Chapter 3 - SOMEONE KNEW THE AUDIT HAD STARTED
The restaurant opened at four that afternoon as if nothing had happened.
Champagne poured.
Candles lit.
People ordered eighty-dollar steaks.
Meanwhile, I served table twelve knowing somebody had entered the management office searching for evidence.
Dana and Marcus returned at six.
This time they did not pretend to be guests.
They met privately with Julian, me, and Redwood’s independent employment counsel.
Dana made one point immediately.
“Do not play detective.”
I nodded.
Julian looked disappointed.
Apparently managers enjoy unnecessary risk when their careers collapse.
The auditors explained what they had already found.
For eighteen months, Aurelia House employees had paid mandatory tip-outs averaging roughly $22,000 per month.
Most reached legitimate support staff.
Some did not.
Seven names appeared to be ghost employees.
Total suspicious distributions:
$91,400.
Then there were cash “recovery” payments.
Walkouts.
Broken glassware.
Complaints.
Kitchen errors.
Servers had been pressured to cover losses that should have remained business expenses.
Those payments rarely appeared in the accounting system.
Instead, managers entered the original checks as comps, voids, promotional discounts, or customer recovery.
I frowned.
“If the bill is comped after we pay cash, where does our cash go?”
Marcus looked at Julian.
That was the question.
Julian whispered:
“The nightly management deposit.”
“Meaning?”
“Cash collected outside the POS gets put into an envelope.”
“Then what?”
“Regional management picks it up.”
Dana asked:
“Who?”
Julian answered:
“Serena Blake.”
Regional Director of Operations.
The woman who visited Aurelia twice a month, wore six-thousand-dollar suits, and called servers “labor units” when she thought we couldn’t hear.
I remembered handing Julian money twice before.
A seventy-dollar wine mistake.
A sixty-three-dollar walkout.
If hundreds of employees had done the same—
Dana placed another spreadsheet in front of us.
Estimated undocumented employee cash collected across five Redwood restaurants:
$214,000.
Then Marcus said:
“We believe those payments may have been recorded a second time as operating losses.”
I stared.
“They charged employees and still told corporate the restaurant lost the money?”
“That’s what we’re investigating.”
Double recovery.
Then Julian whispered:
“I have envelopes.”
Everyone turned.
“What envelopes?” Dana asked.
He swallowed.
“Serena told managers to destroy the handwritten collection sheets after each month.”
My heart started pounding.
“But I kept mine.”
“How many?”
“Three years.”
Dana stared at him.
“Where?”
Julian looked toward me.
“In a storage locker.”
May you like
Then he added:
“And there’s one sheet Serena signed herself.”
