“Yes, sir!” she said with her never-failing enthusiasm.
“Have you had any success reaching Destiny?” I asked. I had given Wanda the single task of calling Destiny’s cell phone and house numbers, since she hadn’t been answering for me.
“It goes straight to voicemail for both her cell and house phone. I will let you know as soon as I get her,” Wanda said.
“Thanks Wanda.” I hung up the phone and took out my cellphone. I pressed star sixty seven to block out my number. Montie answered on the first ring.
“May I speak to Destiny?”
“She’s busy.”
“Busy doing what?” I asked, boiling hot over Montie answering her phone.
“She’s getting her rest, so she can build her strength after being attacked.”
“Take her the phone and let her tell me she’s too tired to talk,” I ordered.
“No, and don’t worry about calling back,” Montie said before he hung up. I called back, but it went straight to voicemail again.
I stood up from my seat. I was one instant away from firing up the jet and heading back to Atlanta. “If it wasn’t for this damn meeting with Tom, I would be gone,” I said to myself.
All I knew was Tom’s shit had to be together when he came into the meeting I scheduled. It was his fault I was straightening out a financial mess, instead of keeping that vulture away from my woman. I wondered what Destiny was thinking by having him answer her phone.
I was livid when I went back to compiling financial data for my meeting with Tom. M
y father interrupted my fact checking when he walked briskly into the room saying, “You have to get to the bottom of this discrepancy, Son. You’ve only been in charge for a year and for something like this to happen will not bode well with our investors.” He sat on the other side of my desk tapping the folder that contained the information I gave him regarding the embezzlement on his chair.
“I know I have to figure this out. I’ve gone over every possible scenario of how a check the size of twenty-two million dollars could walk out the door, without the required signatures,” I said, worn out over the financial debacle.
My father shook his head. “That’s not an acceptable answer. Everything we have worked for is on the line. If people think they can walk out of here with that kind of money, we’re in trouble. This has to be handled swiftly and with a heavy hand.”
“I know,” I said, agreeing.
“No one crosses Turner Enterprises.”
“That goes without saying, Dad. I have come up with a few plausible things that could have happened,” I said.
I pulled the company’s financial records up on my computer. I’d spent the last two days and nights going over the statement, identifying any suspicious activity.
“What you got?” Dad asked.
“Last month when I came in the office, I asked Jalisa to have Tom run the financials and get them to me,” I said.
“And did anything look out of place then?”
“No. I spent at least four hours that day going over the records and everything looked tight. But today, I noticed the payment from that DOD contract for twenty-two million. It was posted in our financial statements a month ago.”
“The DOD wouldn’t have paid the entire invoice like that.”
“And especially not in advance,” I added. “But that’s not the interesting part. A wire transfer was made to an undisclosed account in the same amount of twenty-two million dollars the following week.” I turned my computer screen around and showed my father the electronic transaction. “I’ve got a team working to find out who the owner of that account is as we speak.”
“So basically, what you are saying to me is that someone forged a payment from the DOD and then wired the money to themselves?” Dad asked.
“Either forged a check or entered a ghost payment into the system. I personally went to the DOD today to follow up with our rep there and was told the contract hasn’t even been awarded yet. She said they are planning to use us, but that no awards had been given out yet.”
“You’re shitting me,” Dad said as he began to pace the room.
“I wish I were. You should have seen the look on my face when I was standing in the office finding out that we didn’t even have the contract.”