CHAPTER 8 - MUTINY AT SURFER'S PARADISE
From the moment she ran out the lobby door and through the hotel pool area, an angry and distraught Fin continued crying as she ran all the way to the staff house, hot tears streaming down her cheeks. She was enraged at Bummer for his heartless attitude toward her personal tragedy, made worse thanks to him believing that she only made up her father's death so she could skip out on work. As soon as she reached the front porch, she dropped onto the couch closest to the front door, buried her face in her hands and cried in anger and sadness.
When she heard Fin sobbing outside, Kelly, who was in the living room during a break from duty, went out to the front porch to investigate. "Oh no, Fin," she said with a gasp when she saw her friend crying on the couch. "Are you okay? What happened?"
"Bummer happened," Fin said between sobs, then she went into detail about the incident in the lobby.
Kelly, who sat down on the couch with Fin to hear her story, was still listening to Fin when she saw Lo and Emma running toward the staff house. "Emma, Lo, guess what Bummer tried to do to Fin!" Kelly said as she stood up and ran to the front porch rail.
"We know, we were there," Emma said. "We heard everything from the moment Fin started yelling at Bummer." She and Lo then went to sit with Fin on the couch. "Fin, it's okay, sweetie," Emma said as she and Lo each began rubbing Fin's back to comfort her. "What did Bummer do to get you so upset?"
While Fin explained what happened in the lobby to Lo and Emma, Kelly, who had been horrified and angered by Bummer's callous, uncaring attitude toward Fin's plight, turned her head and glared at the hotel, where she knew Bummer still was, while scowling and clenching her fists.
Moments later, Reef, Broseph, Ripper and Lance were coming from a surf session at the Office when they saw Fin on the porch with Lo, Emma and Kelly. "Hey, what's going on?" Reef asked when he heard how upset Fin was sounding as she talked with Lo and Emma.
"Fin told Bummer about her dad and asked for time off so she could go home for his funeral tomorrow," Kelly explained. "But Bummer thought Fin was making it up and not only did he crumple up her dad's obituary when she showed it to him, he threatened to fire her if she didn't get back to work."
"What?" a shocked Reef said right before he and the other guys ran up to the porch to check on Fin. "What's Bummer thinking? He can't fire Fin for wanting time off to go back home for her dad's funeral. That's just asking for trouble!"
"You're telling me," Lo remarked. "It's bad enough when he treats us poorly while playing 'yes-man' to Daddy and the hotel guests, but when he threatens to fire Fin after all she's been through? This time, Bummer's finally gone too far!"
"Oh, I'm only getting started, missy!" a voice said out of nowhere, causing everyone on the porch to turn their heads to see who spoke up. It was Bummer, standing there with his arms crossed while Johnny, who had tried in vain to convince him not to go to the staff house to confront Fin again, walked past him to join the gang on the front porch.
When she saw Bummer standing there near the porch steps, Kelly walked over to the top of the steps. "You've got some nerve showing your face here after what you did to Fin, Bummer!" she said angrily as she glared at Bummer, who had now become public enemy number one to the summer staff because of his recent actions.
"Yeah, what's the matter with you, anyway?" Lo joined in when she marched to the porch railing. "How can you be so cruel to someone who just lost her dad? Me and Emma were there when Fin got that obituary from her grandma in the mail, and you go and treat it as a joke and crumple it up like it was garbage? That's just ghoulish, even for you!"
"Oh-ho-ho, is that what she wants you to think?" said an incredulous Bummer. "Did you all suffer memory loss and forget that she pulled the exact same trick last month to try to skip work and surf? Or maybe - just maybe - you're all in on it with her!"
"Look, mate," Ripper then said as he stepped up. "Usually I got your back, but not this time, not when it comes to Fin. You just crossed a line that no one should be crossing."
"Believe it, dude," Reef said next. "Do you even know about the concept of...uhh...hey, what do you call that thing where anything bad someone does comes back to bite 'em in the butt?"
"Enough already!" Bummer snapped at the gang. "Alright, here's how it's going to be from here on out! Effective immediately, all of you here are banned from surfing for the rest of the summer!"
"What?" Emma said when she heard Bummer's edict.
"That's bogus, dude!" Broseph joined in.
"You can't do that!" Fin, the centre of the whole issue, then spoke up angrily as she stood up from the couch. "We have a right to surf here!"
"I can do it and I have," Bummer declared. "Now here's what's going to happen if all of you don't get back to work right now. Lo, I'm going to call your father and see to it that he removes you from that Christmas trip to Florida he has planned. And for the rest of you, you can start searching the want ads in the paper because you'll be canned! Pink-slipped! Terminated! In other words, the rest of you WILL BE FIRED!" Bummer then turned around and marched back toward the hotel, with nearly everyone else looking toward him and shaking their heads in disgust, while Fin sat back on the couch and resumed sobbing softly while Emma consoled her.
Outside of Fin, no one in the gang was more infuriated than Lo, who stared daggers at Bummer with an angry scowl as she watched him walk away. The hotel heiress was less-than-pleased about the ego-driven power trip Bummer had been on in recent weeks, but after witnessing his disrespectful behavior toward Fin (including his continued refusal to believe her and his threat to fire her even after she tore into him for demeaning her situation), followed by his ban on surfing against the gang and his threat to fire them (and to get Lo's Christmas vacation in Florida taken away) for supporting Fin, she came to realize that Bummer had indeed gone too far where her friend was concerned.
Once Bummer was far enough away that she was convinced he was safely out of earshot, Lo then glanced toward Johnny. "Johnny, I'm going to need your help," she said to the front desk concierge. "What does Bummer have planned for his agenda tomorrow?"
"I think he's going out to the fish plant over in Campbell River to pick up an order of fish slurry," Johnny said. "I found out a while ago that's one of the ingredients he uses for that gruel he's been giving to the summer staff for meals."
"So he's going out of town for the day? Good," Lo said in response, "'cause I have an idea to help Fin and teach Bummer a lesson at the same time." She then turned back to glare in the direction of the hotel again. "You wanted trouble, Bummer, now you're going to get it," she said with resolution.
The next day after Bummer headed to Campbell River, Lo put her plan, which she had discussed with the gang the previous night, into action. While Broseph, Ripper and Lance all volunteered to keep watch for Bummer's return, Johnny remotely deactivated the security system that guarded the day manager's office.
To avoid Fin risking her neck with the rest of the gang, Lo convinced her friend to clock in for work in Housekeeping as usual while she, Emma, Kelly, Reef and David went into the office. David, who Kelly convinced to join the mission because of his knowledge of computers, was working to hack the password to Bummer's computer files by using his laptop (which he had connected to Bummer's computer), while the others searched through the file cabinets nearby, all with the intent of digging up any dirt on Bummer that Lo could use against him with her father on Fin's behalf.
"Man, searching through all these files sucks," Reef complained while thumbing through a folder from one of the file cabinets. "Besides the time it's taking, how're we supposed to know what to look for?"
"We have to find whatever we can get that'll be useful to us to bust Bummer - receipts, bank statements, forms, anything incriminating against him that'll come in handy," Lo pointed out. "And remember, we're doing this for Fin. No one disrespects my friend by dishonoring her dad's memory and gets away with it, not even Bummer." Turning to David, she then asked, "How're you doing with the computer, David?"
"Still haven't cracked the password yet, but I'm working at it," David said as he tapped away at his laptop keyboard. "Anyway, now I know I've entered the world of business - this is the first case of corporate espionage I've ever engaged in."
"That's true," Lo replied after a small giggle, "but it's for a good cause. Kelly, any luck with your drawer yet?" she asked the Pirate Ship manager.
"Nothing so far," Kelly said while checking through file folders in the cabinet drawer she was assigned. "Everything I've checked in here up to now looks legit."
"Hey Lo, how's this look?" Reef asked, handing Lo a receipt. "Incriminating enough for you?"
Lo examined the receipt. "For tooth whitening strips from a drugstore?" she said. "I don't think so, Reef."
"Can't hurt to ask," Reef said with a shrug. "Hey, it looks like he uses the same kind of whitening strips for his teeth that I do," he added with a grin as he checked the receipt again. "Nice choice, Bummer."
"Reef, forget about the tooth whitening strips and focus," Kelly chided the cocky surfer.
David was still trying to crack the password to Bummer's computer files when he scored a breakthrough. "Ah-ha, jackpot!" he declared, getting the others' attention. "I finally got Bummer's password!"
"Sweet!" Lo said when she and the gang went over to look. "Awesome work, David! Now see what you can find in those files. If there's any evidence of wrongdoing by Bummer regarding hotel business, it has to be in there."
"It'll take a bit of looking, but I'm game," David said. "There's bound to be stuff in here or in the file cabinets that Bummer doesn't want Mr. Ridgemount to know about, so he'll have done all he can to cover those tracks."
"Well, we can't give up now," Emma said as she returned to her assigned cabinet drawer. "Not when we're getting closer to finding what we need."
Reef was digging through another file folder when he found some more receipts. "How about these, Lo?" he said, handing them over to her.
Lo looked the receipts over. "These are no good either," she said. "They're just receipts for pizza and Chinese takeout deliveries charged to the hotel."
"Man, all that talk about food's makin' me hungry now," Reef commented. "If I had the cheddar to spend, I could go out for Beaver Tails in town when we're off-duty."
"So why don't you?" Emma asked.
"Have you seen our paychecks lately?" Reef said. "Bummer's been payin' us in peanuts - literally."
"Johnny told me about that a while ago," Lo then told Emma. "Bummer also paid me and Fin in hot dog coupons that were only good for certain times that were, like, totally inconvenient to us. Why would he do that to us when the hotel's been making a fortune?"
"If Bummer's been ripping you off on your paychecks, that alone would be grounds for him to be in deep trouble with Mr. Ridgemount, especially since he knows his boss's daughter is on summer staff," David pointed out. "The only likely reason Bummer hasn't been fired or otherwise disciplined is because Mr. Ridgemount doesn't know what's really going on in his own hotel, because Bummer's been actively keeping him in the dark about the conditions the staff is working under."
"That's what I thought," Lo said. "Bummer's been acting as a buffer between Daddy and the staff since he became manager here."
"And he knows if Mr. Ridgemount found out what you were being subjected to while on the summer staff," David said to Lo about Bummer, "he'd be done like dinner here."
"Exactly," Lo said. "That's why we have to expose Bummer to Daddy. Not just for ourselves, but also on principle because of what he did to Fin."
Meanwhile, Reef was searching through a folder he found in the back of a bottom file drawer when he uncovered another sales receipt. "Hey Lo, how about this?" he said as he handed her the paper.
"I hope it's not for another trivial item, Reef," Lo said. "You've already handed me several of..." She then stopped in mid-sentence and gasped when she saw what the receipt was for. "Reef, do you know what you just gave me?" a surprised Lo said, which also got Emma, Kelly and David's attention.
"No, what?" a puzzled Reef asked.
"It's a sales receipt for a golf cart made out to the hotel in Bummer's name," Lo said. "Where'd you get the receipt from?"
"It was in this folder here," Reef said, holding up the folder.
"Hey, isn't that the same cart me, Reef and Broseph took into town for a Beaver Tail run a few weeks ago?" Emma said.
"If it's the same one with the personalized licence plate that read 'BAUMER1', then it must be," Reef replied.
"That's it!" Lo said, sounding hopeful. "This may be the key to what we need to take Bummer down! All we need now is to find a bank statement from the same time frame and we're good to go."
"Wait, you mean one of these?" Reef said, picking up an envelope next to him from the floor. "I wasn't sure if it was important then, so I put it aside."
Lo took the envelope, which was from the bank the hotel had its account with, and took out the four-page statement inside. Near the end of the second page, she discovered a payment withdrawal to the golf cart dealership for the same amount as shown on the sales receipt Reef had found. "Yes, that's it!" she declared happily. "This bank statement and the sales receipt are exactly what we need!"
Emma took a look at the vital pieces of paper. "That's great, but what's the monthly budget for the staff's meals?" she asked out of curiosity.
"Less than what Bummer paid for his golf cart," said Lo, who had some knowledge of the hotel's financial workings. "It sure explains why he's been cheaping out on staff food ever since he bought that cart." Turning to Reef, she then said, "Reef, you're a hero! When we take these papers to show Daddy, he's gonna thank you and Fin's gonna love you for busting Bummer!"
"Well, what're we waiting for?" Reef declared. "Let's go execute part two of 'Operation Bummer Roast'!"
After Lo, Reef, Emma, Kelly and David put back all the files in their cabinets and logged off on the computer, the gang left Bummer's office to head for the staff house for the second part of Lo's plan. After contacting Johnny to tell him of the success of obtaining the forms she needed, Lo called Fin next. "Hey Fin, ask Rosie for a break and come meet us at the staff house," she said to her friend. "I'll explain everything over there. You'll want to be there anyway because I've got good news!"
When she finished talking to Fin, Lo called her father next. "Hi Daddy, it's Lo," she greeted Mr. Ridgemount. "If you're not busy now, I need you to meet me at the staff house right away. It's urgent. Bring along Monday's copy of the Halifax newspaper if you still have it."
"Wait a minute, why meet your dad at the staff house?" Reef wondered after Lo hung up her iPhone. "And why bring a paper from Halifax along?"
"Because Daddy hasn't been over there since Bummer became the day manager a few years ago," Lo said, "and what I've got to show him there is only the beginning. Daddy also subscribes to some of the major newspapers from around the country and the obituary for Fin's dad is in this Monday's Halifax paper." As the gang cut through the lobby on their way to the staff house, Lo stated firmly, "Bummer, you're going down."
Coming up, what happens when Mr. Ridgemount learns about what Bummer's been up to lately (and when the Marvin family gets roped into the fallout)?