Wrong Place, Right Time(49)

“Well, I don’t know for sure if I can help you, but I’m willing to give it a shot.”

Lucky pulls out the empty chair next to him. “Why don’t you have a seat here, and I’ll show you what we’re looking at.”

I take Sammy by the hand and bring him around the table with me.

“But I want to go with Auntie May,” he whines.

May follows behind us and I stop, waiting for her to catch up. I’m about to tell her she doesn’t need to play babysitter, but she takes Sammy by the hand without hesitation and starts to lead him away. “How about we go meet Sahara?”

“Ith that the big doggie?” Sammy asks, sounding excited about the prospect.

I’m trying not to panic over the idea that Ozzie’s dog could have Sammy as a snack between meals.

“Yes, that’s right. You already met her once, didn’t you?”

Sammy nods. “She’th big. Mommy thayth we can’t have a big dog, ’cuth big dogth have big poopth and she doethn’t wanna pick them up.”

Everyone chuckles under their breath.

My face goes a little pink, but I know they’re not laughing at my son. His little speech impediment makes him sound like he’s cracking a joke when he’s just saying whatever he needs to say. I don’t hold it against people who find humor in it.

I’ve been told he’ll grow out of it, but that if he hasn’t by the time he starts school, he’ll have speech therapy through the system. Regardless, I don’t pressure him because it’s part of who he is, and I think it makes him special.

May leads Sammy away into an area of the warehouse I’ve not yet seen, and I sit down at the table. Where I was working before, the environment was really casual. Meetings were held sometimes in a circle made of beanbag chairs. It feels nice to be sitting in a room full of grown-ups who actually act like grown-ups. With all the muscles around me, I can almost imagine I’m hanging out with the Super Friends, circa 1973.

Everyone takes a seat as Ozzie speaks. “First of all, I assume that May has spoken to you a little bit about the situation, but just to make sure we have all our bases covered, I’d like to start by having you sign an NDA.” He nods at Lucky and one is presented to me.

“Absolutely.” I scan it to be sure I’m not signing over a kidney or anything, then use the pen Lucky gives me to put my signature on the paper. It looks like nearly every other one I’ve seen. Confidentiality has been pretty much standard procedure in every job I’ve had since college.

“Good. Now that that’s out of the way, we can talk about the case. This one concerns a marine accessories retail chain called Blue Marine. Maybe you’ve heard of it?”

I shrug. “I’m not really into fishing.”

“It doesn’t matter. You don’t need to know about the marine business to know something’s not kosher with this particular outfit. We’ve been hired by one of the owners of the business, who is also the major shareholder of the corporation. The other shareholders are not aware of our involvement.”

I nod, letting him know I get it. So far, so good.

“There’re some irregularities in the accounting, and Lucky, who is our financial expert, has been going through the books. He’s also made a site visit to verify some of the things he found. I’m going to let him give you more detail on that, but the gist of the matter is, we suspect pretty substantial embezzlement is going on.” His expression goes dark as he delivers that bad news. “We have no idea who is responsible; we don’t know if it’s a single actor or more than one person, and we don’t know if the other owners are even aware there’s a problem.”

And the plot thickens. I hate to admit to myself that I’m actually getting excited about working in the middle of this mess.

“Because this is a closely held corporation, a family business, we want to be careful about not stepping on toes. This operation is entirely covert. If and when you make site visits, you will go as a customer, as an undercover employee of some sort, or maybe even a vendor. But under no circumstances will any of our team let anyone at Blue Marine know what we’re up to. And that includes the person who hired us, Hal Jorgensen.”

Ozzie pauses to let that sink in. It seems like everyone’s on board by the way they’re nodding, so I nod too.

“Hal will be aware if and when we put someone in place, but that person will not interact with him; and on the off chance that they do interact with him, it will be as a new employee or a new vendor would with a business owner who they’ve never met before.”