Chapter 193: Helen Conducts an Audit
Two Saturdays before Bellamar's closed, Helen's first official act as a foundation director was to audit the insurance.
Not the investments. Not the classes. The insurance.
People lie when they are nervous, she said, arriving at the lake house on Saturday with a clipboard. Policies lie when they are comfortable.
She had joined the board after nine months as its governance consultant and one excellent investigation of forty-eight hundred dollars that did not belong to us. The corrected report still hung in her hallway.
This was not an eligibility audit of the man I had already married.
Owen was at the kitchen table because his firm supplied volunteer lawyers for our monthly legal-aid clinics, and Helen was reviewing every related-party arrangement before her first board vote.
I am not deciding whether you may keep my sister, she told him. That transaction closed. I am deciding whether your lawyers are insured when they give free advice in our third office.
Owen put down his coffee.
That is considerably less romantic.
It is also answerable, Helen said. Produce the rider.
He did.
Owen had been warned, which meant he had brought a binder. Helen regarded the binder the way a wolf regards a locked picnic basket.
She checked the firm's malpractice coverage, the foundation's directors-and-officers policy, the volunteer waivers, and the conflict disclosures. She made Owen explain, in plain English, who defended whom if a client sued both the foundation and a volunteer attorney.
Separate counsel, he said. Separate files. No shared privilege unless the client authorizes it in writing.
Who pays?
Our carriers allocate it.
Which paragraph?
Page thirty-eight, endorsement six.
Helen found page thirty-eight. It said what he said.
She looked disappointed.
Then she reached the schedule of covered locations.
East office, she read. Main office.
Her finger stopped.
Where is the third office?
The third office had opened eleven months earlier. It hosted Vera's class, June's intake desk, and one Saturday clinic every month. Our broker had added it to the property policy and the liability declarations.
He had not added it to the volunteer-lawyer rider.
No villain. No stolen money. One address on one schedule that had not followed the foundation into a larger life.
Owen read the page twice and took out his phone.
Helen put one hand over it.
Not yet. First, we document when you learned it. Then we call.
She wrote the time on her clipboard. Owen signed beneath it. I signed as chair. Only then did she let him telephone the broker.
The broker began with reassuring noises.
Helen moved closer to the speaker.
Reassurance is not an endorsement, she said. Send the paper.
The noises stopped.
The broker asked whether Monday would be soon enough.
Helen asked whether lawsuits observed weekends.
Forty-two minutes later, an email arrived. Corrected schedule. All three offices. Coverage effective from the third office's opening date, with no added premium because the omission had been the broker's.
No claims had been made. No client had been harmed. The danger had existed only on paper, which was exactly where Helen preferred to catch one.
Owen leaned back.
Do I pass?
You are not the subject, Helen said. You are a related party with acceptable document retention.
She wrote ACCEPTABLE in capital letters.
At Monday's board meeting, Helen presented the gap, the correction, and a new one-page rule: every policy schedule would be checked against the current office list each quarter, by someone who had not prepared either document.
The motion passed unanimously.
Then the board made her chair of governance before she could object.
On Tuesday she sent me a photograph from her hallway. Beside the framed forty-eight-hundred-dollar correction, the empty hook now held the corrected insurance endorsement.
Her caption said: FIRST BOARD RESPONSIBILITY. NOBODY SUED. STILL COUNTS.
I printed the photograph for the minutes.