Chapter 2: What the Contract Actually Says
“Did someone get in?” I asked.
“Not that I can see,” Mara said. “The request is still pending. The folder hasn’t been opened or changed. I’m preserving the log, and I’ll verify it against the access records in the morning.”
Across the kitchen, Dad turned off the faucet. He had been washing two mugs that were already clean.
“Do you know who sent it?”
“Only that it came through Ashford’s finance office. I’m not putting a person’s name on it until I can confirm one.”
I looked at the clock above Dad’s stove. Less than an hour had passed since we walked out of the Grand Belmont. It felt as if I had lived an entire other life inside that hour.
“Leave the request pending,” I said.
“That’s the plan. Come to my office in the morning. Bring the license agreement and the reports you’ve been comparing. Nothing from Ashford that you aren’t authorized to hold.”
“I’ll be there.”
When I ended the call, Dad set the mugs upside down on a towel.
“Could it be Fiona’s father?” he asked.
“It could be a finance employee doing an ordinary job.”
“That wasn’t what I asked.”
“I know.”
Dad dried his hands. His new suit jacket was folded over the back of a kitchen chair, the shoulders keeping their shape even there.
“I meant what I said in the car,” he told me. “Don’t let what happened tonight decide what you do tomorrow.”
“I won’t.”
He gave me a look that said he intended to find out.
I slept in the room I had grown up in. My old desk still bore a pale circular mark where I had once left a soldering iron too close to the wood. I had learned a great deal at that desk, including that saying you could fix something was different from finding out what was broken.
By morning, Fiona had called twice more. I put my phone face down without listening to the messages. I owed her an honest conversation, but I couldn’t have it while I was still furious enough to mistake every sentence for a verdict.
Mara’s office occupied two rooms above a pharmacy. She had represented the holding company that owned Bennett Systems since I first needed someone to explain why a good technical idea and a sound contract were not the same thing. She had never seemed impressed by the fact that my company’s name was on the door.
She slid a copy of the Ashford agreement across her desk.
“Before we discuss the finance request,” she said, “tell me what you think this gives you.”
“A right to examine the records tied to our license.”
“And?”
I studied the page. I knew the answer she wanted me to say aloud.
“Not control of Ashford Industries.”
“Correct.”
The holding company owned Bennett Systems. It also licensed Ashford the diagnostic firmware built into one of its elevator-control product lines. The firmware recorded faults and let trained technicians read what a unit had done when something went wrong. It was a critical piece of Ashford’s product, but the agreement did not give me the keys to its factories, its bank accounts, or its boardroom.
Mara tapped a paragraph near the bottom.
“You can request records relevant to whether they’re meeting the license requirements. Testing, approved versions, service documentation. There are conditions and procedures. You cannot demand every document in their finance office because you’re worried about their loan.”
“I know.”
“Then I’m going to say the other part.”
I leaned back.
“There is no switch you can pull to stop their equipment.”
“I didn’t ask for one.”
“Last night, you watched people humiliate your father. I’m checking that you understand the difference between having a right and wanting one.”
For a moment, I wanted to tell her how little she understood about last night. But she was the person I had called because she would say precisely this.
“Even if there were a switch,” I said, “I wouldn’t use it to make a point.”
Mara waited.
“Technicians need those diagnostics to service units. Customers need those technicians. And the people building the modules need their paychecks. I’m not going to put any of them between me and Richard Ashford.”
“Good,” she said. “If there’s an actual safety issue, we deal with it through the agreement and the appropriate independent people. We don’t turn it into a threat at a negotiating table.”
I nodded. There was nothing else to add.
Mara pulled up the access log on her screen. The request had been made using an Ashford finance-office account. It identified a restricted Bennett Systems folder containing records for licensed-product reviews, but the account had no permission to open it. No permission had been granted, and no file had been touched.
“That tells us where the request came from,” she said. “It doesn’t tell us why. I’ve asked our administrator to retain the logs and leave the folder as it is.”
“Could finance have a legitimate reason?”
“Possibly. If they do, we can route the request properly. No guessing, and no quiet exception.”
That made two of us trying to get into the same records from opposite sides of the contract. I could not yet tell whether it meant anything.
We turned to the reports I had brought. For six months, I had compared Ashford’s financial statements with internal summaries I received through authorized work on the licensed product. I had kept a list of figures that didn’t reconcile and dates when descriptions of the same work changed. Some differences might have had ordinary explanations. Others had survived every explanation I could think of.
Mara placed one statement beside my notes.
“This amount appears under a different heading here,” she said.
“Yes.”
“Do you know it’s false?”
“No.”
“Do you know which report used the wrong classification?”
“No.”
“Then write down both questions. Don’t write down an accusation.”
I crossed out a sentence in my notes and replaced it with two questions.
Mara opened her calendar.
“Ashford’s loan review is in twelve days. According to the notice we received concerning the licensed product line, the company has to provide updated information to its lender by then. We don’t know what decision the lender will make.”
“Richard’s investors were at the wedding,” I said.
“They were guests at a wedding. We are not calling them.”
“I wasn’t suggesting it.”
“I know. But that deadline can make an incomplete report look like an answer if we rush.”
My phone lit up with a call from the Grand Belmont. I let it ring. Beside the caller’s name, I could almost see the platinum band lying on the white tablecloth.
“There’s something else,” I said. “I need to know whether Fiona and I are legally married.”
Mara’s expression didn’t change.
“Tell me what happened with the paperwork.”
“The officiant said she would bring us the license after dinner. We exchanged vows earlier, but I never signed anything afterward. I don’t know whether Fiona did.”
“I’ll check directly and discreetly. Until we know, don’t make assumptions about it.”
She called the officiant while I stepped into the hall. I stood by a window overlooking a delivery truck parked below and remembered Fiona reaching for my hand after our vows. At the time, I had thought I understood what we had promised each other. By the end of dinner, I understood how little I knew about what she would defend when it mattered.
Mara opened the door a few minutes later.
“The officiant still has the unsigned license,” she said. “I’ll confirm the record through the proper office, but on the facts we have, no marriage paperwork was completed. I’ll send you my advice after that check.”
I sat down. I hadn’t realized I was holding my breath.
“The hotel has been calling about the remaining bookings,” I said.
“I can have my assistant get an itemized account. You and Fiona can each address what you authorized without turning the staff into messengers. Don’t ask anyone there about the guests.”
“Please make sure the people scheduled to work are paid for the shifts they were promised.”
“We’ll ask what the contracts provide and handle your part of it,” she said.
I left the ring where it was. Getting it back could wait.
At Dad’s house that afternoon, he had changed into work clothes and was fixing the loose hinge on a cabinet door. He listened while I explained what Mara had found, stopping me only once.
“The firmware doesn’t make the elevator run?” he asked.
“No. It helps a technician see the fault history.”
“Then taking it away would leave somebody trying to diagnose a problem with less information.”
“Yes.”
Dad turned the screwdriver another quarter turn.
“People used to think I liked taking things apart,” he said. “What I liked was getting them safely back to the person waiting on the other side of the door.”
He closed the cabinet. It sat square in its frame.
My phone rang before I could answer him. Mara’s name appeared.
“We’ve verified the office number associated with the access request,” she said. “Elena Ruiz, an Ashford finance officer, has asked to speak privately. She says she made the request.”
“Did she say why?”
“She says the folder may help her establish which version of a report we received. I told her we won’t change access or accept documents through an unofficial channel. She still wants to talk, with counsel present.”
Dad watched my face.
“Set up the call,” I said.
Mara put Elena through a few minutes later. Her voice was low and controlled, but she did not waste time introducing herself twice.
“I requested access because the records I can see inside Ashford don’t match the copy your team was sent,” she said.
“Which records?” I asked.
“I’d rather identify them when Ms. Chen is with us and we can preserve what each of us has properly.”
“That’s fine,” Mara said. “For now, don’t move or alter anything. Tell us what made you reach out today.”
Elena was quiet long enough that I checked the screen to see whether the call had dropped.
“The reports you’ve been looking at are incomplete,” she said.
May you like
“Financial reports?”
“Not just those.” Her voice tightened. “One of the missing reports concerns equipment already in service.”
