Page 78 of He's the One

“I can’t get into the safe either. I should be able to but he’s changed the combination.”

“Does your father know?”

“I have no idea.”Yeah, I get it. I should find out.He’d let too much slip past him.

Theo looked around. He still had the feeling there was something in here that he was missing.

“What else is in the filing cabinets?” Col asked.

“Receipts, invoices, old quotes, staff information, everything about events we’ve held including weddings.”

“Is it worth going through it all and making a note of suppliers you don’t recognise?”

“Why?”

“In case they never supplied anything?”

Theo winced. “Really?”

“If you’re right about him getting a kickback from Frank Nyman, then he might well have been up to more than that. Who does your accounts?”

“I don’t know.”I ought to know.

They went through every drawer, every folder.

“This isn’t as organised as it first appears,” Col said. “Maybe he’s done it deliberately. I mean, there issomeorder, just less than I’d expect.”

“And not as much as I expected on recent weddings. Next time I’m working in here, I could start to sort the receipts and see what he says.”

“If he says no, then don’t push it or you’ll give away that we’re onto him. He might…”

“Might what?”

“Start a fire?”

They stared at each other.

“Oh God,” Theo whispered.

“Worst case scenario.” Col shrugged. “I’ll keep looking but I’m less likely to spot anything suspicious than you.”

Theo found four suppliers whose names he didn’t recognise, and took photos of their invoices. He also noticedPicture Perfecthad catered for events before, specifically the last wedding. An invoice for a large quantity of champagne flutes made him furrow his brow.

“What is it?” Col asked.

“I remember these arriving. I ended up moving them to the storage room but there were twenty boxes not thirty.”

Col looked over his shoulder. “That’s another way he could defraud your father. Order more stuff than you actually need and either sell the surplus or supply it to a friend or family member.”

“Oh shit. We order tons of stuff.”

“He wouldn’t be doing it for everything. What’s this about artist weekends?”

“My idea that he stole. It makes me wonder why I’m even doing this. Is anyone going to listen to me?”

Col put his arm over Theo’s shoulder. “Let’s leave before we’re discovered. We have enough to work through.”

At every step on the return journey, Theo kept expecting to hear Dick Dastardly or his father, or worse still his mother or grandmother, demanding to know what they were doing, but they reached the stable block without encountering anyone.

---