Yeah. Everyone had access to the register, and no one watched over it that carefully. Absolutely anyone could have stuck their hands in the bank deposit envelope, pulled a fistful of cash, adjusted the deposit slip for a new total, and no one would have blinked. “Who empties the register at the end of the day?”

“Same answer,” Tina said. “Whoever’s working. The register spits out a report telling us how much there is. As a backup, the checks are added up. The cash is added up. The numbers are compared to make sure.”

“And that gets done for certain?”

“It’s supposed to,” Chloe said. “Or we get in trouble.”

But then she and Tina and Camille all exchanged a long look. A long guilty look.

Bill groaned. “Oh, ladies.”

“Okay, so we don’t always check,” Tina admitted. “I trust the printout. I mean, a computer can’t add things up wrong, everyone knows that.”

“Me too,” Camille said softly. “I trusted the printout.”

Chloe winced. “And I guess this is where I admit I’ve never added it up, I just say I do.”

Bill put his heads into his hands. “Christ.”

Summer sighed. “So there’s no check and balance system?” She got a bunch of blank looks. “Okay, we’ll get back to how stupid that is in a minute. You fill out a deposit slip, right? Listing both the cash and the checks? So it’d be hard for someone to actually change the cash and the total, right?”

Another look between sisters.

Chloe studied the ceiling.

“Hello?” Summer said. “Anyone home?”

“I don’t always separate the numbers,” Tina admitted. “Sometimes I just put down the total, no breakdown of checks and cash.”

“Me too,” Camille said.

Chloe added a guilty shrug.

Bill just shook his head.

Summer sighed. “So the deposit is taken to the bank, by whoever’s available, without a breakdown of cash and checks, and then credited to the account. You all realize there’s only about four different places where it can go wrong, where the cash can be separated from the checks without a system in place to stop that from happening.”

“How many discrepancies did you find?” Bill asked quietly.

“Three hundred and fifty dollars for this first half of the month alone,” Summer said. “And I’d be willing to bet this problem goes back a while, so three hundred and fifty bucks minimum a month for all the years in business…We need to check it out.”

Tina’s frowned deepened. “On the computer?”

“I can try to do it, but I’ll need help.”

Tina bit her lower lip. “I wouldn’t know where to start.”

Camille shocked Summer by squeezing her hand. “I’ll help.”