The Wrong Supplier

"Can you pull the batch number for the brake line we ordered on the second?"

The parts rep on the phone, a guy named Curtis at Redline Distributing, took a minute longer than I liked before he answered. "You thinking it was bad stock?"

"I'm thinking somebody needs to rule it out." I didn't say why. I didn't want to say Ryan's name out loud to a stranger yet, not until I had more than a sealed box and a fast timestamp.

Curtis read off a batch number and a delivery date that matched the sealed box sitting on my desk. "That whole batch shipped to six shops. No returns, no complaints filed. If there was a defect, we'd have heard by now."

So it wasn't the part. Whatever had gone wrong with Vic Delgado's truck, it hadn't started at the factory.

I sat with that for longer than I wanted to admit. If the part was good and the box was still sealed, then the only brake line that ended up back on that truck was the old one. Which meant somebody had put it there on purpose.

Ryan came through the office twice that afternoon, once to grab keys, once to grab his phone off the charger. The second time, the screen lit up before he snatched it, just long enough for me to catch two words on the lock screen: missed payment.

He caught me looking and turned the phone face down. "Personal stuff."

"Everything okay?"

"Fine." That answer came just as quickly as bay two had, three days earlier. "Just a bill I forgot about."

I didn't push. I filed it away instead, next to the sealed box and the forty-minute ticket, one more piece that didn't fit anywhere yet.

I'd spent two days chasing a supplier that turned out clean. I still didn't have proof of anything. But for the first time since that first call, I was starting to wonder if I'd been looking in the wrong direction entirely, and Ryan hadn't corrected me once.