I’ll say this much for Charlotte’s business elite: Behind that soft facade, they certainly swing a hard bat.

Consider the latest news about Gloria Pace King.

The United Way board has accused their former darling of spending tens of thousands of agency dollars on personal expenses. They also revealed in court papers that King is being investigated by a grand jury.

This is not good. Not good at all.

I’d be shocked if King isn’t charged with something. To paraphrase a popular saying: Most prosecutors can get a ham sandwich indicted.

As far as convicting her...well, for now we’ll assume her innocence.

What amazes me is how quickly it all went bad -- and how nasty the fight has become. It seems like just yesterday I was sitting in a luncheon where a glowing King and her staff were kicking off what was to be another successful United Way campaign.

But when the former United Way president decided to fight back after being (questionably) fired, things got nasty. Knowing how much this city and its business boosters hate messy controversy, I had assumed that someone would quietly pay her off -- maybe offer her some other cushy job -- and bring an end to this embarrassing saga. No one, after all, would come out of a slugfest smelling or looking good.

I knew King was in for a brawl she never anticipated when I read in the Charlotte Observer about the grand jury.

Grand jury workings are supposed to be kept secret. But in papers filed against King, the United Way board included a document showing that the agency had been subpoenaed for evidence in the grand jury probe. (Look, Marge. How did this find its way into the  file?)

The inclusion of that document was meant for the clamoring press, I suspect, as much as anything else. It also was brilliantly malicious.

What should anger us all is that King alone, and not the United Way board that should have been overseeing her, has become the ugly face of this drama.

So far, King’s flamboyant and sometimes-brilliant attorney, Bill Diehl, has been outflanked. The board has cut off King’s severance pay and now seems hell-bent on grinding into the Carolina clay all that's left of her once-sterling reputation.

If Diehl has any tricks, now would be a great time to pull them out.

Even if her wrongful-termination lawsuit against the agency prevails, Gloria Pace King will likely emerge with little to show for it.

Glenn Burkins is editor/publisher of Qcitymetro.com

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