Rex simply couldn’t believe his eyes. He had seen a lot of fancy kitchens, but this one looked like an MGM extravaganza movie set.
“If they had needed a modern kitchen in Cleopatra, this would have been the place to film it,” Rex said.
“No shit. That’s why I felt you just had to see it,” Zelda replied.
Zelda Zimmerman was the internal audit director for the University of North Georgia. She was “rough as a cob” according to Rex’s boss, Henry Verna, the State Auditor. “Watch out she don’t stick one in you from behind,” he had admonished Rex, half jokingly and half seriously before sending him out to head up the audit. Rex later learned that that reference was double-edged from some of the guys on the staff. He would never forget that little conversation. It had made him wonder whether he shouldn’t have just gone to Greensboro and taken a job with his old friends at Nelson & Stacey, CPA’s.
“You watch that gal, Rex,” old Danny Bowen had warned. “She’ll get you in a closet or a dark hallway and stick that thing in ‘ya, boy.”
“No lie,” Homer Rontz added “She’s got one longer than you, I’ll bet.”
“And she’s a gotcha’ type of auditor, too. And she’ll stick you with that too.”
“No lie. She’s quite a gal, she’s quite a guy.”
That was all that had been said, but Rex was able to figure it out. He had a childhood friend, or at least an acquaintance with the same physical defect. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to know what they were talking about.
Upon meeting her, he was able to confirm his analysis. Rex was glad she wasn’t an opposing lineman when he played high school football. He wouldn’t have wanted to have to block her, that was for sure. And he quickly noticed she had a huskier voice than he did, which was saying something, because his friends had often teased him that his voice was bigger than he was. Rex was barely five foot six. Yet, he was very athletic and with his close friends as a kid, he didn’t get teased too much, except by them. Nobody else really wanted to mess with the crowd he hung out with.
“How big is this place, Zelda?”
“The house or the kitchen?”
“Both, either, whichever? I really meant the kitchen.”
“It’s probably a little over 400 square feet. It’s big for a kitchen but not when you consider the size of the whole house and the uses this place is put to.”
The house was the President’s Mansion on “The Circle” at the University of North Georgia. The house had been built in 1825, shortly after the founding of the University. The University was the State’s primary higher education facility, having been named, like the State, for the state to the immediate south.
Rex was the auditor in charge of the 1978 audit of the University. He had just been hired at the Office of State Audit and Inspection and this was his first assignment. Of course, he was more than qualified for the assignment, having been a Senior Auditor for a Big 8 CPA firm and having almost ten years of public accounting experience. But he had not been prepared to walk into a mess like this. The University had just hired a new president at the beginning of the 1977-78 academic year, one Dr. Jones J. Haltermunger, who was previously the head of the Michigan Commission for College Management.
According to Zelda, who had done her homework on him, Dr. H as his friends called him or “Slim” as he was often called behind his back, was running amuck with the University’s finances. She had even made a trip to Michigan at her own expense and found from the local papers and the local politicians that Dr. H was in the process of being investigated on some pretty serious charges there when he took the job in Jefferson. His problems there had pretty much fizzled out after he left and the locals all seemed to be glad to be rid of him.
“Yeah, old Slim was about to get run out of town on a rail,” Zelda had said. “I guess he decided to make his own tracks out of town before the hounds could find his trail,” she continued.
Rex though that Slim was certainly an odd nickname for this short, pudgy Ph. D. with no neck. His complexion indicated that grease was probably his favorite food. The only thing wider than his waist was his huge smile that seemed to show at least fifty big shiny white teeth when he was his most gregarious self.
All the business people in town seemed to love him. And he was certainly a big hit with the alumni. He looked very unlovable to Rex. Beauty was in the eye of the beholder, Rex knew, but he had a hard time making that stretch no matter what this guy was promising or doing. Rex had only seen him once in person. That was the day he and Trudy had gone to the University Club for lunch as guests of a professor friend. They had been friends growing up in Charlotte. Dr. H was there too. He sat at a table far across the room. Rex wouldn’t even have noticed him, except when Dr. H and his wife were leaving, they passed right by the salad bar where Rex and Trudy were fixing their salads. Rex noticed Dr. H looking their way, as if undressing Trudy. It wasn’t until he looked him eye to eye that Rex got the distinct feeling he was the one being undressed, not Trudy. It had given him a chill that lasted well through lunch.
Rex got back to business. He knew that he had far too much work to do to daydream, or have day nightmares, as the case was now. Their purpose in being here was to inspect the remodeled kitchen as part of the audit. Zelda had documentation that showed that the kitchen had been remodeled twice in less than a year. She had explained it to Rex like this.
“The University had agreed to renovate the President’s Mansion as a part of the plan for attracting and hiring a new president. They, in fact, had authorized almost $400,000 for the renovations of the house prior to his hiring and had completed most of the work. This required Board of Trustee approval as they had to approve any renovations over $10,000. When Dr. H and his wife, Sheryl, had toured the place, she was very disappointed in the appearance of the kitchen. They explained that they had spent almost $45,000 completely redoing it. She just shrugged.
“Later, when they arrived on Campus as the new president and first lady of the University, Dr. H called the Chief of Campus Building and Grounds Maintenance. He demanded that they redo the kitchen exactly as Sheryl wanted it. He was told it, by University rules and State law, would have to go before the Board. He had been told his head would be removed if the goddam’ kitchen wasn’t done to Sheryl’s exact satisfaction and he would be fired if he mentioned it to anyone, let alone the Board.
“The Chief, a Mr. Gunther, had been totally intimidated. He had the work done with Sheryl directly supervising it and had buried the costs in an already approved $2.5 million renovation of Short Street Theater, less than a block away. Of course, without proper planning and with Sheryl supervising, the renovation was even more costly than he could have possibly imagined. I was never sure exactly how much they spent, but I know at least $65,000 went into the kitchen and not the theater. I can prove that much” Zelda had said in concluding her tale to Rex.
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