"You should know upfront that we can't promise redemption after the date," Leonard said. "We have fewer stores left, and the old agreements are very clear."
"I understand," Evan answered. "I need the purchase history for BM19-CORP. If you can verify the date, I'll take the information and get out of your way."
Leonard studied the code. Then he asked Ruth to bring the old inventory laptop from a cabinet, and his entire posture changed. He navigated the aging system slowly, clicking through screens that had not been updated since the chain's expansion years. He explained that when Becket closed fourteen stores, it had sold large blocks of corporate promotional certificates to businesses that wanted employee gifts or customer rewards. Discounting those blocks had raised immediate cash during a painful restructuring.
The record appeared after three searches. Leonard turned the screen toward Evan so that they could read the same line together. The block's printed face value was $310,000. The purchaser had paid $88,400, and the listed purchaser was Blackridge Systems Incorporated. The issuance date was three years earlier; the expiration schedule ended on April 30 of the current year.
Evan did the division in his head. Blackridge had paid a little over twenty-eight cents for every printed dollar. The company had handed him $4,860 in paper that had originally cost it roughly $1,386 within a larger block, and that paper had now expired altogether. The company could not claim to have purchased anything this December when the record showed the transaction had occurred three years earlier.
"Why would they hold it so long?" Ruth asked.
"That's what I want to know," Evan said. "But I'm not sure it matters as much as how they used it."
Leonard's eyes moved from the screen to the envelope in Evan's hand. "What did they use it for?"
"My wages."
The office went quiet except for the rattle of a heating vent. Leonard sat back slowly, then asked whether Evan meant an additional bonus or a company gift. Evan explained that the twelve certificates had replaced the remaining cash wages on his December payroll statement. He described the assembly, the envelopes, the expiration dates, and the other employees who had received the same paper.
Leonard rubbed his forehead. "I specifically told our lawyers I didn't want that happening," he said.
He brought up the original use agreement and scrolled to a clause that had been initialed by the purchasing party. It permitted promotional customer rewards, client gifts, trade-show incentives, and similar programs. It expressly excluded the use of the certificates as wages or as settlement of an employer's payroll obligations. Leonard explained that his family had insisted on the restriction because the chain did not want workers receiving discounted retail paper in place of money they had earned.
"A company can buy a block of gifts at a discount," Leonard said. "That doesn't make it the currency a family uses to pay rent. We put the clause there because we could see exactly how somebody might try to misuse it."