The Fund Treasurer Set Two Invoices Beside The Same Check

I did not take Tessa's ledger home. She left copies for Bell and took the bound book back to the fund office.

"It's their record," she said. "I have to account for where it goes."

I understood that better than she knew.

The $9,600 invoice came from Harbor Ledger Services. Pike had signed the payment request as project chair. State business records listed him as the company's only owner.

That alone did not prove theft. Bell said so before any of us could get ahead of the facts.

The written agreement was the problem.

The fund had agreed to reimburse actual outside costs, without a markup, for an archive of the Karsa evacuation. Five interviews, a source index, and copies of supporting records were required.

Pike's signed request said those items were complete. It called the whole $9,600 an outside preservation expense.

The outside studio had charged $2,600. Its invoice covered cleaning old audio, scanning photographs, and producing one edited interview with Pike.

There were no other interviews in the delivered files. No source index. No casualty notebook.

The fund's board hired an independent accountant. I did not pick her or pay her. She checked bank records, called the studio, and asked Pike for receipts explaining the remaining $7,000.

He first called it an allowance for his time.

Then he called it reimbursement for travel.

The agreement allowed neither without separate approval. The board minutes showed none.

Brooke read the accountant's first letter at our desk.

"He built a history of himself and charged everyone for the frame."

"Let her finish checking," I said.

"I can be angry while she checks."

She could. She also kept answering the phone with the same steady greeting.

Bell sent Pike's attorney a small evidence packet. The museum recording. The fresh notebook pages. The bridge entry. The shore extracts. Evan's signed statement and his medical slip, shared with his permission.

She asked for a public correction and withdrawal of the $5,000 demand.

Pike offered to call it a misunderstanding if I signed a statement saying both of us remembered events differently.

He also wanted me to stop helping the fund's review.

"No," I said.

Bell wrote that down.

"Anything else?"

"Evan gets named. What happened to him doesn't become a private favor Pike gives me."

At the board meeting, I sat beside Farid near the back. We had been invited to answer questions about the records. The accountant handled the money questions.

Pike stood before anyone asked him to.

"I have given this town decades," he said. "Now we're letting a bitter mechanic conduct a trial."

The chair, Len Orser, kept his hands on the agenda.

"The mechanic isn't reviewing your receipts, Garrett. The accountant is."

"Do you know what this will do to donations?"

"That's why we need an answer."

Pike turned toward me.

"You always were good at making work for other people."

I felt the little driver in my pocket. Across the room, a screw sat crooked in a wall plate. For once I left it alone.

"You told a room I abandoned my station," I said. "Here are the times. If you have different records, give them to the board."

Farid slid his packet forward.

"Complete pages," he said. "We find those useful."

The board voted to suspend Pike's access to accounts and events while the audit finished. He had to surrender the fund's checkbook and office keys. A second officer changed the account access that evening.

It was not a parade. The keys made a small, ordinary sound on the table.

Afterward, Tessa told us two donors had asked for the audit when it was ready. One wanted to keep supporting the fund if the controls improved.

That pleased me. Pike did not own the veterans whose needs had brought people there.

Our own books were less cheerful. Brooke and I checked the canceled jobs against estimates and supplier quotes. We counted lost profit, not the full price of work we had never done. Returned deposits were listed separately.

The loss came to $12,460.

The canceled refit accounted for $8,400 after the costs we had saved. Two canceled panel contracts made up the other $4,060. Brooke clipped each customer's reason for canceling to the estimate. She refused to add a dollar for work we only hoped to get.

I could say the amount without my voice catching. Saying it still did not pay the rent.

Three mornings later, a process server stepped into the shop while I was testing a shore-power inlet.

Pike had sued me for defamation.

His complaint said I had invented a rescue and used false documents to take control of the fund.

In an affidavit attached to the complaint, he swore that no sailor had been recovered from the lower landing after the order to clear it.