Chapter 20: The Hearing
The hearing was held in the salon's back office, which had been decorated with a folding table, four chairs, and a pitcher of water nobody touched.
Marcus Doyle sat in the middle, with Regina on his right and Mr. Pruitt on his left, and a woman from human resources at the end, typing everything into permanence.
"Tessa Boyd," Marcus said. "Disciplinary hearing, final determination, regarding the loss of property, one pair of founders' display shears, gold-plated, valued at two thousand dollars, and related conduct."
"May I put something on the table first?"
She laid down two things. The first was a photocopy of a page from a ledger, the entry in her own handwriting: Received from G. Alden, balance of service, paid in full, with the carbon receipt number beside it. The second was a photocopy of a yellowed page from a 1975 employee handbook: the First Chair covenant, word for word, with Evelyn Alden's name at the top and a charter summary signed G. Alden at the bottom.
"What am I looking at?" Marcus said.
"Proof," Tessa said. "The first page proves that the only money I ever took from the man you call a vagrant was a debt he owed and paid, logged in the company's ledger, in ink. Thieves do not usually keep receipts for their victims, Mr. Doyle. The second page is why he was in my chair. The founders of this company promised that anyone preparing for a job interview would be served free in Chair One. I did not invent a charity. I honored a covenant this company has been breaking for fifteen years."
Regina leaned forward. "She found that in storage, Marcus. She was caught going through archives without authorization. Snooping, defying, inventing rules from a fifty-year-old pamphlet."
"It is not a pamphlet. It is a charter. Charters are what companies are made of, before they are made of money."
Marcus picked up the covenant page between two fingers, the way a man handles a fish. "Heritage marketing," he said. "The founders wrote poetry to sell haircuts in 1975. It has no standing. Legal has reviewed every document connected to this property."
"Then legal missed one," Tessa said. "Because the owner of that building signed this, and your lease sits on top of his signature, not the other way around."
The woman from human resources stopped typing.
"Miss Boyd," Pruitt said, "we are not here about the lease. We are here about theft. If you can tell us anything about who took the shears, this is the moment it would help you most."
"I cannot take something I never touched, and I cannot name a thief for you on the evidence of my own dislike. You have my bag, my locker, my log, and my ledger. You have everything except a fact. That should trouble this table more than it troubles me."
Regina's voice went bright and terrible. "What troubles this table, Marcus, is that the gala is in two days, the press list includes two council members, and this girl plans to make a scene. She has been seen with the vagrant. Staff have seen her at that hotel. Whatever she is planning is aimed at this company, and I want it on record that I warned you."
"There is no plan," Tessa said. "There is a porter across the street who pays his debts and sweeps a clean step. If that frightens this company, the company should ask itself why, because I asked myself, and the answer is keeping me calm."
Marcus set the covenant page down and aligned it with the table edge, the way men do when they have already decided and are arranging the decision. "Determination," he said. "The suspension is converted to termination for cause, for loss of trust. However." He raised a finger. "The gala requires every trained hand, and the termination will take effect at close of business on gala day. You will work the event, Miss Boyd. You will smile. You will be, for one evening, an asset of this company. And then you will leave by the service door, and you will not come back."
"You are firing me," Tessa said, "but not until I have done your party."
"I am being practical. It is the quality you might have learned from us."
She stood up. She picked up her two pages, because they were hers, and she folded them and put them in her pocket, over her heart, where a better man kept his receipts.
"Then I accept the schedule," she said. "I will work your gala, Mr. Doyle. I will smile. And I promise you, on my honor, which is the only currency I have ever dealt in, that it will be an evening this company remembers for the rest of its life."