Chapter 5 - Forty-Eight Invoices
By nine that night, the garden was empty. Owen went home with Tara. I watched their taillights disappear before driving to my office, where Asha had spread printed invoices across the conference table like a terrible game of cards.
"Forty-eight payments," she said. "Four months. Four hundred eighteen thousand dollars."
"From the renovation account?"
"Mostly donations earmarked for fire doors, accessibility ramps, and emergency lighting. Some legitimate work got done. The invoices claim much more."
I flipped through the pages. A supplier named TrueSpan Installations had billed us for insulated fire-rated doors. The attached delivery slips listed equipment numbers I'd never seen. Every approval carried my initials.
"How did I miss this?"
Asha didn't soften her answer. "You gave Brielle access to the community fund's purchasing portal. You were planning a wedding and traveling to three job sites. You checked totals instead of attachments."
She had volunteered to manage donors and seemed to care about the children. She'd brought sandwiches to volunteer crews, remembered birthdays, and framed a picture Owen painted of the building. I could hear the little hiss again every time I looked at another invoice.
Asha clicked a vendor record. Owner: Colin Saye.
"He's the man from the wedding," I said.
"He's also the man whose company installed the new north-hall exits. Or claimed to."
We enlarged a photograph of an installed door. I recognized the frame immediately: household-grade hardware where fire-rated commercial hardware should have been. Worse, a bolt near the bottom had been fitted to secure the door from the hallway side.
"That's not a panic exit," I said. "People could get trapped."
"The inspection in our archive failed it on Thursday," Asha said. "The version uploaded this morning says it passed."
I grabbed my keys. "We need to stop the reopening."
Asha pointed at a message on her laptop, newly sent from the family center's event account: CHILDREN'S OPEN HOUSE CONFIRMED. MONDAY, 10 A.M.
May you like
Beneath it was a line that made my stomach turn.
SAFETY CERTIFICATION: DANIEL ROWAN, APPROVED.
