The password was correct. But all that there was on Jo’s desktop was a shortcut to her email. Daniella clicked around for a bit, trying to find a document file that might provide her answers, but there was nothing. Not even in the documents folder.
Jo hadn’t just kept her desktop scrubbed clean. She’d kept her whole machine nearly pristine. Unnervingly clean.
That meant that the only record of what Daniella was looking for had to be a paper copy. Daniella turned around, started looking through the shelves again. Row after row of those binders were labeled as Inventory, by year.
Bingo.
Daniella flipped through the binder labeled Inventory: 2017–2020. Everything looked fine. Mostly normal. But the systematic nature of the numbers she had in her sales ledger bothered her for some reason. They were random, in a way, but they were also tracking downward so steadily, so perfectly.
She looked at the distribution graph in her personal notebook. But she still didn’t buy it. She started plotting some of the most recent sales. Again. This time just the numbers over time. They were down, but they weren’t down exponentially the way they should have been. They should have looked like a hockey stick, sliding down until they hit a tipping point of no return. Instead, they were just down, down, down, like a perfect little escalator.
Daniella got up, found another binder. This one was from five years ago.
Holy pickles, Batman.
The sales were down because the inventory was down.
By a lot.
Archer Hunt Junior was buying about half of what he used to just five years ago. And Daniella knew it was Archer because he was such a control freak, he refused to hire a book buyer for the store. He did all the buying personally.
Daniella went back to the sales ledger, noting the places where Imogen had left those little notes in the margins about buying copies. She checked that against the actual inventory that the store had bought. Nothing. They’d bought none of the customer requests. Nothing new, either. Just a slowing trickle of classics and bestsellers.
Archer Hunt Junior was unwittingly hampering the sales with what he was buying.
But why?
A new wave of nausea hit. And this one had nothing to do with the hangover.
She went back to the laptop. But instead of looking for answers on the computer, Daniella clicked through to the browser, trying to see if she could find any records of the actual accounts online.
And Jo, God bless her, had left herself logged into her password manager.
Daniella suddenly had access to nearly everything. She went looking for the petty cash first, knowing that was the easiest thing to fudge, the easiest thing to fake.
And that’s when she saw it—an inventory transaction for over nine thousand dollars in the account. Daniella looked over the business-expense totals in the binder again. She had records up until the last week. So unless the transaction happened literally last night, there was nine thousand dollars that went missing, somehow. But that didn’t make any sense at all. Nobody just misplaced nearly ten grand. Not overnight.
She needed to talk to Eli. No—first, she needed to talk to Imogen. Because Imogen handled all of the weekly shipments coming into the store. That’s why she was the one who made annotations about customer requests in the sales ledger.
Daniella reached for the call button that sounded the PA system over the whole store. She tipped the metal microphone toward herself and it balanced precariously along its front edge. “Imogen. Will you please get your bald, depressed butt in here and explain something to me.”
Yelling at Imogen felt good. Took the edge off. Made Daniella feel in control. The store might be closing. Archer Junior might be committing some kind of fraud. She might be a nauseous blob, but she was a nauseous blob in charge of somebody else for the moment, and that made all the difference in the world.
“No,” came Imogen’s one-word reply. She’d shouted it from the bookstore floor.
“Immmoogeennn.” This time Daniella had tried a singsong approach. She knew it would grate on Imogen’s ears, if she knew anything at all. Besides, there weren’t customers until the store opened officially at nine.
“I’m not bald, and I’m not depressed,” Imogen shouted back. “And I’m taking my five now.”
“Imogen, I swear to God if you don’t get in here right now I will use the tiny modicum of power that I do have to get you fired.” Daniella hadn’t bothered using the store intercom. If she could hear Imogen’s shout, then Imogen could definitely hear hers.
Imogen appeared in the doorway pretty quickly after that. It was still shocking to see her missing her shoulder-length hair. Like a whole piece of the girl had suddenly gone missing. Plus, Daniella had always assumed that, under all her hair, Imogen had tons of hardware and piercings in her ears. But Imogen actually had none whatsoever. Daniella had never noticed, not with how thick Imogen’s hair had been.
Imogen raised an eyebrow. “What do you need—money for a midmorning beer run?”
“No, but funny that you should mention that. We’re missing about nine thousand dollars in inventory. I need help finding it. And you’re our girl when it comes to inventory.”
Imogen just rolled her eyes. “And you’re our girl when it comes to selling out. I’m getting Eli to deal with your hangover mood.”
Daniella felt a screech building up in the back of her throat. “I swear, Imogen. Help me figure out this discrepancy. Or, hand to God—”
“I know, you’ll have me fired. The thing is, Jo doesn’t fire anyone. And she sure as hell isn’t starting with me. There hasn’t been a delivery since last week. Which you clearly know because you’re messing with me to make yourself feel better about your crappy decisions last night. So I’m getting Eli, and you can go find your chill now.”
Daniella let out that screech. “I have plenty of chill.”
“Sure you do.” Imogen winked in what could only be described as a taunting manner.
“Get out of my sight. And go get me Eli.” Daniella ought to have learned by now that trying to control Imogen would never work, but still, she felt a need to throw the force of her anger that way. “You better sweep in the bathroom when you get back because your new haircut is still all over the bathroom floor. Oh, and this counts for three minutes of your five.”
Daniella felt good about that, until Imogen fired her parting shot.
“Like hell it does. I’m counting from when I find Eli.” The break room door slammed behind Imogen.
And Daniella was left alone, wondering whether the bookstore was going under or if its owner was accidentally sabotaging the entire operation.
5
Lonely as a Cloud
9:27 A.M.
Imogen
There were times when Imogen wanted to punch the simpering smile off Daniella Korres’s face.
To be honest, it was most of the time. That was why she’d left the break room. She didn’t want to actually give in to her violent impulses.
As she moved through the stacks, Imogen walked by Little Miss Perfect, who was helping a customer check out at the register with her signature smile. She had let the customer in half an hour ago—early—because “they really need to get to work,” and Little Miss Perfect had been so understanding about it that there was no way she was actually human. They weren’t even a regular. And they had stayed in the store for half an hour. Nothing about the situation that the customer created had been reasonable. Rinn had been mind-bogglingly understanding about the whole thing.