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I made sure I buckled her in before I shut the door, letting her drive off before I pulled out my phone to call Mom. No answer.
At the back of Sam’s store, I got the truck loaded and found out what Jeremy knew. I dialed Jeremy’s number, and he picked up.
“Yeah?” He sounded out of his mind already.
“Where are you?” I asked, skipping the bullshit.
“I told you out of the country. It’s late. I’ll call you in the morning.” He hung up the phone, and when I called back, he didn’t answer.
I jumped in the truck and sped off to my mom and dad’s house to see if he was there. When I pulled up, there wasn’t a car in sight and everything was locked as it was supposed to be. I wondered if I could tell if anything was missing.
“Shit!” I walked into my parents’ room to see things scattered about. My mother’s jewelry was missing and so was my dad’s watch collection. The box under his bed where he hid money was gone, and in the kitchen, the china and silver utensils were gone, too.
When I drove away, I passed Ms. Wallace’s house and saw her struggling with her bags, so I stopped to take in her things. When I left her, something dawned on me, so I called the bank. Our personal banker was unavailable for another two hours, so I’d have to wait. I’d warned Dad against putting Jeremy on the list for access to his accounts. He’d told me he hadn’t, but now I was questioning it. Instead of driving back to the farm, I went to the office instead. My father was meticulous; he’d have notes there.
I had a bad feeling about things, and somehow, I knew my brother was involved. It wasn’t a coincidence that money was missing and my brother was here. Him being present was always bad, no matter what. Figuring out what he was up to could prove beneficial to solving my problems and figuring out what in the hell was going on with my mother. I pressed the pedal down harder, hoping like hell I was wrong. Jeremy couldn’t be that fucked up, could he? Except I knew the answer. Yes, he could be.
MICHELLE
Ifinally found something. There was a small withdrawal that wasn’t on the accounting sheets. The account number matched nothing I’d seen so far. When I asked Linda about it, she’d brought me to her desk so that she could look. When she pulled up her spreadsheets, I stopped her.
“Why do your sheets look different from mine?” I asked.
“What do you mean?” she asked, confused.
“Your sheet has colors, arrows, and comments. There are errors and markings all over this version. Mine is polished.”
“Oh! That’s because you have access to the edited version. Before everything rolls over to your version, it’s verified.” Linda responded. “This stuff in red are items we’re waiting on the bank to verify. Sometimes they take a while to respond to pending items, so I keep them red until I get a response.”
My temper flared. I’d been looking through stuff for weeks and trying to figure out what I was missing. This was it.
“You’re logged in as who?” I inquired.
“The admin account,” she responded.
“And I’m logged in as…?” But I knew this answer already.
“A user.” Linda looked at me, confused. How did this not make sense to her?
“I need you to go back to my desk and log in as the admin. When I’m inquiring about things or needing access to information,thisis what I need to see. The same information that is being seen by everybody else. The raw numbers and details. Look at this… There are red items that date back months where there aren’t any explanations given about sizeable sums of money. This is the missing piece to the puzzle. How do you contact the bank?”
“We have a personal banker who takes care of the account.”
“Good. Since Dante has submitted written approval to the bank for me to talk to them, send me his contact information so that I can request documents.” I walked to the break area to grab a granola bar, fruit, and water. Mostly, I’d walked away from her so that I wouldn’t blow up. She was older, and though she was nice, she was the reason I’d lost so much time there.
“Keep calm, Michelle,” I mumbled.
Calmer, I went back to my desk where Linda had logged in as I’d asked. Clicking the tracer arrows, I found exactly what I was looking for. After looking through various statements, comparing them, and seeing the withdrawals hidden there, I could see that millions were missing. Money transferred to other accounts, withdrawn as cash, and there were checks written, too. By whom, though?
I contacted the bank through email, and I also placed a call to the personal banker. I hung up the phone, feeling restless. Was this something Dante had hidden from me on purpose? Did he know how much money was missing? Was he trying to distract me from seeing what was going on here?
“Good morning, Mr. Allen,” Linda greeted Dante, catching my attention.
He waved but kept moving. He rushed into his office and closed the door. Agitated and needing answers right away, I got up and followed him. I opened his office door and closed it behind me. He looked up, ready to snap, but his eyes softened when he saw me.
“Now’s not the time, darlin’,” he said as he went back to rummaging through drawers.
“Now is definitely the time, Dante. Did you know that there are distinct features in Linda’s accounting program that lets the administration see things differently than the user accounts?”
