The Fourth Stall - Chris Rylander [52]
The Game Fund and Emergency Fund matched my Books. So that meant that the discrepancy was somewhere in the Tom Petty cash. The Tom Petty cash was basically all of our daily operations money. We heard some businessmen in this movie call some extra money “petty cash” once, so we decided to steal that name. Tom Petty is actually some musician my dad listens to sometimes, and we decided just plain “petty cash” is too boring. It’s like Vince sometimes says, “Why call a spade a spade when you can call it whatever you want?” Our Tom Petty cash was any money we used to make loans to kids, spend on business-related materials, pay employee salaries, etc. It’s all the money we have and use that doesn’t go into the Game or Emergency Funds.
This had to be an error with my Books. We’d been paying out so much lately, and with all this Staples commotion it’d be pretty easy to miss something, right? To forget to write something down? It had to be, because otherwise it meant someone was stealing cash from us. It certainly could have been Brady, given how many times we had left him alone in the office to watch Fred. But then again, the cashbox is hidden in the bathroom trash can and the only other two people who know where it is are Vince and Joe. And Vince and I are the only ones with a key to the box itself.
This is the reason I usually left the Books to Vince, to avoid headaches like this. I was going to have to figure this out tomorrow. Hopefully this was just a case of some bad bookkeeping on my part. But my brain kept wandering back to Vince’s weird response to my question at the cabin. I chose to keep ignoring it.
Chapter 17
I called Vince before school that morning and told him to meet me at the office as soon as he could. I had no problem getting up early since I could barely sleep at all that night. Turns out, it’s not as easy as it sounds just to assume something is a simple mistake and not a major problem.
I counted the Tom Petty cash before he got there and confirmed that we were short some money. When Vince finally arrived, I explained what I’d discovered the night before. He listened calmly the entire time and kept his eyes on the tile floor. When I finished, he nodded.
“So the two Funds worked out, though, right?” he asked.
“Yeah.”
“Well, then I think everything is okay. I mean, we’ve been dishing out money left and right. My Books work out okay with your count from last night and this morning, so I bet you just forgot to write something down or messed up on the numbers somewhere in your Books.”
I nodded. I was relieved to hear him say that but also surprised he wrote it off as a mistake so easily. How can he be so sure it wasn’t his Books that were wrong?
“I guess,” I said. “But can’t we double-check your Books against mine, just to be sure? To see exactly where the mistake is? I’ll feel better.”
I started moving toward where he kept his Books in the first stall.
“Wait, Mac,” he said quickly, and I stopped. “I mean, yeah, sure we can do that, but we have a bigger problem right now.” Vince had a worried look on his face. “I can’t make it.”
“What?” I asked, not sure exactly what he meant.
“I can’t make it to the meeting at the Shed after school today.”
“Why not, Vince?” I asked. “Does this have something to do with what happened at the lake? Look, I’m sorry if I made you mad somehow. I don’t know what I did, but whatever it was, I didn’t mean to.”
“No, it’s not that,” Vince said. “It’s my grandma’s, like, hundred-and-fiftieth birthday, or whatever, and I have to go to her apartment after school to ‘celebrate.’ I tried my best to get out of it, but my Mom . . .”
Vince’s mom was a cool lady most of the time, but when she was set on something, it was impossible to get her to break. Impossible. Especially when it came to family stuff. She was