company line even as she said it.
“Then what?”
She hesitated, but as her father liked to say, in for a dime, in for a dollar. She’d reached out to this man for a reason; she might as well tell him. “He said he had concerns that the persistent level of some toxin in the water was making people sick. I explained that we’d cleaned up our act. I even told him I’d pull copies of all our old violations and the remediation measures we took. We’re not monsters.”
“And you didn’t offer him a donation? Suggest a little quid pro quo? You know, Joel would stop pushing on the polluted water, and the company would make a generous contribution to the clinic? Maybe something in the neighborhood of fifty thousand dollars?” He watched her face.
She laughed involuntarily, then covered her mouth with her hand. “Sorry, it’s not funny. No, actually, it kind of is. I don’t have the authority to write a check that large. Nobody in the company does.”
“Someone must.”
She considered this for a moment. “Well, sure. The CEO, the CFO—I’m not sure who else. And I wouldn’t be surprised if our financial controls also require board signature. But it’s a moot point. We don’t make donations that big. Nobody in this town does. Have you looked around?”
The comment echoed what Steffi had said when she’d told him about the phone call Joel’d taken. “Someone offered him fifty thousand dollars. They called it a donation, but Dr. Ashland seemed conflicted about it.”
“How can you possibly know that? Did he tell someone before he died?”
“No.” He didn’t elaborate.
