Home > The Money Man

The Money Man
Author: Nancy Herkness

Chapter 1

Alice Thurber was losing her mind—or at least the part of her mind that she used to add and subtract. She stared at the computer screen, willing the $3.37 discrepancy to resolve itself into perfect balance. But no matter how often she ran the numbers, her client, the Mane Attraction, still had a shortfall of $3.37 for the month of February.

She felt a tremor of panic ripple through her, making her suck in a breath to calm herself. Never before in all the years she’d been a bookkeeper had she been unable to find the problem in a client’s books. Yet in the past six months, four of her clients had tiny errors that she could not account for.

“Gosh darn it!” She shoved her rolling chair back from the desk in her newly redecorated home office. One of her two cats, Sylvester, the Duke of Salford, gave her a regal glare from his bed on the multilevel cat tree that stood beside her desk. As she started to pace between the matching cream-painted desk and credenza, his golden eyes closed again.

A few months ago, the first discrepancy had shown up in the books of Sparkle, a special-occasion dress boutique. She’d combed through all the debits and credits but found no explanation. However, the owner had dismissed her concerns, assuring Alice that she didn’t care about a few dollars of shortfall. Alice had reluctantly let it go because she simply didn’t have time to go through every piece of paperwork.

But it nagged at her pride. And at her need for control.

The second discrepancy appeared the next month at Work It Out, the gym where her friend Dawn was a personal trainer. The gym owner dismissed the problem as someone forgetting to fill out the proper paperwork when they took money out of petty cash, but Alice couldn’t let it go so easily. Because now it wasn’t just her pride taking a hit. Her worldview was beginning to tilt.

She’d chosen her career in bookkeeping for a reason: numbers were objective and reliable, unlike her parents. She could count on two and two always adding up to four. Until now . . . with her own clients.

However, it wasn’t until Nowak Plumbing Supply showed a $4.12 shortfall that Alice began to freak out. Especially because the owner complained loudly. Of course, that was because Alice had talked his son into switching from paper ledgers to a computerized system and the older man didn’t trust computers.

The panic swelled into her throat as she wondered if he was right.

She tugged at the collar of her white cotton blouse as she felt the unpleasant sensation of being dragged back into the crazy unpredictability of her childhood, a life she had hated and that she had carefully constructed her adult career to avoid. Her stepfather’s fortunes had fluctuated so wildly that Alice never knew when she’d get pulled out of summer camp or ballet class for nonpayment of the bill. Her mother’s moods changed right along with their monetary status, so Alice also never knew what kind of parent she’d be dealing with at school pickup time. Alice had sought and found comfort in the predictable outcomes of algebra and geometry as a barrier to the constant zigzagging of her life.

And now her beloved reliable numbers were becoming as untrustworthy as her parents.

She bent over the long work surface and scanned through the pages of debits and credits, unable to believe her own calculations. Which made the panic rise up again, this time twisting her stomach into a knot.

“Nothing! Nothing! Nothing!” she muttered, flipping back the long brown ponytail that had fallen over her shoulder.

Of course, she’d double-checked with the banks to see if their records agreed with the monthly balances. They did. The same with the credit card companies. No obvious issues.

She paced back to the computer and stared at it. Was it possible that the software was the problem? It was a relatively new package that several businesses had bought in the last six months or so. The program’s creator, Myron Barsky, had held a sales seminar at the local hotel, which Alice had attended as a service to her clients. She had been impressed with the software so when seven of her clients decided to purchase BalanceTrakR, she had no problem with that. In fact, she’d gone through the training webinars and set up the system for those clients.

But the numbers were telling their own story once again. Seven clients were using the software. Only four had an accounting issue.

That meant Alice was the problem.

Now the panic began to close up her throat as she felt the foundation of her world crack under her feet. If she could no longer count on her skill with numbers, what could she count on?

She pushed past the knot in her throat and tried to consider the situation with some calm. If there was a software problem, it should have a thread on the help forum for BalanceTrakR. Yesterday she had searched through all the questions and answers posted online. None touched on her problem.

So, swallowing her shame, she had posted her problem on the support forum. No one had responded yet.

Dropping down into her ergonomic desk chair, she typed in a more general search query, looking for bookkeeping advice. Maybe someone with a fresh perspective might find her problem.

She clicked through several sponsored ads that offered nothing useful. The next entry was affiliated with the KRG Consulting Group, a powerhouse firm based in New York City but with a worldwide reputation. She couldn’t imagine what sort of help such an elite group had to offer a local bookkeeper. But her sanity was on the line.

She slipped off her wire-rim glasses to rub her tired eyes before seating them back on her nose and clicking on the link. The tagline read: Are you a small business owner with a problem? We want to help—free of charge. The introduction went on to say that KRG Consulting Group had started small too so they remembered the struggle. They had met with success and now offered to lend their fellow entrepreneurs a hand through their Small Business Initiative. All she had to do was fill out the online form and KRG would be in touch.

“If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is,” Alice said to Sylvester, who had leaped off the cat tree to walk across her keyboard. She stroked his sleek black head as she stared at the website.

It wasn’t a marketing ploy to draw in new customers, since no small business owner would be able to afford KRG’s services. So either it was genuine—in which case she might end up looking like an incompetent idiot when one of their genius consultants took three minutes to figure out what she was doing wrong—or they would just ignore her request because it was so far beneath their high-level abilities.

She weighed the two possibilities for a moment before gently setting Sylvester on the floor and starting to type.

 

Derek Killion sat down at the conference table and braced himself as his partner Tully Gibson strolled over, his big, athletic frame encased in a charcoal suit.

“Good job on bringing in the Argon International assignment, partner,” Tully said, giving Derek a hard congratulatory thump on the shoulder before heading for his usual chair at the end of the table.

Derek rolled his abused shoulder under his suit jacket, while Tully sat down and pulled off his handstitched Lucchese boots before propping his sock-covered feet on the table. He’d once put his boots on the expensive zebrawood surface, but Derek had put a stop to that by threatening to deface them with a permanent black marker.

Tully tilted the chrome-and-leather chair back, making it creak under his solid muscles. “That’s quite a coup for KRG, beating out two of the biggest accounting firms in the world, but you have your work cut out for you.”

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