Chapter 5
The auditor came on a Tuesday.
Her name was Sana Farooq and she was fifty-one years old, had driven up from St. Paul in a gray sedan with a state license plate, and wore sensible shoes and a plain skirt and carried a canvas messenger bag full of binders. She spent six hours in the parish office with the ledger, the invoices, the checkbook, the archived carbon copies from the council's file cabinet, and a laptop that connected to the diocesan finance system.
Arlene did not meet her. Arlene cleaned the kitchen on Tuesday afternoons, as she always did, and when Sana Farooq came through the hall at noon with a stack of binders under her arm and stopped by the kitchen door to say hello, Arlene only nodded and kept wiping down the counter. Marlene was not in the building.
Sana Farooq did come back the next Tuesday, and the Tuesday after that, and the Tuesday after that.
By the end of the third week, the numbers were on paper.
Arlene heard the amount from Deacon Paul, who had been instructed by the bishop to tell her before anyone else. Deacon Paul came to her house on a Thursday evening and sat on the porch swing with his hands in his pockets and did not look at her while he said it.
"Sixty-eight thousand dollars," he said.
Arlene leaned back in her chair.
"That was the second gift?"
"No. The second gift was thirty-one thousand dollars. The auditor found that the entire amount was transferred out in seven transactions between 1999 and 2002." Deacon Paul swallowed. "But that's not the whole thing. The auditor found that the fake catering invoices started earlier than we thought. Not two years. Eight years. Marlene was writing herself catering payments, little ones, twenty-five dollars, fifty dollars, once a month, for events where no caterer set foot in this hall. Over eight years, that's about twelve thousand dollars. And separately, the volunteer stipends—the ones she put in the bulletin and never paid out—add up to about four thousand over the last six years. She kept a private ledger of them. We found it Monday."
Arlene sat very still.
"The auditor found Marlene's private ledger?"
"In the bottom of her council binder. She labeled it 'Palanca,' which is a retreat word, and she used it for the stipends and the invoices both." Deacon Paul finally looked at her. "There are also entries in it that don't have a category. Just initials next to amounts. B.H., R.H., C.D., T.L."
"Those are people."
"Yes."
"What were the amounts?"
"Small. Between fifty and three hundred dollars each. Paid out on dates that correspond to council votes."
Arlene set her hands on the arms of the porch chair.
"She was buying votes."
"We believe so. There's no proof. The people whose initials are listed have already all been contacted by the auditor and have claimed the money was for legitimate reimbursements. Herb Sorenson is not one of the initials. Neither are the Halvorsens. There are six names total and none of them are currently on the council."
"What does the bishop want to do?"
"He wants to call a parish meeting on the first Sunday of next month, after Mass. Not a vote this time. A reading of the audit. Names read out. Amounts read out. He wants the parish to hear what happened and decide for itself what it wants done with the council."
"Will she be there?"
"She will be there. She has been notified by registered letter as a member of the parish, not as a council officer. She cannot stop it. She could refuse to attend, but the bishop told me he doesn't think she will."
"Why not?"
Deacon Paul was quiet.
"Because on Sunday, when she walked out through that kitchen door, everyone in the room watched her do it," he said. "And I think she has spent every day since trying to figure out how to walk back in."
Arlene looked out at the lane. The snow was mostly gone now. The fields were turning green in patches, and the muddy ruts in the gravel were drying into hard ridges, and the maple tree at the end of the lane had tiny pale leaves pushing out of its branches.
"There's one more thing," Deacon Paul said. "The auditor wanted me to ask you. Did your husband ever have a safe deposit box?"
Arlene thought.
"At the Badger Creek Savings Bank," she said. "In his name, but it was a joint box. He had it for our wedding rings and the deed to the house and the title to his truck. After he died, the bank sent me a letter about it once and I left it alone. I didn't want to open it. I knew what was in it and I didn't want to look at it again."
"Do you have the key?"
"In the drawer with the envelope."
"Do you want to open it with the auditor present?"
Arlene stood up.
"Yes," she said. "Yes, I do."
They drove over the next morning. The assistant manager of the Badger Creek Savings Bank was a young woman named Emily Prellwitz, who had gone to the parish school before it closed, and who understood better than she said out loud why the widow of Walter Kasparek had come in with a deacon and a state auditor on a Friday morning.
The box was in the vault. It was a small one. Arlene slid the key in and turned it, and the assistant manager turned the bank's key, and the box slid out on its tray.
Inside there was one item.
A man's leather wallet, cracked and dark at the folds, the same wallet Walter had carried every day of his adult life. His driver's license, expired. His social security card. A hospital board badge from 1994. And in the billfold section, folded twice, a photostat of a cashier's check for thirty-one thousand dollars, made out to St. Casimir's Catholic Parish, dated August 19th, 1998, with two words typed in the memo line:
FOR THE SCHOOL.
Arlene looked at the check in her hands for a long time.
On the back of the check, in Walter's handwriting and in Marlene Duclos's handwriting, there were two signatures: WALTER KASPAREK, on the top line. And below it, on the line labeled RECEIVED BY PARISH COUNCIL PRESIDENT, in blue ballpoint, the same looping D.
M. Duclos.
She had signed for it. She had taken the money into her own hands. And she had spent every dollar of it, over time, in small payments and large ones, on events that never happened, on volunteers who were never paid, on a community that trusted her to keep the books.
Arlene folded the check back into the wallet and put the wallet into her purse.
At the front of the bank, Emily Prellwitz was talking to Sana Farooq in a quiet voice. The auditor had her phone out and was taking a photograph of something. Arlene walked over.
"What is it?"
"The signature on the back of the check matches the signature on the carbon copy from the parish file," Sana Farooq said. "Same pen, same date, same loop on the D. She signed for the bequest and then told the next council meeting the money had never arrived."
Arlene turned to the door. Outside, the street was wet and small and gray, the way it had been for her whole adult life, and the bank sign buzzed under the awning, and a red pickup went by driven by a man she'd known since grade school and never once had dinner with.
"Mrs. Kasparek," Sana Farooq said, following her out, "one thing. The parish won't get all of that money back. Some of it is gone. Some of it has been spent on things that can't be unwound. The diocese will recover what it can, but I want you to understand—"
"I understand," Arlene said. "I've understood since Sunday."
She walked to her car and did not look back.
But on the drive home, on Highway 22, she pulled the car over onto the shoulder, sat with her hands on the wheel, and cried for the first time in twenty-six years.
Not for the money.
For the fact that her husband had bought a whole farm of a gift and never told her, and for the fact that he had asked her to say no if anyone ever came asking, and for the fact that on Sunday morning she had picked up her tote and started walking toward the door like a woman being escorted out, and he had been right about all of it.
When she got home, she went to the drawer and took out the letter and read it one more time. The last line said: Do not let them make you small. — W.
She folded it back up. She put it in her purse next to the wallet. And then she made herself a real dinner, the first one in three weeks, and she sat at the kitchen table and ate it while the sun went down over the fields.
On Sunday morning, she took the letter and the check to Mass with her, in the same tote bag she carried every week, and she sat in the third row from the front, and she did not look at anybody.
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