Chapter 17
Finally, I was about to hear what happened yesterday at Dad’s house.
When Shadow and the others returned yesterday, he hadn’t said a whole lot.
We had dinner and then went to Eden. Afterward, when I asked, my man told me to hang on until tonight.
The club members were having church as usual, and I was invited to attend.
I thought about coaxing it out of him, but I didn’t. It wasn’t fair.
To help pass the time today, I went to Punishers’ Lager with him. Shadow had asked me last night if I’d be interested in coming to see where he worked and what they did. I jumped at the chance. I’d never been to a brewery before. I admitted I was curious.
We’d ridden in with Reaper. Entering the front of their building, there was a small reception area, similar to what you’d find in most businesses. Behind the desk, I saw a woman in her early forties.
“Good morning, Reaper, Shadow. I see you brought a guest,” the woman said, coming out from behind the desk, smiling.
“Morning, Carlota. We did bring someone, but she’s not a guest,” Reaper replied.
“She’s much more. This is my old lady, Aubrielle. Ellie, this is Carlota. She keeps us from being overwhelmed with the stuff we hate to do. She’s married to our brewmaster, Tom,” Shadow explained.
I shook her hand and said it was nice to meet her.
“About time you brought her here. We heard Shadow had claimed himself an old lady, but I refused to believe it until I saw it for myself. About time he did something smart,” Carlota teased.
“Hey, don’t scare her away,” Shadow protested, causing Carlota to laugh.
“Then you’d better behave. If not, I know who to call,” she replied.
From there, the first hour or more of the morning was spent on introductions. I had no idea how many people it took to run a microbrewery.
Reaper was the general manager overseeing the overall business, including compliance and finance. Shadow was the logistics manager, which meant he managed raw materials, inventory, and shipping from the warehouse.
The warehouse supervisor was a man named Art.
He stood in for Reaper and Shadow when they were unavailable.
Tom, Carlota’s husband, was the brewmaster, which was the most important job there, according to Reaper and my man.
Tom oversaw the daily brewing operation, managed production, and, most importantly, created the recipes for all their ales.
To help Tom out, a brewer handled the brewing, monitored the fermentation, and managed the ingredients.
Their brewer was a guy named Jacob. The person who maintained the brewing equipment, cleaned the brewing tanks, managed the yeast, and transferred the beers was their cellar technician, Jordyn.
I was surprised but happy to see a female in such a different role.
I discovered she was Carlota and Tom’s daughter.
The one who ensured the beer’s consistency and safety was their quality control technician, Tig.
The packaging manager, Paulo, oversaw and operated the kegging lines, as well as canning and bottling operations.
The main sales rep who found retail accounts and managed distribution to sellers outside of on-site sales was Denver.
However, I found that a large portion of the sales occurred there and were made from a taproom where Clive worked.
He managed the taproom's operations and staff.
One of those people was Norah, the head beertender.
She served the customers and explained the different types they offered.
Everyone was nice and welcoming. Then, throughout the day, they took time to explain what it was they did there.
I was given tours of the various areas. I’d told Shadow to go ahead and do whatever it was he had to do.
I was fine on my own. He’d periodically come to check on me, maybe stay for a bit, then go back to his office.
During lunch, Shadow and Reaper took me to Grub Connection.
It was their favorite deli, and I learned over lunch that Cheyenne had been hit by a car there when Reaper was trying to get her to agree to go out with him.
She’d run away from him, and a car driving too fast in the parking lot hit her.
Thankfully, she wasn’t seriously hurt. I’d heard from Chey about her unusual courtship with Reaper.
It seemed none of the old ladies had what most people considered a traditional or normal courtship, but it was clear, despite that, that they all deeply loved each other. Shadow and I fit right in with the rest.
We arrived home from the microbrewery at five o’clock.
I was still full from lunch, so we made it into a free-for-all dinner.
Each of us found leftovers or picked whatever we wanted to eat.
Then, after we were done, we went to the clubhouse, bringing me now to sit at the table next to Shadow and watch the faces of the entire brotherhood of Punishers.
“We’re going to mix up the order tonight so Elle doesn’t have to sit through the boring stuff. I know she’s dying to hear how it went with her family yesterday. First, I’ll give a rundown of what was said and done. Then I’ll ask some of you to give your observations. Sound good?” Reaper asked.
I nodded while the guys all murmured in affirmation.
Reaper kept it concise and outlined the highlights, including that Shadow had wanted a piece of Truce.
Shadow shrugged when I glanced over at him.
I heard how my family tried to pass off their false ledger, and when called on it, they pretended for a few moments that it was the only one.
I loved how Spawn sat at the table, supposedly taking notes, when in reality he was hacking into their Wi-Fi to access their computers and cell phones.
When Reaper wrapped up the outline, it was time to hear from the others.
“Tinker, why don’t you start?” Reaper said.
“Okay, they for sure keep a clean ledger. I don’t know if there’s an electronic version somewhere, but if not, it’s risky.
If the house burns down, their only copy goes up in smoke.
It showed decent profitability, but the way they acted and the one fight we saw between Truce and his competitor made me realize it was a cooked version.
The betting was crazy. Once they coughed up the real one, it’s clear that at present, their businesses are producing at least five times as much profit as the cooked ledger shows. ”
When Tinker paused, Ink asked, “What do they claim to do and invoice the revenue under?”
“According to the entries, they sell custom-made wood furniture. Their cost items are chisels and other woodworking tools. They cut and plane their own wood into usable pieces, which requires larger capital items such as massive blades, sawmills, bandsaws, and more. According to their entries, they mainly sell large pieces, such as custom dining sets, bedroom sets, and patio furniture, so orders can take a while to complete and are costly. Elle, do they even know how to do anything like that?” Tinker asked.
“Yeah, Dad and Jock do, but I can’t tell you the last time they sold much.
When they had only dogfights, they did more of that kind of work.
However, when they added the fight club, woodworking became rarer.
There are people in the area who know what they used to do, and they occasionally ask them to create stuff for them, which I know they sometimes do.
There’s a workshop in the outbuilding behind the house.
That’s where they have their equipment set up. ”
“Okay, so if anyone were to come around checking, they could show them their work area. Those betting could be asked to pay by credit card, and fake invoices could be created for the bets. If it were a small enough order, those could be paid in cash or even by check,” Tinker muttered, jotting down notes on a notebook he had with him.
“Anything else?” Maniac asked him.
“Only that with the actual businesses, the overhead is minimal. Your brothers are paid as 1099-MISC contractors. Your dad doesn’t withhold income taxes, pay into Social Security, offer health insurance, or anything like that for them.
On paper, Oliver is the majority owner at seventy percent, and Jock has the remaining thirty percent.
Truce is listed as a contractor, too. He’s supposedly another woodworker. ”
“I’m not surprised that Dad retained the biggest slice of it. I am kinda surprised that Rome doesn’t have a percentage. Maybe it’s because he’s always been touted as Dad’s successor and Jace was a lesser inheritor,” I told them.
“Maybe. At the moment, that’s all I’ve got, but they’ve been clever at it,” Tinker finished.
“Thanks, Tink. Okay, Spawn, how’d it go on your end?” Reaper asked.
“They had shit for security from the standpoint of protecting their internet access. They have that fucker wide open. Anyone could tap into it. Maybe because they don’t have a nearby neighbor, they think it won’t happen.
I used it to find and gain access to their electronics, meaning the two laptops and four cell phones in the house.
The other one nearby was locked. It was Truce’s phone.
“When I asked for their emails to set up the fake orders from our end, I sent them a preliminary one this morning. What they didn’t know was that it held a virus.
As soon as they opened it, the virus downloaded and is now running in the background.
It’s embedded itself into their devices.
I created mirror images of them.” Spawn explained.
“Mirror images?” I asked, utterly lost.
“Oops, sorry, yeah, it means I have them mirrored on my end, so everything they enter into the computer, save or do on their phones, I see. I’m a ghost in the background,” Spawn said, grinning.