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Back A Penny for Your Thoughts Save as PDF
Chapters (62)
  1. Cover
  2. A PENNY
  3. Dedication
  4. Acknowledgments
  5. One
  6. Two
  7. Three
  8. Four
  9. Five
  10. Six
  11. Seven
  12. Eight
  13. Nine
  14. Ten
  15. Eleven
  16. Twelve
  17. Thirteen
  18. Fourteen
  19. Fifteen
  20. Sixteen
  21. Seventeen
  22. Eighteen
  23. Nineteen
  24. Twenty
  25. Twenty-One
  26. Twenty-Two
  27. Twenty-Three
  28. Twenty-Four
  29. Twenty-Five
  30. Twenty-Six
  31. Twenty-Seven
  32. Twenty-Eight
  33. Twenty-Nine
  34. Thirty
  35. Thirty-One
  36. Thirty-Two
  37. Thirty-Three
  38. Thirty-Four
  39. Thirty-Five
  40. Thirty-Six
  41. Thirty-Seven
  42. Thirty-Eight
  43. Thirty-Nine
  44. Forty
  45. Forty-One
  46. Forty-Two
  47. Forty-Three
  48. Forty-Four
  49. Forty-Five
  50. Forty-Six
  51. Forty-Seven
  52. Forty-Eight
  53. Forty-Nine
  54. Fifty
  55. Fifty-One
  56. Fifty-Two
  57. Fifty-Three
  58. Fifty-Four
  59. A Sample Chapter of Don’t Take Any Wooden Nickels
  60. About the Author
  61. Other Books by Mindy Starns Clark
  62. About the Publisher

Harriet agreed. She had tried crunching the numbers several different ways, but it still came out the same. In the last five months, Feed the Need had drastically cut their costs, diverting the savings into a series of unrelated accounts. The surprise here was not that the money had been stolen, but where it had gone—not into someone’s private account, as I had suspected, but into the business accounts of Smythe Incorporated. Whoever had stolen this money from Feed the Need had simply diverted it to the for-profit company. Of course, it wasn’t quite that clear-cut on paper, but Harriet had brilliantly traced it out.

“I don’t get it,” Harriet said. “I mean, a quarter-mil isn’t exactly a lot of money to a company like Smythe. They deal in multi-millions. I can’t imagine why a measly $250,000 was worth all the trouble.”

“Unless they’re not done yet,” I said. “What if whoever did this is still doing it, pulling out just a little at a time so they don’t get caught?”

I stood and paced around the room, thinking of Wendell’s secretary and wondering if she had had any part in this. I doubted it. She so truly valued Feed the Need; I doubted she would’ve done anything to hurt the good works they were doing. It had to have been Judith and Alan.

“This is so awful,” I said. “Not to mention incredibly illegal. How can we tell who authorized all of these transfers?”

Harriet shook her head, pointing to the list of transfers that was nearly a page long—the small transfers that added, in total, up to nearly $250,000.

“You want names connected with the actions?” she asked. “These days, it’s all done electronically.”

“There has to be a record somewhere. I’m going to need that in order to prove any of this.”

“My suggestion,” she said, “would be to get into the Smythe’s electronic banking setup and see if it has a history field. There’s usually a code assigned to each transaction.”

“Okay, let’s do it.”

“It’s not that simple,” she said. “I can’t do that here. You need access, code numbers, the right software—”

“In other words, we need to get over to the Smythe offices and do it from there?”

“Exactly.”

I hesitated, knowing the last place I wanted to be was back on the road, much less at a familiar place where my tail could once again pick me up and make roadkill out of me. I felt sure we’d be safe in the Smythe offices, though once we left there I wouldn’t have taken money on our odds of making it back to the train station in one piece.