“Yup.” Buster smacks his lips together. “At least I’m telling you to your face and not forcing you out.”
“Whatever will I do?”
“Take up golf.”
“I hate golf.”
“Become a masseuse, I don’t fucking know. All I know is I’m getting my condo back.”
“You never lost your condo.” I snort. “In fact, didn’t you just buy a beach house?”
Buster’s smile widens. “I did! Hmm. If I want to spend time there, maybe I shouldn’t be CEO. Who has time for all that?”
“Not you.”
“Exactly. I’ll pause the coup for now.”
“Appreciate it.”
“Anyway,” Buster sighs. “I don’t want to point fingers, but Angelic Jewels has a serious problem. Fraud.”
The big F word. The one thing that throws a wrench into my plans. “Can you tell me who?”
“What, you want me to do all the work?” Buster scoffs. “You’ve got purchases that aren’t matching with inventory, sales that don’t make it into the yearly figures, and I found this.” He slaps a sheet of paper over the camera, turning the whole screen black.
“Buster.”
“What?”
“You realize I can’t see shit.”
“What? Oh.” A short, sharp bark of laughter follows as he removes the sheet. “I’ll email it to you. Anyway, back at Halloween, I found a purchase order for two thousand Amberpumpkin earrings. But those earrings never made it into stock. I checked to see if they were damaged and written off or even added as credit from the supplier, but no, they vanished.”
“Your theory?”
“I bet they arrived and whoever had them swiped them and sold them at a markup elsewhere.”
My teeth sink lightly into my cheek. “We’d notice, though, right? Where could someone sell them to make a cut and not get caught?”
“Black market. You’ve no idea how much someone on the black market would pay for jewelry of that quality. Mostly, they melt it down for the stones, but the market’s there.”
“So someone uses company funds to buy up stock that never makes it to inventory, makes a buck off resale, and no one finds out?”
“You have to find out who, or we’ll be pouring money into a project that’s lining some thief’s pockets.”
“Thanks, Buster, I’ll look into it.”
“Gotcha. And remember, that coup is only on hold so the second I see something I don’t like?”
“You’ll take my job and my livelihood and I’ll spend the next decade shamed on the cover ofFinancial Weekly. I get it.”
“Take care.”
Buster’s laugh echoes in my mind as the call ends, and it lasts with me all the way down to the car. He’s brought forward a really serious matter and technically, I should get the rest of my team involved for a serious investigation. But the last thingI want to do is start this acquisition off with such an invasive investigation. Not only will it create bad blood, but the moment the world finds out that I, Elijah Baird, couldn’t trust his own instincts, I’ll be done for.
I need to try and sort this myself.
The drive to the Angelic Jewels offices only takes twenty minutes, but the offices I pass when I arrive are all empty, row upon row of empty cubicles and open office doors with abandoned desks. My rising curiosity about where the hell everyone is gets answered as I reach the top floor and find the entire office staff crammed into the single conference room.
