Fifteen Round Entries Led Us To Tests Without Any Tracks

I put the two totals side by side.

“The smaller one came from the billing export,” I said. “I can match its test blocks to our run log.”

“And the larger one?”

“That's the number Everett put in the sale deck.”

Anika pulled a chair to my desk.

“Let's earn the difference.”

The difference was $630,000.

Outside the lab windows, a plow pushed snow against the loading dock. A technician walked past with frost caught in his beard. He had been on the packed-snow lane since dawn.

Inside, the sale deck claimed we had sold work I could not find.

We started with January. Then February. By the time we reached March, Anika had drawn a small box around three entries.

Each was $42,000.

“Same customer?” I asked.

“Three customers. Same journal description.”

She read it aloud.

“Weather recovery adjustment.”

Our weather credits usually went the other way. If warm air ruined a booked ice window, we moved the work or gave the customer a credit. We did not make forty-two thousand dollars because the lake sent us fog.

“Could it mean overtime?” she asked.

“Then there would be extra blocks and crew sheets.”

I opened the read-only run map in the approved folder.

One test block cost $3,000 under those contracts. A $42,000 entry would mean fourteen blocks. Fifteen entries would mean 210 blocks.

“We don't lose 210 blocks in the snow,” I said.

Anika made no face at that. She wrote down the count.

We went through each entry. There were no matching controller times. No tire set numbers. No load sheets. Three dates fell on days the ice lane had been closed.

I checked those dates twice.

There were limits to what that proved. A closed ice lane did not mean every chamber was idle. I checked the indoor bookings too. Then I checked the contracts to see what each charge claimed to cover.

Every disputed line named outdoor braking work.

“Put that in the notes,” Anika said. “Include what you ruled out.”

“How do you know the lane was closed?” she asked.

I brought up the surface reports. On one day, a warm wind had raised the top ice above our allowed range. On another, a pump seal had failed during resurfacing.

“These notes are yours?”

“Yes. The controller record is separate. So are the crew hours.”

“Show me all three.”

That was her way. She never called a thing false because it looked wrong. She kept asking what else should exist if it were true.

At noon, Everett appeared behind us.

“I hope we're not confusing forecasts with invoices.”

“That is what we're checking,” Anika said.

He rested a hand on my chair.

“Miles built a lot of forecast tables. Young analysts sometimes get excited about a full schedule.”

I turned enough to face him.

“My tables marked those blocks as available capacity.”

“Numbers move between sheets.”

“Their labels should move with them.”

His hand left my chair.

Anika asked him who could post revenue adjustments. He named Dana Pell, our finance director, and a shared executive account.

“We'll need the change logs,” she said.

“That's a lot of effort over rounding.”

She looked at the fifteen identical amounts.

“Rounding normally changes the last digits.”

He left without answering.

An hour later, he called me into the stairwell. The door shut behind us with a flat metal sound.

“You want to make this ugly?” he asked.

“I'm answering the buyer's questions.”

“Then answer that those were planning numbers. Take down your little comparison before they misunderstand.”

“I don't control the review folder.”

“You control whether you're useful here.”

I could hear a cart moving on the other side of the door. Someone stopped, then moved on.

“Send any correction to Anika,” I said. “She'll keep it with the records.”

He stared at me for a long moment.

“Your aunt knew when to be reasonable.”

“She kept your signed note.”

I opened the door and returned to my desk.

My hand shook when I picked up the black stone. I put it down again before Anika came back. I did not want her to mistake a steady voice for a steady stomach.

I wrote another dated account for Mara.

That afternoon, the board's lawyer sent a notice requiring staff to preserve sale records, finance files, and related messages. An outside records firm began taking fixed copies under the board's order.

Nobody asked me to sneak into an account. I was asked to explain the records I already used.

Near six, Dana came downstairs.

She still wore her coat. Her car keys left red dents in her palm.

“Did he tell you those were forecasts?” she asked.

“Yes.”

She looked toward the stairwell.

“They were, at first.”

From inside her coat, she took a single folded page.

Across its top, in Everett's handwriting, was a command: “Book All Fifteen Before Buyer Review.”