Grantville Gazette Volume 25

by editor Paula Goodlett

  "Of course, I won't hold that against them," Maria Anna said. She glanced over at Carl. Yes, there was a look in his eyes that suggested he'd known about the card game and deliberately timed her visit to put the worst possible light on the Harts. She wondered why Carl had it in for them. She didn't need to add to the reasons she didn't like the brothers. There were enough of those already, and the biggest reason was that her friend Erika, a police officer with the Grantville Police Department, believed they were the principals behind the backwoods percussion cap plant on Salt Lick Run where her friends Christina and Justina Heine died. They'd certainly been behind another plant making percussion caps, but she and Erika had managed to talk the workforce into deserting them. She'd quite enjoyed the sight of the two overweight up-timers cleaning up after the horses on Main Street.

  A few days later

  The Hart brothers were blocking the corridor Marie Anna Siebenhorn wanted to pass through. Not that they were doing it deliberately, it was just that two large pot-bellied men who have stopped to talk tended to take up a lot of room. "Excuse me, could I get through?" she called to their backs.

  "Sure," Ape Hart said as he and his brother moved to let Maria Anna pass between them.

  She had to turn sideways to slip through the gap they made. She felt Monkey Hart's pot-belly touch her back and arched it to avoid further contact. Unfortunately, this pumped up her chest, much to the obvious appreciation of Ape.

  Once past she strode away as quickly as she could. She really wanted to run, but that would only let them know their behavior upset her. Well, she wasn't going to let them win. Right now she just wanted to get into her office where she could examine the company's accounts. Especially those aspects of the company the Harts were involved with. The unions might not allow her to dismiss the Harts just because she didn't like them, but if they were convicted of an offense, the union wouldn't have a leg to stand on.

  A few days later

  Maria Anna was ready to scream in frustration. Nothing. Not a goddamn thing. The books were clean. Sure there was a discrepancy, a massive thirty-eight dollars and fifteen cents, but she was pretty sure that there was a petty cash jar somewhere with exactly thirty-eight dollars and fifteen cents sitting in it.

  She chewed on a tendril of hair. Maybe the books were too good? Maybe the Harts were smarter than she was. Hold it, Maria Anna, this is the Harts we're talking about here. That left just one possible conclusion—that the Harts hadn't been fiddling the books.

  Maria Anna sat staring at the stockroom accounts for several minutes before finally slamming them shut and pushing them to a corner of her desk. The Harts had to be up to something. Doing actual work wasn't in their makeup. It was just a matter of digging until she found it.

  A week later

  The Harts were standing talking to each other in the corridor as Maria Anna approached. Pulling her body up straight, she walked right past them.

  Ape put his hand on Maria Anna's shoulder and halted her, then pulled her around to face him. "Hey, Girlie, don't try to walk past as if we ain't there. What's this we hear about you auditing our accounts? That's not a nice thing to do. Anybody would think you didn't trust us."

  Maria Anna looked at the hand on her shoulder. She imagined digging her nails into it and the sound of Ape squealing in pain. "Please remove your hand, and my name is not 'Girlie.' It is Maria Anna."

  Ape lifted his hand. "Hey, no need to be so touchy."

  "Yeah, Ape didn't mean nothin' by it," Monkey said. "But you're barking up the wrong tree if you think we'd steal from Garland. We ain't gettin' any younger, and with no social security, we need this job."

  "How much money do you have in the petty cash?" Maria Anna asked.

  Monkey shrugged his shoulders. "Damned if I know. Maybe twenty or thirty bucks I guess. Why?"

  "Just checking."

  April 1634

  Monkey stumbled into the stockroom in his brother's wake, rubbing the spot on his ribs where he'd been kicked by G.C. Cooper in the fight the previous day. "Damned woman. Count everything in the inventory she says, and I bet she means everything . . . right down to the number of individual percussion cap blanks and the sheets of wrapping paper. Doesn't she think we have anything better to do?" Monkey complained.

  Ape sucked the knuckles he'd skinned hitting G.C. Cooper in the same fight and rubbed the bruise Officer Neubert had raised on his ribs when the cops arrived to break it up. "I bet Neubert put her up to it. The bastard's always had it in for us."

  Monkey nodded. "Yeah, fucking krauts. Always stick together. So, what do we do?"

  Ape snorted. "As if we have any choice. The little bitch has been looking for 'just cause' to fire us since she took over. Not following a direct order would play right into her hands.

  "So where do we start?"

  Monkey looked around the stockroom. With his ribs feeling the way they did at the moment, he didn't want to do any heavy lifting. His eyes settled on a barrel. "How about we start with the percussion cap blanks?"

  "Yeah, might as well. Gimme a hand to move it closer to the table then."

  An hour later

  Ape slapped a pile of percussion cap blanks onto the bench and stood up. "The hell with this shit."

  Monkey put aside another pile of one hundred percussion caps and looked over at his brother. "You'd rather be shoveling horse shit?"

  "Of course not, but that broad's got it in for us. I ask you, what have we ever done to her to deserve this?" He gestured to the barrels of percussion cap blanks they still had to count. "There must be an easier way. Hell, it's not as if anybody's going to check our numbers, is it?"

  Monkey sat back and examined his piles of carefully counted percussion cap blanks. "You still got that old set of reloading scales?"

  "The balance set? Yeah, why?"

  "Just a thought. If we weigh each of those piles we'll have a good idea how much a hundred caps weighs. That'll give us an average weight per cap. Then we just weigh the rest of the caps and divide the total by the average weight of a cap."

  "You think the bitch will let us get away with that?" Ape asked.

  "What she doesn't know won't hurt her. Besides, it sure beats the hell out of counting every single one of the damn things."

  "True enough, bro. True enough."

  A few days later

  Monkey emptied the box of wrapped explosives into the pan, checked that he had ten rows of ten blocks, and watched the needle as the balance scale to come to rest. "Ape, how much should a hundred blocks of the military explosive weigh?"

  "A hundred pounds, of course," Ape answered.

  "That's what I thought. In that case, I think we've got a problem."

  "What? What kind of problem?"

  Monkey gestured to the needle of the balance scale. "Look for yourself. There's a hundred blocks in the pan and one hundred pounds of weights in the other pan."

  "Maybe the wrapping paper . . ."

  "Nah, that'd make them heavier."

  "Ah, shit!" Ape glared at the stacks of explosive. "Maybe somebody slipped in an empty wrapper."

  "Then we better see if we can find it," Monkey said.

  Half an hour later

  Monkey surveyed the refuse of their unwrapping. There were one hundred pieces of wrapping paper and one hundred blocks of explosive. "Well, nobody slipped in an empty wrapper. Why else would the scales show underweight?"

  "The only way that comes to mind is if some of the blocks are under weight," Ape said. Let's run them through the reloading scales and see what they weigh."

  * * *

  "One hundred and thirty-eight grains," Monkey called as he added the last weight to balance the scale.

  "Shit, that's ten out of ten underweight so far," Ape said holding up a clipboard.

  Monkey pulled over a chair and sat down, glaring at the offending scales and pile of weighed blocks of explosive. He held out a hand towards his brother. "Gimme the clipboard."

  Monkey read down the weights. A
ll of the blocks had been close to one hundred and forty grains underweight. He looked at the other ninety blocks still sitting in the large balance scale's pan, and then he looked at the several cases of explosive still to be examined. He had a horrible feeling. "Ape, open another couple of cases and take out a couple of blocks from each and bring them here."

  "Who died and made you the boss, little brother?"

  "Just do it will you? Unless you want to weigh each and every block."

  "What?" Ape turned to stare at his brother. "You think all our stock is underweight?"

  "I hope not, but there's only one sure way to find out. So, if you'd be so good as to get me a couple of blocks from a couple of cases?"

  "Okay, which cases do you want me to take them from?"

  "Pick a couple at random."

  When Ape handed him the blocks of explosive Monkey unwrapped them and placed the first one on the scale. "One forty," then the next, "One forty-two," and the next, "one forty-four," and finally the last one, "One thirty-nine." He glanced over at his brother. "Near as dammit, one hundred and forty grains short, just like the rest."

  "Maybe the cutting gauge has just slipped a bit over time?" Ape suggested.

  Monkey looked at the stacks of explosive. Nothing on the shelves was more than a few days old, so there was no way to check how long the cutting gauge had been measuring short weight. "At least we're only responsible for counting what comes through the stockroom. It ain't our fault if the stuff we get is underweight."

  "It might not be our fault, but it is our problem," Ape said. "You got any idea what could happen if it got out that the company has been selling short weight?"

  Monkey froze. "Shit, the company could go under, and our jobs with it. Well, we found the problem, doing anything about it is way above our pay grade."

  "So are you going to call in the boss or do I?"

  "Little Emma?" They'd been fielding a bit of flack from the other guys at the factory over calling the boss "Girlie," but "Maria Anna" was one hell of a mouthful, so they'd shortened it to her initials, and then they'd settled on "Emma". That had satisfied the other guys, many of who were starting to use the name themselves. "Sure. You hold the fort while I go get her."

  * * *

  Marie Anna was deep in the spreadsheet on her computer when Monkey poked his head through the doorway. "Hey, Emma, could you come down to the stockroom for a few minutes? There's something me and Ape think you need to see."

  Maria Anna glanced up at Monkey. This was the first time either of the Harts had come to her office without being asked, and she wasn't sure she liked the look in his eyes. It wasn't threatening, or condescending, or anything like that. It was worse. Monkey looked worried. She closed the file she was looking at and stood. "Do I need anything?"

  Monkey smiled. "Just yourself, but you might want to bring your pocket calculator."

  Maria Anna ignored Monkey's smile as she collected her pocket abacus. "Lead the way, Arthur." She grinned at his wince. Using his real name was her little retaliation for him and Ape calling her Emma. Their new name for her was an improvement over "Girlie" but it still wasn't her name, and other people at the company were starting to call her Emma as well. Maybe if she called them Arthur and Dexter often enough they'd get the message.

  * * *

  Monkey held the stockroom door open for Maria Anna before leading her over to Ape, who was standing beside a work bench.

  "Come and have a look here, Emma." Ape pointed to a set of scales and some unwrapped blocks of the new RDX based "military dynamite" the company was producing. "Put one of those on the scales and tell me how much you think it weighs."

  Maria Anna looked at the balance scales and the range of weights. She had a nasty feeling she wasn't going to like what she found. The block should weigh pretty close to one pound, or seven thousand grains. She put the one pound weight in one pan and the explosive into the other. It was underweight. She added small weights to the explosives side until the scales balanced. "A hundred and forty grains underweight." She looked over to the attentive Ape and Monkey. "How many are underweight?"

  "Every one we've checked so far," Ape answered.

  "Shit!" Maria Anna looked guiltily at the Harts. They were still just standing there waiting for her to make a decision. Her use of an obscenity seemed to have completely passed them by. "How long has this been going on? How far back have you checked?"

  "Just to the beginning of the week," Ape answered. "We don't have anything in stock older than that."

  Maria Anna was worried. Selling short weight was a crime nobody wanted to be associated with. She looked at the Hart brothers. The survival of the company rested on their ability to keep quiet about this little problem. Could she trust them? Probably not. But what was it they'd said to her back in March? Something about their needing this job. Suddenly hopeful, Maria Anna looked them over. "Ape, Monkey, I hope you realize how important to the survivability of the company it is that this little problem is handled with the utmost care and discretion?"

  "Yeah, we know all about why bakers created the 'bakers dozen.' They come down real hard on people selling short measure here and now," Monkey said.

  "That's right, so I want you to let me handle this problem. That means you don't say anything about what you've discovered until I'm ready, okay?"

  "How long are you thinking it'll be until you're ready? Monkey asked.

  "A day, two at the most . . . right now I want the pair of you to count the number of blocks of explosives we have in inventory and when you've done that, check the cutter and if necessary, reset it," Maria Anna said.

  "Sure, we can do that. What'll you be doing?" Monkey asked.

  Maria Anna paused at the doorway. "Checking the computer to make sure the number of blocks in stock is equal to the amount of explosives that should be in the stockroom."

  "What are you suggesting?" Ape asked.

  "Hopefully nothing, but either we have two percent more blocks of explosive than we should, or we're missing two percent of our production."

  Monkey and Ape stared wide-eyed back at Maria Anna. "Missing?" Monkey muttered.

  "There are other words for it, but that'll do for now." Maria Anna shut the door on the Harts and walked slowly back towards her office. She was worried. A better word would have been "stolen," but who would want to steal military explosive in dribs and drabs? It would have to be somebody in the company, and she didn't think it was the Harts, she'd been keeping too close an eye on them. So who could it be?

  * * *

  Ape didn't like working with an audience, especially when it was made up of krauts. He accepted the last of ten samples from the newly adjusted cutter and put it on his scales. It wasn't quite a pound. Adding a few weights to the scale, he called out the final weight. "Six-nine-nine-seven grains."

  "Right. That's it then. All ten samples are within the permitted range." Monkey turned to the down-timers who had been watching him and his brother do their quality control check. "It's all yours, guys, but now we know the cutter gauge can slip we'll be making random checks from now on so that it doesn't get so far out of range again."

  Ape picked up the scales and followed his brother out of the room. "The cutter gauge can slip? Some bastard fixed that cutter deliberately," he growled.

  "Shush!" Monkey put a hand over his brother's mouth and looked around to see if anybody could have overheard. "Not so loud."

  "Yeah, well, we better go see Emma and tell her someone rigged the cutter gauge."

  * * *

  Monkey opened the door to Maria Anna's office and poked his head in. "You got a moment, Emma?"

  "Sure, come in and take a seat. I'm just about finished calculating how much explosive should have been made in each batch this month."

  Ape passed a soiled sheet of paper over as he sat down. "That's the counts for each batch in the stockroom."

  "Thanks." Maria Anna took the sheet and compared it to what she had on the computer in front of her.

>   Monkey read the emotions on Maria Anna's face. "Somebody's been stealing explosives, haven't they?"

  "I think so, but you seem awfully sure. . ."

  "Yeah, well, we would. We've just finished resetting the cutting gauge. There ain't no way that gauge slipped. Somebody deliberately set it to short."

  Maria Anna nodded. "I'm not surprised. Near enough precisely two percent is a bit unlikely to happen naturally, but who? It has to be somebody working for the company."

  Monkey stared back at Maria Anna. "Don't you think it might be me 'n Ape?"

  Maria Anna shook her head. "No, of course not. You wouldn't have put the whole company at risk like this."

  Monkey was a little dumbstruck. He knew he and Ape wouldn't, but here was Emma not even considering the idea that he and Ape might. "Well, gee, thanks for the vote of confidence. For a while there me and Ape kinda thought that maybe you didn't like us."

  "What's not to like?" Maria Anna asked, desperately trying to keep a straight face as the brothers puffed up their chests.

  "Yeah, we're just regular likable guys, but if you don't think we did it, who do you think did?" Monkey asked.

  Maria Anna shook her head. "I've got no idea. We don't even know how long ago the cutter gauge was set. It might have happened when the machinery was first set up, or it might have happened last week."

  "Whoever did it was looking to the future," Ape said.

  "How do you mean?" Maria Anna asked.

  "Well, it's obvious. They weren't greedy. A couple of percent of our current production is hardly anything, but as production grows, so does the value of their theft," Ape answered.

  "If Schmidt and company had been half as smart as our thief, we wouldn't be here," Monkey said.

  "Schmidt?" Maria Anna asked.