Chapter 8 - Peyton Found the Duplicate Payments by Accident
Peyton never audited:
Spencer.
That was not her job.
She found the pattern because I asked her for:
help.
Northshore’s monthly operating margin looked wrong.
Revenue had improved.
Costs had improved less.
I sent Peyton a sanitized export.
“Tell me what I’m missing.”
She called two hours later.
“Are you sitting down?”
“What?”
“Blue Lantern Management and Hale Harbor billed identical emergency dock-repair labor in March.”
“No.”
“Yes.”
“Different locations?”
“Same work-order references.”
I looked.
She was right.
One duplicate:
$87,400.
Could be:
clerical.
Then another:
$124,000.
Then related invoices.
Peyton kept digging.
Not into restricted systems.
Into data I had legally provided.
By midnight she had identified:
approximately $1.8 million
in transactions requiring explanation.
Not all fraudulent.
Some maybe:
coding errors.
Some:
related-party arrangements.
Enough for independent review.
I confronted Spencer the next morning.
Bad decision.
I should have called:
general counsel,
internal audit,
Dad.
Instead I wanted:
Spencer’s explanation first.
He laughed.
“Peyton hates me.”
“This isn’t about her.”
“It always is with your family.”
“Explain the invoices.”
He did.
For:
forty minutes.
Vendor consolidations.
Emergency scopes.
Pass-through costs.
Reclasses.
Some explanations sounded:
plausible.
Then he asked:
“Did you give Peyton internal data?”
“Yes.”
“She doesn’t work for Ainsley.”
“I had permission to use an outside accountant.”
I had:
general authority
for certain analyses.
Still, Spencer turned the issue.
“Your family is spying on me.”
By the end of the conversation, I was:
apologizing
for involving Peyton.
May you like
That should tell you how far control had already progressed.
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