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“I’ve been working since yesterday, and I’ve only gotten through a little over half. Finishing it up is going to takehours.”
“Yep… and since you took a couple of days off this week, I’d say you have some hours to make up.”
Avery eyed his boss, sensing it wouldn’t be a good idea to contradict the man. What little time he’d spent around Vaughn had shown the brothers were nothing alike.Nothing.Wilder seemed… easy going. Kind.Comfortable.(When he wasn’tuncomfortabledue to a heat, that was.)
Vaughn didn’t project any of those feelings.
“Yes… yes, I do.” Avery’s relief morphed into something akin to terror. “I do have to go out by five to pick up a prescription for my brother. He has to have it tonight when I go home.”
“Fine. I have no problem with you taking a break for that.”
“Thank you,” Avery said on a sigh. “Will you continue looking through the back end of the list?”
“I have a couple of meetings I have to attend, but as soon as that’s done, I’ll be back at it.”
“Great,” he murmured, glad the entire list wouldn’t be his to finish on a late Friday night. “Oh, and before you go… you might want to know I ran into Gus Hardwick this morning on the elevator. He pushed me hard, trying to get information on what I was doing. Said he was brought into the loop and had suggested me for your little project. I thought you might want to know.”
Vaughn’s grin was lethal. Enough to give Avery a shiver up his spine. “I’ll have to have a little talk with Mr. Hardwick about encroaching on my project.”
“Don’t tip your hat,” Avery warned.
“Oh, I won’t. I know what I’m doing.”
Vaughn left him alone to ponder that one. He turned, stared at the computer screen, and exhaled. An early night? Yeah right.
Damn it.
* * *
Hours passedas Avery continued to check through the vendor list. He’d found one more company that appeared bogus but no others up to that point. The list was perhaps inching toward three-quarters of the way done, maybe more depending on where Vaughn was on his end.
He checked his watch. Another two hours before hehadto leave for the pharmacy.
His body throbbed a bit, hinting at the upcoming need for some help. Searching through his bag, he swallowed his last pill just before Vaughn coasted into the conference room, followed by Wilder.
“I want you both to look at something,” Vaughn said, setting up right behind Avery. “Check Yawsley’s Paving’s account history.”
“Is that one of our vendors?” Wilder asked.
“Yawsley’s was bought out by Parker-Levy eight years ago. They merged into one company, but then it appears we continued to get invoices from Yawsley’s for three more years after—along with legit ones from Parker-Levy,” Vaughn answered. He tapped on Avery’s shoulder. “I called the accounting department at Parker-Levy to confirm that invoicing from Yawsley’s only continued for three months post purchase. Look at the manual journal entries eight years ago.”
Avery scrolled through the data. “There’s a ton of them.”
“I think our embezzler may have started here, or it was one of the early ones. It appears each one was entered manually versus the regular process with accounts receivable. They were tacked on at the end of a batch. I searched for invoices in the system and found none.”
“Journal entries would be stamped with time and date—and computer,” Avery said. “So we could narrow down who it was by who was logged in at the time.”
“Then we’d have our embezzler?” Wilder asked.
“Potentially,” Vaughn replied. “The perpetrator could always claim someone used their log-in. I’d want something more concrete than that. Something that couldn’t be denied or explained away.”
Wilder turned to his brother. “Isn’t Abraham supposed to be doing the investigating here?”
“We were sorting through the companies, looking for fraudulent ones… I found this one earlier today and I couldn’t help but search through the history.” Vaughn clapped Avery on the shoulder. “Abraham was absolutely right that this has been going on right under our noses for years. I wasn’t a hundred percent sold that we could find it ourselves… but it’s all right here if you know what you’re looking for. If our new employee here hadn’t stumbled across that fraudulent invoice, we’d probably still be none the wiser.” Vaughn grinned. “Abe can go through with the fine-tooth comb and find it all before we get the Guard involved. I just needed to see it in black and white right in front of me—to be sure there was something to be found.”
“You’re not still planning on calling in a forensic accountant?” Avery asked.
Vaughn focused on him. “Seems you’re doing a good enough job. If you can find the proof we need to stop Hardwick, then I say we let you tackle that task.”
