Chapter 131

Wednesday went much better all the way around. The damaged cars in the parking lot had been hauled away after the owners had retrieved their personal things. The top of the transformer had been hauled away and a cleanup crew was cleaning up the blacktop. It was especially pleasing to ride through the parking lot and see the six rental cars there.

Several students came by to complain about the generator noise. I told them they would get used to it pretty quick. The choice was a little noise or no food and no heat. The rest of the day was quiet.

The office was running much smoother when we got home. The 1st day rush had settled. The four secretaries had been given specific assignments. Two were assigned to Marcy with one of them handling and screening all incoming calls. The other two were pooled among Vicky, Lorrie and Ching Lee.

The four college students were to start Monday. Marcy had several legal tablets in her office with assignments for them to do. From our nightly meetings we had decided to look at new sites and expanding the car rental sites. The one at the Island airport was going to be expanded as it currently had only 4 cars. Marcy wanted to bump it up to at least 10 so we could use it as a pool. We were going to look at putting a rental site at the Naples airport if we could negotiate a site there. Marcy had asked Dad to look over the airport to see if there looked to be room enough to set it up at the terminal.

The airport at Naples was county owned and had recently received some grant money to renovate. It had 3 moderate runways. It couldn't handle the big jets but turboprop commuter planes had a schedule there along with a lot of parking for private planes. The passenger complex was nice, Dad had said, and there were several empty business areas where an auto rental office could be established. An office there could be jointly used with the rental houses.

Another item that was on the agenda was to buy 200 new cars. None were bought last year because of the previous owner's money problems and none had been scheduled for this year. The oldest were now seven years old, even though some of them only had 50,000 miles on them. We thought that was just too old. We had to do the make and model decisions and put out bid requests. Then we had to decide where to tag and store them along with the ones removed from service until they were disposed of. We had discussed offering them to employees first at some kind of blue book value. If we expanded we would need even more new cars and could hold on to some of the better older ones a while longer. You just could not send old cars to a new site. You had to send new ones for the PR push and in a couple of months work some of them away to where you really needed them.

At 5AM Marcy, Jenny and I were boarding the King Air for the flight to Charlotte. We each had a laptop, a briefcase and an overnight bag. One of Marcy's secretaries had booked two adjoining rooms at the Holiday East chain with our corporate rate.

We arrived at 7AM at the general aviation section of the big terminal. That was also the area where the auto rental companies had their facilities located. Our rental office was there and out the door was the auto pickup and drop-off point with our parking area with the 30 rental cars. Charlotte was a major hub for several airlines. It was also a huge NASCAR team area. Historically MAAR rentals had been good there but had declined in the last year by some 20% that we attributed to the owners problems.

The site was to be manned and open at 6 AM until 7 PM by a 4 person team. One of those people was a site manager James Johnson. A second person, Jack Freeburg came in at 11 AM, a delayed time to give the late coverage, the third person, Ray Stanley worked a long Saturday and Sunday - 13 hours each - and was paid for 30 hours. He worked as needed as determined by the manager to total up 40 hours. The fourth person, Charles Dickerson worked 2 to 7 as the cleanup guy keeping the cars clean, and was called the check-in clerk. The manager and the check-in clerk were the only two signatures on all the paper work on the repairs. According to the original job applications the manager had selected the current check-in clerk over better applicants, even though he had failed the pre-employment drug test and had scored poor on the background check. The check-in clerk had listed the site manager as the only character reference.

We turned to corner to look at what should have been our rental site open for business. The security gate was down, the lights were off and no sign of anyone. Across the hall from our outlet was one of those small stores that you see at all airports. As we stood looking at the closed site the man running the cash register yelled across to us, "They usually open between eight and eight thirty." Marcy remarked, "That explains the 20% drop in rentals."

All of our rental sites had one of those emergency access key boxes on the wall by the security gate. Marcy used her smart phone to find the code for the Charlotte site and the code for the alarm system. After the gate was up and the lights on we searched the office and found the keys for the cars and everything we needed to rent cars. While Marcy and Jenny fired the computers up I took the auto inventory sheet and went to the parking lot to count cars.

As I went out the door I heard a shout, "Stop police." I looked to my right to see a man in a ski mask carrying a ladies purse running my way with a security guard in chase. I moved like I was going to back out of the way but instead executed a soccer kick at his knees as he got close enough to make contact. He was laying face down on the sidewalk when the security guard cuffed him.

I looked at the security guard and said, "I think he tripped on something." The guard replied, "That works for me," as he smiled.

I checked the cars in our slots and those in the drop-off area. Six were missing. According to the print out four were rented for several days and were not due to be back until Saturday. That left two missing. Back in the office there were no notes on the log indicating where they were.

Marcy and Jenny were both busy with customers. I waited on two fast-tracks customers as they were called. They were regular customers that had one of our corporate cards. All they needed to do was present their license and the tracks card, sign the rental sheet that was completed on line or by phone and we handed them the keys. Those rentals were usually daily rentals. When the car was turned in the check-in clerk filled them with gas that was billed to the rental, cleaned the car if necessary and put them back in line. We had been there less than fifteen minutes and had rented four cars.

I filled Marcy in on the two missing cars. We could speculate where they were with everything we had seen going on at this site. Marcy typed up letters of termination for both the manager and the check-in clerk and sent a copy to HR, also to the girls in the office. The county court system could handle the fraud issues and that could take months to prove, but stealing by forging time sheets was a reasonable cause for immediate termination. Their time sheets showed 6 AM start times but the statement from the vendor across the hall shot that one all to hell. Marcy also disabled all of their computer authorizations and access codes.

Jenny called the state police and talked with their criminal fraud unit. They were going to send a detective right over to see the data that we had. Their barracks must have been close; he was standing in front of us in twenty minutes. Jenny and Marcy spread out the copies of everything including copies of the checks to the dealer that were not deposited in the dealers account. The few that were deposited we figured were legitimate auto repairs. The rest of the checks were signed instead of stamped for deposit. The first signature was not readable. The second signature was the dealer shop supervisor, our site manager, check in clerk or according to the dealer web site the dealers credit manager. Marcy explained the frequency of the same repairs and parts on the same vehicles, sometimes with less than 500 miles.