What was it?” I am going to give this my best shot, and if she kicks me out because she thinks I have the back ground and thoughts of a thief, then so be it. “Did they change supply vendors and are the people working at the main place connected in some way to those vendors?” Deep breath. “They obviously knew what to rearrange to hide missing inventory and they all worked together to do it. Items are delivered in large quantities to the main warehouse then are sent out as needed to the smaller stores. All records of what is sent to the smaller stores are kept at the main location, that way they can share the shortages and do not have a finger to point to any particular person or place. The key is that there must be a shortage coming in. The only way they could make any skim on that is if they had a good deal with the vendor. Otherwise what would be the point?”

“All of the deliveries are checked in with their bar codes.”

“Who assigned the case quantity to the bar codes? Is it a vendor’s download or is it done in house?” I am on a roll so I may as well keep going.

“If a case of 10W-40 motor oil is checked in with the account saying it has 18 units inside it and there are actually only 12 units, on paper no one will be the wiser because no one opens the case to physically count them. The people there know what is going on. They make money from the deal or they wouldn’t keep doing it. When one of the smaller stores sends in an order everything is done by in-house e-mail and the warehouse puts the individual pieces in some big blue plastic totes for delivery.

I watched them. They are neither systematic nor orderly. They create chaos so it will be harder to verify what comes in. They probably add things that were not on the original request as “honest mistakes”, that way things are constantly being scrambled coming in or going out. They only short the orders by a little bit on each one, that way a ‘small’ mistake doesn’t raise any red flags.” (Well, here’s where we see if I still have a place here.) “Anyway that’s how I would do it.”

“Prove it.”

“I would have to go there and pull the cardboard boxes the stuff comes in out of the dumpster and scan the bar codes to see what it shows.”

“Let’s go.”

Guess I am still here.

We drove there to the store in her Lexus and pulled around back where the cardboard dumpsters were. Regular dumpsters have lids you can crawl into from the top when the side doors are locked, but cardboard ones have a spring lid that only opens when a truck is holding it upside down. The side doors to the dumpster were padlocked. Some employees there were more than a little hostile and rude to us. Things were getting ugly when the owner, Mr. Kostas, walked outside to see what the problem was.

Beverly said she wanted to check something and needed to see the empty boxes in the dumpster. She and Mr. Kostas stared at each other for a minute then he told one of the guys to open it. His flunky said that no one knew where the keys were and the dump truck was on the way there now, so there wouldn’t be time to find them.

That was a mistake.

The old man straightened up and gave him a look that would have blistered paint, saying “Bring me a set of bolt cutters, NOW!” He personally cut off the lock securing the door.

Of course I was the one who had to crawl in to get out the boxes I wanted. Lots and lots of boxes. I especially wanted the ones that they had been shuffling around on me. Since I had earlier thought I would be working in the office I had worn a nice pleated navy blue skirt and was not happy about getting something oily on it, but work is work. I was also scared.

This entire thing was based on my idea so I had a lot riding on it. Beverly was putting a lot of trust in me and I did not want to let her down. I was somewhat less than graceful getting out of the dumpsters side door. Oddly enough I remember thinking that Ann was going to kill me for ripping the sleeve of the new blouse she had helped me pick out last week.

Beverly asked for the hand scanner to check the bar codes. The employees were reluctant at first but the old man looked at them, growling out something in what I guess was Greek.