When They Fired the Woman Who Knew Where Every Dollar Went

At 3:17 Friday afternoon, Harold Benton thought he had won.

By Monday morning, he would discover that he hadn’t fired an employee.

He had removed the one person standing between twelve thousand workers and a payroll disaster.

And the first sign that something was wrong came at 7:06 Monday morning.

My phone started ringing.

I ignored it.

Then it rang again.

And again.

By 7:30, I had seventeen missed calls.

By 7:45, I had forty-three.