“We weren’t sure all those things were involved, but then there was the forty walnut dining sets that were never picked up, and the money reverted on Christmas Day.”
“How does money get reverted?” Rhonda’s fingers tapped on the keyboard attached to her ipad.
“We traced it to a phony credit account that was pulled back. After that we started taking deposits two months ahead.” Greg shrugged. “I know we are a big company now, but my great-grandfather started this place with handshakes. Some things still need modernizing. My Dad just turned over full control to Burris and I two years ago. We’ve never really had a need to be worried.”
“What happened to those walnut sets?”
“Donated to various schools, colleges, shelters.” I remembered my administrative assistant Aaron came up with that plan to help remove them quietly.
We discussed the poor review campaign that we didn’t realize was happening for a while, the tires mysteriously blowing on delivery trucks, and various other repairs needing to be done a lot more often on our fleets by March.
“Do you have mechanics on staff?” Rhonda kept taking notes while asking us questions.
I nodded. “They’ve all been with us for years. We have cameras in the garage, and took the head mechanics into confidence. The alarms went off a few times, but nothing was picked up. We got more roadside insurance, but some of the drivers have quit.”
“That has been happening around town at other places, too,” Greg said. “We discussed it at the Chamber of Commerce.”
She nodded. “It has, that’s true, but more randomly. This feels targeted. The campaign is working to shake confidence here.”
Greg nodded. “The reviews have started to hurt sales some in the US, but our Canadian sales are still strong.”
“Now that’s interesting. Any particular region of the US?” She asked.
I looked at Greg. “Mostly here in the South and spreading out.”
“So it could be a local grudge. I’ll need a list of former employees.”
“Aaron is putting that together already. I asked him to when we called you this morning.” I nodded towards my assistant’s desk outside my office.
“Our payroll funds were cut in half last week. We thought it was an error.”
“What did you do?”
“Covered it.” I said.
“Of course you did.”
“We were going to call you after the festival, as a smoke bomb went off in the employee lounge last Friday after the afternoon shift. No one but maintenance was supposed to be here, but an employee forgot her lunch bag and came back for it. She had to go to the doctor with asthma issues.” Saying this out loud made me realize that things were escalating badly even before Raymond’s accident.
“We thought it was a prank. It was outside a window.” Greg said.
“All right. So now you have a saw that was tampered with at a high profile festival.”
“Yes. We are happy to use private funds to help with testing or overtime for this investigation if need be,” Greg said. “We were thinking about a private investigator friend from college as it is. Bryan is meeting us at the diner in an hour to talk to us about checking things out here.”
“You could do that of course, but I might have another idea, too.”
An hour later, Greg and I were headed to the diner in town for lunch, with Rhonda.
“You know you don’t have to feed me,” she said.
“Yeah, but now you can coordinate a little with our friend. Plus I know you cops love the diner.” We’d teased her like a sibling since high school when she’d competed against us for academic and athletic awards.
“We can’t talk much about the situation in that diner. It would be like broadcasting it.” She reminded me.
“Fair point.” I said. “But he’s waiting for us in his car first, and we’ll talk in our car first.”
“Everyone will see that.” Rhonda rolled her eyes. “Whatever. At least they won’t hear it.”
