The shop was crowded with tourists, and the phones were ringing non-stop. The two other employees were at their wits end, juggling the phones, attending to mail and on-line orders and waiting on customers. There was so much chaos that a line started to form outside of the shop and around the block.
It was now six in the evening. Things had slowed down, and yet, there was still no sign of Dough. As Passion was getting ready to leave work, she thought about calling the police but believed that an adult had to be missing for at least twenty-four hours before law enforcement would do anything.
She went home, hoping he would be there, but he was not. As she started to get undress, the phone rang, but it was the wrong number. When she went into his room, all of his belongings were gone. It still did not dawn on her that he had left for good.
Confused, she did not know what to feel, and thought, He would never leave without saying something.
The next day, she reported him missing.
A week later, Cid and Betty received a cashier's check for ten million dollars and deposited it into their joint account. A couple of days later, they decided to move funds from the business account into their joint account. What they were about to discover would leave them in a state of shock and disbelief. The business account had a zero balance.
When they confronted the bank manager about the error, the administrator said, "You moved your money from the business account into a foreign bank account."
Cid and Betty looked at each other as though the woman was speaking in tongues. They insisted that no such transaction occurred, that the bank made a gross blunder and to check and correct the mistake, or they would sue the institution for blatant negligence.
If they thought they had put the fear of God into the bank executive, they were about to face the most terrifying event of their lives. The ten million dollar check, which they deposited into their joint account, was bogus, and the balance was one hundred dollars.
What happened next would leave customers and the business community asking, "Who swindled whom?"
When Passion learned what had happened to Cid and Betty, she was stunned. For all purposes, the shop was out of business. She thought that maybe she could continue to run the shop or perhaps purchase it, but where was she going to get that kind of money? Everything was now in disarray.
A computer technician was able to pinpoint the moving of the money from the owners' bank accounts back to Passion, because all of the transactions took place on her PC; it was unknown where the money went.