Chapter One
A Quiet Embezzlement
Tony’s Wine and Spirits opened at nine and closed at nine. By noon I had already been on my feet long enough to hate everyone in the building, starting with the couple from Maryland who pronounced Chablis Chab-LISS.
I did not correct them. Correcting customers was not in the new job description, per Tony, who owned Tony’s Wine and Spirits and pronounced Chablis the same way.
Tony was an idiot.
The couple from Maryland were idiots.
The man at register two who asked me three times for a Pinot Gris when the Pinot Gris was in his hand was an idiot.
Beverly was asleep on the heat vent in the manager’s office. She came to work with me every day because I could not leave her at the townhouse. Last time I tried, she ate a couch cushion. She was probably also an idiot. She was a dog. It did not count.
I checked the opening drawer against last night’s close. Thirty-one dollars short. The register was always thirty-one dollars short. Tony said it was probably nothing. I pointed out that thirty-one dollars five nights a week fifty-two weeks a year was eight thousand and sixty dollars. That was not nothing. That was embezzlement on a payment plan.
Tony said you’re funny in the tone of a man asking me to never say it again.
I did not say it again. I started a spreadsheet on my personal laptop. I am Dana Ashton. I do not let things go.
The delivery truck pulled into the lot at two fifteen.
I saw it through the front window. A flatbed with a small crate strapped to the bed. A man in a polo shirt climbed down from the cab. He had the posture of a man who delivered things for a living and stopped expecting anyone to help him.
I went to the door. The bell over my head jingled.
“Tony’s Wine and Spirits?”
“Yes.”
He looked at the clipboard. He looked at me. “You Tony.”
“I am not Tony.”
“Can you sign for Tony.”
“I can sign for Tony.”
I signed. I did not look at the form. The man and a second man I did not notice lifted the crate down. They walked it inside on a dolly. They set it against the back wall.
“Where do you want it.”
“Push it into the corner.”
“You don’t want it unboxed.”
“I want it in the corner.”
They pushed it into the corner. The taller one slit the side of the crate with a box cutter. He pulled back the cardboard.
It was a wine rack. Wrought iron, six feet tall, four shelves. The kind of thing a person bought to make their liquor store look like a Tuscan trattoria instead of a strip mall.
There was a small brass tag on the bottom corner. Carter Metalwork. Fairhaven, VA.
“Tony order this?”
“He must have.”
“It’s nice.”
“It is.”
I tipped them ten dollars from my own wallet. Tony was not the kind of man to leave a tip. They left. The truck pulled out. The wine rack sat in the corner.
I went back to the register. I forgot about it within the hour.
