He shrugged his shoulders. “I’m not sure what you’re getting at. You can’t just move assets out of the company without signoff from higher sources than this John was. I’m sure you know that as well as I do.”

“Agreed, but John had signing authority for other things. Like if he wanted to scrap an old computer, he’d sign off on it, and it went to a vendor who recycled old electronics,” she explained as she buttered a slice of bread.

“Sure, but you’d have to scrap a lot of little things to make a dent in it. And besides, whatever you scrap probably has very little value left anyway, so what’s the point? I don’t see how you can move a large amount of assets out of the company like that. You’d be busy for years,” Amaury rebuked her idea.

“That’s what I thought at first, too. But what if the true value of the asset isn’t just scrap value, but much more?”

“How?”

“Depreciation.”

“Depreciation?” Amaury didn’t quite understand. Of course he was familiar with the concept of depreciating an asset over its useful life to reflect an accurate value on the books and claim the expense on the profit-and-loss account of the company. But that’s where his knowledge ended.

“Yes. John was authorized to scrap old assets below a value of $2,500 without getting any other signoff from HQ. He accelerated depreciation to reduce the value of these assets to below the threshold he could sign for, thus eluding internal controls.”

This sounded promising, he had to admit. “And then?”

“Then he would transfer the asset to somebody outside the company, who in turn sold it for what it was truly worth. He’d give the scrap value back to the company and keep the difference for himself.” She bit into her sandwich and chewed.

“But how much money could he really have stolen like that? What if it amounts to fifty- or a hundred-thousand dollars? That’s peanuts. Not enough reason to send somebody after you to kill you. You saw yourself from the records we looked through yesterday that this has only been going on for about a year.”

“But this doesn’t change the fact that he was clearly defrauding the company. The transaction documents point to him. His signature was all over them. He initiated and then authorized the transactions. Yes, it wasn’t exactly the most sophisticated fraud, and it certainly isn’t new either, but maybe that kind of money meant more than peanuts to him. And maybe he wasn’t trying to kill me; maybe he was only trying to scare me away?”

“What for? The next auditor would just come along and continue where you left off. It would just be a temporary fix at best.”

“Temporary? Hmm.” She clearly gave it a thought.

“Maybe he had something else up his sleeve.”

She knit her brow. “You mean a better fraud?”

“Why not? At some point criminals get greedy. Trust me, I’ve seen plenty of greed in my life.” Amaury wasn’t exaggerating. He’d seen more than his fair share of greed in his long life.

“Greed. Hmm. It reminds me of something my teacher used to say to us in class. If you want to embezzle, you have to embezzle big. Get what you want in one big strike and get the hell out. Long-time embezzling schemes never work.”

“Interesting teacher. What kind of school did you go to?” Amaury gave her an amused smile.

“He was my accounting teacher in college. Believe it or not, accountants and auditors need to actually learn how to perpetrate a fraud in order to spot one in the books.”

“Like a security specialist who has to have broken into a few safes, huh?”

“Exactly. So, is that how Scanguards trains its people?”

Delilah had finished her sandwich and was putting the remaining food back into the fridge.

He gave her a sideways glance. She probably had no idea how close her question cut to the truth. Not only did Scanguards employ a majority of vampires, some less tame than others, a large number of their human employees were reformed criminals.

“I’m afraid I can’t disclose our methods of how—”

She interrupted him. “Amaury, that was a rhetorical question.”

He let out a nervous laugh and changed the subject. “You know what surprises me about John? He goes through this complicated setup to steal a little money, when it would have probably been so much easier to get at Scanguards’ liquid assets. You’re familiar with our balance sheet. We have very little in fixed assets, many of the buildings we operate out of are rented, the vehicles are generally leased. But we run a very heavy cash position. So why not get at the cash? Wouldn’t that have been easier?”