Big Pickle: A Secret Boss Romantic Comedy - JJ Knight Page 0,38
of the family.”
He chose his words carefully, but my suspicion remains. Something here’s not right. I spin the heart glasses on the desk, trying to come up with a way to get at the truth.
“You know, I find it interesting you wanted to work at this particular deli. I’d think you would get a lot out of working at the Manhattan Pickle with the founder. He’s got tons of experience running that gigantic restaurant. Here, you’re learning from someone who has to fake it all the time.”
He holds my gaze. “You don’t look like you’re faking.”
I search his face for his intention with that double entendre, but he’s back to the Jason I know, handsome and attentive and thoughtful.
“Well, I am. I might have two years of business school behind me, but it’s nothing next to you and your MBA.”
“Right. Let’s just say New York isn’t my scene. I needed to get away.”
Interesting. Maybe he went through a bad breakup. Or his family was hounding him. Maybe he would admit that to me one day. When we were more personal.
My shoulders relax.
He pushes aside the emails to lift one of the spreadsheets. “So, what is this about, the cheesecakes?”
“They’re stacked up like crazy in the freezer. It hasn’t made any sense. I remember us selling them before, but not in the numbers we’re receiving. And corporate hasn’t given us any specials to offload them. Big portions of rich desserts don’t really go hand-in-hand with a lunchtime deli. So I started looking into it.”
I lean in and point to a line on the spreadsheet. “This is when Susan left. And a couple of weeks before, she started ordering the cheesecakes in greater numbers.”
“Why would she do that?”
“I think it might be because this delivery is handled differently monetarily.” I put another printout in front of him. “Look here. With that bigger delivery, she can show that we got, say, five hundred dollars’ worth of the cheesecakes in and put it inside the system as deliveries received. But we don’t have to pay out the money, because the deliveries between delis aren’t billed, but credited to the chain.”
He nods. “But she still entered it as a payment upon delivery. That way she can make it look as though we paid out more money for deliveries than we did, so that she can hide money that’s actually going somewhere else.”
“Exactly.”
“But where is that money going?”
“I’m still looking, but I suspect the cash deposits. The credit card transactions go straight to national for accounting.”
“But not the cash,” Jason says.
“Exactly. The big bills used to go to the bank via courier. Everything is well documented.” I open the folder he had on his lap and show the receipts.
“But then what happened?”
“She canceled courier service and started making the delivery runs.”
“So she could pull cash without anyone noticing in between?” Jason asks. “But she’s not here anymore. She hasn’t been here to pull cash for six months.”
I hand him another printout. “I know. But look at these cash deposits. Once she starts the manual deposits, they sharply drop until they hit a very specific number, one that’s less than average.”
Jason looks up at me. “Five hundred dollars?”
“Bingo.”
“She was taking five hundred dollars a day from the deli?”
“Precisely.”
Jason’s ears have turned red. Wow. He’s really upset.
“No wonder this deli is nearly bankrupt,” he says.
Wait, what? “The deli’s bankrupt? Jace Pickle said nothing about the deli being in trouble.”
Jason stares at the page a moment longer. “Not yet. But I’ll admit this much. One of the reasons I came here was to see if I could turn the ship around.” He sets the pages back on the desk. “The family will be so grateful to you for figuring this out. It’s been a great mystery.”
I push back in my chair, giving me some distance from this guy. Who is he, really? “I don’t understand.”
“This is Jace Pickle’s fault.” Jason’s mouth turns down into a grimace. “If he’d have paid more attention, he would’ve seen these changes. I think the family is indebted to you.”
“Was this why you sneaked into the office that time?” Things start to fall into place. How he got in there. And why Jace was so anxious for me to keep him here.
“We weren’t sure what we were dealing with down here,” Jason says. “But you figured it out.”
He’s right. I did. “I couldn’t have done it if I hadn’t been given manager status. I didn’t have the access before.”