Chapter 8

Annie cringed, feeling his pain, as behind her Brent pressed his fist into the small of his back and groaned softly.

She squeezed her eyes shut, blanking out Walter’s computer and the mess of the accounting program, replacing it with the image of Brent’s tent hidden behind the bushes in her front yard.

Brent’s presence in her yard all night had made her realize the potential for danger was real. At first she’d simply double-checked all the locks in the windows accessible from the ground. Since Brent was so concerned, she’d put a board in every window, including the second floor and the patio door. Then she’d tucked a fishhook next to every lock that could be reached through a broken window and attached a Christmas bell to every window so if the window was moved, the bell would ring and wake her up. She’d even scattered marbles on the floor beneath each window, in case a thief did manage to get in.

The only possible entrance she’d been unable to booby-trap was the front door. And that hadn’t mattered because Brent wasn’t far away.

She’d slept like a baby, comfortable and secure in her soft, warm bed, while Brent had slept outside on the cold, hard ground.

Before she left for work she’d made coffee and muffins for Brent’s stomach, but there was nothing she could do for his back.

Brent stepped forward and rested one hand on top of the monitor. “Have you found my missing invoice yet?”

Annie shook her head. “No. I also can’t find a few adjustments that I made for journal entries either.”

Luke appeared behind Brent. “Walter’s done our accounting since we started our business. He’s never had trouble.”

She gritted her teeth. She was starting to question Walter’s methods, but she couldn’t find anything specific that was wrong. All she could do was open a different customer file and continue her search for the invoice that she knew was there but couldn’t find. Then her cell phone beeped with a text message.

As soon as Luke and Brent were occupied elsewhere, she grabbed her phone to read the message. Zella’s reply confirmed what she already knew. Zella had never given a house key to anyone. The only extra house key was one their mother had made and left with their neighbor in case of an emergency.

This evening she would visit their neighbor, but for now her priority was finding Brent’s missing invoice.

After painstakingly searching every customer file, she found nothing.

Brent returned from dealing with his customer. “Did you find it?”

Rubbing her tired eyes, she sighed. “No. The only thing that could have happened is that you accidentally deleted it.”

“That’s not possible. There are no numbers missing in the sequence.”

Luke tapped his fingers on the back of the chair. “We’ll just wait for Walter to come back. Thanks for your time, Annie. We’ll call if we need you again.”

Annie had never felt so dismissed. She left quickly and returned to finish up her work for Cindy.

She hoped Cindy still wanted her around.

Brent started to count to ten but only made it to seven.

He turned to Luke, reminding himself that Luke had been his best friend since high school. “How could you do that? You pretty much just fired her.”

Luke waved one hand in the air. “You saw it for yourself. She can’t do it. Not only is she not able to balance, she can’t work the program.”

“Neither can either of us.”

“Neither of us are accountants.”

Brent pointed toward the computer. “You don’t have to be an accountant to do basic data entry on a system like this. It’s designed to be user friendly for idiots like us.”

Luke frowned. “Us idiots never had any trouble with it until Annie came along to help. Since then, nothing has worked right. I hope it doesn’t take Walter too long to fix whatever Annie has done.”

Mentally, Brent began a list of the things that had gone wrong. While what Luke had said was true, some of the things that had gone wrong hadn’t been touched by Annie until after he or Luke discovered they didn’t work. “What if this is a software issue? We haven’t gotten an upgrade since we bought the program. If the problem is caused by an incompatibility with old software and a new operating system, then you’ve accused Annie for nothing. What if Walter has been having the same trouble?”

“Walter would have told us.”

Somehow Brent wasn’t as sure as Luke. “I don’t think so. I’m going to go talk to Annie.”

Brent dug in the bottom drawer until he found the CD of the program disc. As he walked toward the door, Annie’s car drove out of the parking lot.

Instead of going to Cindy’s shop, he called Cindy on his cell. “Why did Annie leave?” he asked, raising his voice over the background noise of power tools.

“I don’t know. She said she had something to do at home. I don’t know when she’s coming back, or even if she is coming back.”

Brent sucked in a deep breath. He didn’t want Annie to go home alone. He’d planned on accompanying her to check out the house before she went in. Just because it was daylight didn’t mean her house was safe. The way he figured it, the thief had put the car in the garage during the daytime while she was at work none the wiser. So he could be there right now—angry that the car was gone.

“Thanks.” He snapped his phone shut and turned to Luke. “There’s something I have to do. I don’t know when I’ll be back.”

Because of the rising panic, it felt like he caught every light red on his way to Annie’s house. When he arrived he found her car parked in the driveway, but the tightness in his gut intensified when she didn’t answer the door. The sign still taped to the garage door that the Mustang was no longer there didn’t calm him.

He was ready to kick the door down when he heard Annie’s voice in the distance. Following the sound, he saw her next door, talking to her neighbor.

Knowing she was safe, he sank down on the porch step to wait for her.

She started walking home, and as soon as she saw him, her pace quickened.

He didn’t want to admit how worried he was, so he pushed himself up and stood slowly, trying to appear casual as she approached. “What were you doing next door?”

She held up a key. “I asked Nadine for our house key back. I told her I changed the locks. She usually has it hanging on a hook by the door, but it had fallen down under the table. We found it, but it was covered in dust and obviously hadn’t been used for years. This is the only spare key there is, so I’m right back to square one.”

Instead of making him feel better, the confirmation that the only known spare key hadn’t been used made him feel worse. “The reason I came is because I wanted to talk to you about something.”

“You couldn’t have phoned?”

“No, I have to show it to you. I need to ask you some computer-related stuff.”

“I’m no expert. I really don’t know much about computers.”

He waited behind her as she unlocked the door then followed her in.

“I was wondering if part of the reason we’ve been having trouble is because of our old program and our new computer.” He held up the program disc. “I wondered if you know someone who knows more about it.”

“I might. Let me put the disc into my computer so I can get the dates and version number.” As she accepted it, a smile broke out across her face. “Wait. I have a better idea. My mother has a really old computer. She says it works fine and has no need to upgrade it. Let’s install it there and see if it works any differently. I even have all your data with me.”

Brent sucked in a deep breath. “What do you mean?”

“I do a backup every week out of habit. I did one from your system a few days ago, so it’s even fairly current. Let’s see if this works.”

Patience was not a virtue of Brent’s; it seemed like forever while they waited first for the ancient computer to boot up and then through the grueling amount of time it took to install the program. Finally when everything was loaded, Annie called up the file. “Here we go. Let’s see the most recent invoices entered.” She hit the button and recalled the last number used.

“That’s my missing invoice.”

Annie hit a few more keys, and a stream of numbers appeared. “Here’s my missing journal entry.” She sighed. “That means this is good news and bad news. It appears that the problems have been compatibility issues all along. So that’s good news. But the bad news is that you have to buy the upgrade and hope that no data has been compromised. That doesn’t really make sense to me, but we have the proof right here.”

Brent tried to be happy, but all he could see was a lot of extra work, and expense, to get all the data fixed.

Annie stood. “If you don’t mind, I have to get back to the office. There’s still a few things I need to do.”

Brent followed her out, then waited in his car while she locked up. He followed her back to the parking lot, but when she went back inside the muffler shop, instead of going back to check on Luke, Brent followed Annie.

Cindy stood at the counter, writing in the appointment book. “Annie, what are you doing back? I didn’t really expect you.”

“I have a couple of things I wanted to finish up.” She headed back to her desk, but didn’t sit down. “My computer’s turned off.”

Cindy nodded. “I needed to put in a special order, so I shut down what you were doing and used your computer since it was already on, then I guess I automatically turned it off. I don’t mind if you go home and finish what you were doing tomorrow.” Without waiting for a response, Cindy turned and went into the shop.

When the door closed behind her, Brent saw it as an opportunity. “I think we have a lot to do tomorrow to re-enter the missing data, so let’s take advantage of this as a break before the grueling work begins. Let me take you out for dinner.”

“Dinner? But—”

“No buts. Let’s reward ourselves for solving the problem.”

Brent held his breath.

Annie sighed. “Okay. Let’s go.”

He turned and stared walking toward the door with his back to her, so she wouldn’t see him smile. “We’ll take my car.”