“I’ve taken a look at the past financial records of this place over the years, and I have a few questions for you. It would be great if you could give more clarification on some of the cost buckets and cost items,” I informed Celine politely.
I tried to pick my words carefully so that I wouldn’t come across as being too offensive to her. Although I was here to audit her and she probably knew that as well, I didn’t want to accuse her any wrongdoing until I had solid proof. Internally, I prayed that there wasn’t anything unethical going on here. Innocent until proven guilty, right?
“Of course, I’m more than happy to answer your questions. Some of the labelling of the costs may not be so clear,” Celine replied with a smile.
Reiner and I sat side by side across from Celine at the meeting table. Since she seemed willing to cooperate, I started asking the questions on the list that I had prepared beforehand right away. Just as I just discussed with Reiner before, there were a few unclear points that needed clarification. At that point, I didn’t want to call them suspicious before we had a better understanding of things.
“Let me show you around the kitchen and equipment room so that you’ll get a better idea of how things work,” Celine suggested as she got up from her seat.
After answering all of my questions quite flawlessly, we decided to follow Celine for another tour of the facility. Unlike the tour from last time where we were focused on evaluating the well-being of the children living here, this tour was focused purely on cost utilization.
I glanced over at Reiner’s face as he walked along side me. His expression was unreadable and guarded and that told me that he found Celine’s responses to my questions suspicious or unsatisfactory. Reiner did not appear friendly or relaxed and I knew that he was thinking of something. Hopefully, we’ll see something on this trip that would either clear or solidify our suspicion. Whatever it was, we had to face it head on for the sake of the children.
“The garden and the playground seem extremely well maintained. You use a professional company for this, right?” I asked when we made it outside into the gardens.
“Oh yes, that’s why it looks so clean and perfect all the time,” Celine replied with a smile.
“Is that truly necessary, though? The cost for this maintenance is quite high on the reports,” I voiced my honest opinion.
“Well, this is a small island so there’s not that many companies to choose from that provides this service and it’s not like we can allow weeds to grow everywhere in the garden…” Celine replied followed by a small laugh.
I smiled back while thinking that if it was this expensive to maintain, maybe this place didn’t really need to have such a large and elaborate garden. No offenses to the trees and the flowers but perhaps the money would be better spent on food, clothing, and educational equipment so that the orphanage could take in more children.
After Celine left us alone to do our own investigation of the place, I suggested that we cross check some of the educational tools and equipment in the storeroom while Reiner suggested that we also take a second look in the kitchen.
“Storage room first or kitchen first?” I asked for his preference.
“You’re the leader here. So, you can decide…” Reiner replied with a teasing smile.
He seemed to be in a slightly better mood now that we were alone. Celine must have sense that we are truly questioning and auditing her work. Hopefully she doesn’t take personal offense about this. After all, we’re just doing our job and we’re going to be very thorough about it.
“Storage room first. According to the reports, there’s supposed to be so much stuff in there. Like so much that I wonder why they have to stockpile so much in advance,” I said as I flipped through the thick wad of paper that I held in my hand to arrive at the sheet that showed the list of tools that were supposed to be in stock.
“Sure, the stockroom is this way,” Reiner said as he took my hand in his and began leading the way.
Reiner’s sense of direction was much better than mine for sure. After walking on a tour just that once on our first visit, he seemed to already know where everything was and had absolutely no problem in navigating the place. That wasn’t something that I managed to pick up after walking around the place a few times.
“I think we should talk to the kitchen staff about the sourcing of the raw materials used for cooking,” I suggested as I followed Reiner.
“You think that that’s suspicious too?” Reiner asked before he sighed.
“Let’s not call it suspicious for now, ok? Let’s just say that…we just need to check it out…” I tried my best to reply in a light tone.
“That’s exactly like calling it suspicious. Something smells very fishy about this place just from seeing the numbers on the account. I wonder how long this has been going on and why King never looked into it before this,” Reiner muttered.
“Maybe he was just too busy with the other things,” I guessed.
“True…could be…” Reiner murmured in agreement as he continued to lead the way.
When we arrived at the storage room, there was no one around. Because we had permission from King, Celine had to give us all the keys to the place so that we could access and check everything at will. Reiner helped unlock the storage room door for us. The room was much larger than I thought but what was more shocking was how empty the room was.
“Well, I was expecting a lot more stuff in here…” I mumbled as I stepped deeper into the room.
Reiner followed close behind me as our eyes took in the various educational equipment in the room. My eyes immediately went to the inventory report in my hand. Reiner came to stand close behind me and I knew that he was looking over my shoulder at the report that I held in my hand.
“It clearly doesn’t match up. We don’t even need to do any manual counting. Just eyeballing this is more than enough,” Reiner surmised confidently.
–To be continued…