Chapter 20 - The Return Call
Charles arranged Blair’s interview for Friday morning. She joined by video from a conference room in Rotterdam, with an independent attorney sitting beside her. Her face looked thinner than I remembered, and the sharp confidence she had worn at the warehouse gates was gone.
The audit committee members sat around the boardroom table. Grace led the questions. I was there to explain how the system had worked on the floor.
Blair confirmed that the automation system had not been fully ready when the company presented it to the board.
“I believed the remaining issues would be resolved before the next reporting period,” she said. “I was told the error rate was below the threshold.”
“Who told you that?” Grace asked.
“Victor.”
“Did you review the underlying records?”
“No.”
“Did you know workers were correcting routing failures manually?”
“I knew there were interventions. I didn’t know there were hundreds.”
I waited for anger to rise, but what came instead was a familiar exhaustion. She had made choices that hurt people, yet I could hear the careful way she was trying to divide what she knew from what she had refused to ask.
Grace displayed the email Blair had sent about keeping workforce impact out of the board packet.
Blair read it silently.
“I wrote that,” she said. “I was worried the board would cancel the rollout.”
“Why were you worried?”
“Because we had promised customers a transition date. The company had invested heavily. Victor said if we delayed again, we would lose the renewal bonuses.”
“Were those bonuses tied to the vendor’s performance payments?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t see the invoices.”
Miriam asked why Blair had fired me on Thanksgiving Eve.
“I thought I was enforcing a policy,” Blair replied. “I believed Nolan was refusing a shift he had already agreed to cover.”
“I had submitted the leave request six weeks earlier,” I said. “It was approved.”
She looked toward the camera. “I saw the approval after the shutdown.”
“You saw it before the shutdown,” Grace said, bringing up the email chain.
Blair’s attorney leaned close and whispered something. Blair closed her eyes.
“You’re right,” she said. “I saw it. I believed making an exception would undermine the rollout schedule.”
No one spoke for several seconds.
“I’m sorry,” she added, looking at me. “I was wrong to treat your family time like a resource I owned.”
I accepted the apology without telling her it erased anything. It didn’t.
The interview continued for another hour. Blair said she had received copies of Northline’s environmental invoices only after she was reassigned. She provided the name of an accounting manager who had sent them. She also confirmed that Victor had asked her to approve a board presentation that described the system as “operationally independent.”
That was new information. Grace wrote it down and asked Blair to send the original emails through counsel.
When the call ended, Charles remained seated, staring at the blank screen.
“Does this settle it?” he asked.
“No,” Grace said. “It gives us more evidence. We still need the source records and the vendor’s full payment history.”
I returned to the dispatch floor just before noon. The workers were preparing for the weekend loads. Marcus had taped a new page beside the schedule board.
It listed the audit hotline, the union representative’s number, and the date of the next employee committee meeting.
Earl studied the page. “You think they’ll ever stop calling us troublemakers?”
“Maybe not.”
“Does that bother you?”
“It used to.”
He grinned faintly. “That’s how you know you’re getting promoted.”
My phone buzzed. A message from Tessa appeared:
I heard there may be a formal records request. Your department is still respecting the separation. Hope the meeting went okay.
I wrote back that it had, and that I’d tell her more over dinner.
Then an unfamiliar email arrived. No greeting. No signature. One line:
The south channel samples were taken before the storage yard was cleaned. Ask why the dates on the report were changed.
I read it again, my stomach tightening.
Grace came over. I showed her the message. She copied it into the evidence log and asked the audit committee’s counsel to preserve the records immediately.
Below us, the warehouse kept moving. Forklifts carried pallets toward the open doors. Drivers checked seals. Workers marked each completed load on the board.
The company had survived a walkout, an audit, and a public story. It had not yet answered the newest question.
I looked through the glass at the old control panel, its screens dark and quiet.
May you like
Then I looked down at the floor, where every person knew how much a single overlooked detail could cost.
The next move would come from the records, not from a rumor. But as I turned back toward the audit office, I knew the truth we had found was still unfolding.
