What is it that arouses someone's suspicion? Is it the absence of the cheating husband, flimsy excuses, changes in behavior that seems like overcompensation for some still-secret wrong? Is it that as soon as you turn your back, the person's demeanor changes immediately, like the guy you see from your rear-view mirror pumping his fist in the air, practically skipping in the direction away from the gas station with the $20 that you just gave him after hearing his sob story about how his credit card was declined and how he needs gas money to get home to the hungry kids? Gas money, indeed. Or could it be that somewhat furtive and unpleasant looking smug smile that you just happen to catch on the face of a greedy salesman right before you sign on the dotted line that causes you to change your mind about making your purchase?
You see, this is something I absolutely have to ask myself because I have a healthy dose of self-doubt. I admit I may just have a suspicious mindset, so before I accuse my boss of shady business dealings, I need to figure out the source of my suspicions from my jumbled thoughts. I mean, something as cliched as a "sixth sense" or "a woman's intuition" simply would not do for a legitimate reason to request for a formal investigation of a person or a business, would it?
I have been at my current job for over a month. I work as a secretary in an office situated in the Prudential Tower in Boston, with quite the nice nighttime scenery. Designer Auto Parts, LLC recruited me off of Craigslist. They hired me based on the fact that I am proficient in Spanish, Italian, French, German, Russian and Japanese. They suggested that I will handle ordering parts and drafting up rudimentary business documents for business lawyers to finalize, and offered me $50/hour. Considering the fact that I am a college dropout, this seemed like a pretty good pay rate for me, and I did need the money. Basically, I am handed a list of customers here in the States and what they want to buy, and I contact European offices to order car parts for shipment into various US ports.
My boss, Ed Bunsen, has a no-nonsense air about him, and does not crack jokes. I can't pinpoint anything that suggests he is untrustworthy, but he made it clear to me during the first week of my job that he does not trust me yet, and I am to leave the shipment of the goods from the ports to the warehouse to him. There are only five people at the office full time: the boss, me, an accountant, a marketing and sales manager, and an IT guy. I am told the company also has a warehouse somewhere else. My boss occasionally greets some men in business suits visiting him, and does not let me contact the customers directly, only the suppliers.
I guess it was the numbers on the orders that first struck me as peculiar. In the auto industry, for example, I had expected that the small repair shops across the US that service high-end foreign cars, who comprise our supposed customer base, would order things such as tires or wheel rims in multiples of four. Instead I see the quantity ordered for those parts in multiples of six, seven, or nine, which I considered pretty odd. However, when I put the list of parts to be ordered to the suppliers and arranged for shipments, the suppliers (supposedly companies like Rolls Royce, Fiat, and Masserati) never complained.
In one of my idler moments at work, I thought to look up information regarding the supplier companies and once even sent an anonymous email asking why someone might want to order in multiples of three rather than two or four, for which I received no reply. I also noticed that the phone and fax numbers that my boss gave me were different from the numbers listed on the websites.
My hunch tells me that there's something fishy going on. Whether or not the company's dealings actually constitute what the CIA would consider a threat, I don't know. I just felt that the situation needed to be reported and investigated, but on the down low, and without really compromising my job if the business actually does turn out to be legitimate.
Thank you for your time,
Sophie L.
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