Chapter Thirteen #2
“Are you shitting me?” he asked, his voice booming throughout the bay.
“We’ve asked you at least a hundred times to help us out in the past, to inventory the parts you’ve used before you leave work, and every damn time you came up with excuses.
Either you don’t have time or you don’t get paid for that shit.
Now we have software that’ll manage it for us, and Britt’s offered her expertise for free.
And I bet she won’t make any more mistakes than you do.
How many times have you asked us to order the wrong shit?
Or punched in the number wrong so we got ten bottles of oil instead of a hundred?
Either cut her some slack, Cam, or shut the hell up! ”
If looks could kill, Walt would’ve been obliterated into a million little pieces. But rather than respond, Camden slammed down the wrench he was holding and stormed out of the building.
“ Fuck he’s annoying,” Barry muttered.
“Don’t listen to him,” Walt told Britt. “He’s just an asshole.
Always has been, always will be. Austin would’ve fired him a long time ago if he wasn’t Otis’s son.
And Evelyn is too nice to cut him off. You’re doing just fine.
Come on, we’ll go into the office and fire up the program, and you can show me more about how it works. ”
Thankful that at least Walt and Barry seemed to want her help, Britt headed into the office.
An hour later, her head was spinning. She’d truly had no idea there were so many different parts when she’d started this venture.
Which was stupid, because engines were complicated machines.
And the engine on a Honda was different from the engine on a snowmobile, which was different from an engine in a lawn mower.
She really didn’t need to know exactly what they did or how they were used, but since she was logging each part into the inventory program one by one, it was taking a bit more time than she’d thought.
She was confident she’d become familiar with the parts they ordered most frequently soon enough. But Camden wasn’t exactly wrong when he’d said that not knowing anything about engines would make the job more difficult.
“You’re doing great,” Walt praised. “You’re gonna be an engine pro in no time. And I can’t believe how fast you type! You’re also a great teacher. We’ll all have the hang of this system before you know it. It’s going to make things so much easier around here.”
He really was a nice man, and Britt was grateful for his patience.
“I need to get back out there and help Barry. We good in here for now?” he asked.
Britt nodded quickly. “Of course.”
He smiled and gave her a nod, then stood and headed for the door.
“I’m just going to create another mock invoice or two before I go,” she told him. “Check to make sure the invoices still work as expected, charging the right prices and stuff. Then make sure the inventory and the billing systems are integrated properly.”
Walt didn’t even turn around. He waved his hand and said, “Sounds good” as he exited.
It took her just a few minutes to create a simple invoice for random parts, and she was thrilled to see the prices were correct, the sales tax was applied, and the parts were automatically deducted from their inventory. Just like the first test she’d run a couple of days ago. She sighed in relief.
She clicked on a different icon on the computer. She’d also been happy to discover she was familiar with the accounting software Otis used for Lobster Cove Auto Body.
It was pretty intuitive, and her experience helped her navigate the spreadsheets quickly. But unlike last time, the longer she poked around in the program, trying to figure out if it was pulling the correct data for the parts she’d invoiced, the more confused she became.
She was finding recent bills for parts that she hadn’t entered into the system.
Frowning, she sat back in her chair.
There were also a lot more vendors in the system than just a couple of days ago.
Names she didn’t recognize. Businesses she’d never heard of.
Not too alarming; after all, she didn’t have every vendor memorized.
But the amounts that were being charged to Lobster Cove were .
.. substantial. And she hadn’t heard Walt, Barry, or even Chad mention any large orders they’d placed recently.
Nothing that would account for such big vendor invoices.
Scanning another spreadsheet, she saw that last month, there were thirty-two bills that had been paid. This month, she only saw twelve. That was a pretty large difference.
“Maybe most of these vendors bill late in the month?” she muttered. So in addition to some rather large bills already paid ... there could be almost two dozen more coming in?
Looking up, Britt made sure she was still alone in the office. Of course she was. But her guilty conscience was kicking in. She was looking at stuff she technically shouldn’t be. But her curiosity had been piqued—and she was suddenly worried.
Clicking on some of the vendor names only confused her further. Digital records of the previous month’s bills were dated throughout the month, not just toward the end.
Most confusing of all—when she compared what was listed on the vendors’ invoices, the parts weren’t listed in the new inventory software ... and they weren’t on the spreadsheet Walt had put together for her of the parts used most often.
For example, one bill last month was for a hydraulic booster unit, whatever that was, but she didn’t see it anywhere on Walt’s inventory list.
The more she clicked, the more discrepancies she found.
Twenty brake rotors—one of the first things she and Walt had put into the inventory system—were paid for, but she’d only logged in ten. Had they actually used another ten in the last few weeks, before she’d started inputting data? She doubted it.
There was also an SAE J1772 type 1 connector, an engine cradle, a water pump pulley, a resonator, an intake manifold, a steering arm ...
More parts the shop had paid for that either didn’t exist on the inventory sheet Walt gave her—whether as stock or as having been used in the last few months—or had way more listed on the bill than were on hand.
Had any of that wonderful, special breakfast Britt had eaten five hours earlier still remained in her belly, she might have thrown it up right there and then. What was going on? Was this just a matter of sloppy administrative work, Walt not knowing what parts they had ... or something else?
It wasn’t a simple matter of an extra part being ordered here and there. The difference was far too great. Thousands more dollars going out to vendors than parts actually being received.
Sitting back in the chair, Britt glanced at the corner of the computer screen and realized that she’d been digging around for over an hour.
She felt seriously sick. Something was very wrong here.
But she didn’t know exactly what. And she wasn’t sure what to do.
She was new to Lobster Cove. And she wasn’t even supposed to have anything to do with the financial side of things.
She’d only logged in to that system to reconcile the mock invoice.
The last thing she wanted was to accuse anyone of being deceptive. Of stealing .
But she couldn’t just sit back and keep her mouth shut either, especially with the amount of money she now had a feeling was missing from Lobster Cove’s accounts.
“Britt?”
She recognized Chad’s voice as he called her name. For some reason, she panicked. She clicked out of the programs on the computer, then gathered the papers she’d jotted her notes and thoughts on and shoved them into the bottom drawer of the desk.
She stood and turned to face the door just as Chad appeared.
“Hey, you’ve been down here a while. Everything good?” he asked.
Britt nodded. “Yeah, it’s good. I was just checking everything out.
Trying to get a feel for the programs. It’s fine.
Good.” She was talking too fast and repeating herself, but she couldn’t help it.
She hadn’t decided the best way to explain what she’d found, or even who to talk to.
It might be nothing, and she didn’t want to make any wild accusations.
Was Barry or Walt fudging the books? Was Otis scamming the system and pocketing money?
Were they innocent mistakes? Maybe she didn’t understand what she was looking at.
Or the charges were correct and the missing inventory was just parts that weren’t used very often and stored somewhere she didn’t know about.
Or Walt simply forgot to add them to his spreadsheet.
“What’s wrong?” Chad asked with a frown.
It was crazy how well he could read her after such a short time.
“Nothing,” she said quickly, feeling as if she was being more than obvious that something was definitely wrong. But there was too much she didn’t know. She couldn’t make him worry over nothing, if that turned out to be the case.
He stared at her for a long moment, then held out his hand. “Come on, time to break for lunch.”
Thankful he wasn’t going to push—Britt had a feeling if he had, she would’ve cracked—she took his hand. Instead of walking toward the door, Chad yanked her forward, making her stumble and fall into him. He wrapped his arm around her waist until they were plastered together.
“I don’t want you to be afraid to tell me anything. If something’s bothering you, no matter how small you think it is, I want to know about it.”
Gah. This man. He was killing her. “Okay,” she whispered.
The burden of holding in her suspicions was heavy, but again, she really didn’t want to accuse anyone until she was sure that something was wrong.
This was her second day of helping out with the admin stuff. It was too soon to be pointing fingers.