The Charity Invoice Put a Price on Six Hundred Empty Seats

I did not go to the preview.

I wanted to. I pictured myself walking into that rented room and asking Delphine to turn over every case.

Nora asked what I hoped that would prove.

"That I wasn't afraid of her."

"Your records already prove something useful. Let's stay with those."

I spent the evening at my kitchen table instead.

My service books were school records, but my approved monthly copies were in the archive. They showed when loan displays had been installed, lit, and removed. I sent the relevant pages through Nora.

I put a red pencil check beside each date I could support.

The iron section's lamp had gone dark on March 8. The pallasite case followed on May 19. The lunar chip left the stand on September 2.

Each job sheet said the same thing: "Return packing assumed by administration."

Those were my words. Delphine had told me to write them.

Detective Lena Ortiz interviewed me two days later. She brought a copy of the camera view and asked me to explain the bright line along the dome's lower edge.

"Alignment sweep," I said. "It checks whether the projected horizon meets the dome seam."

"Could you place a new image inside an old recording?"

"I couldn't. A specialist should answer whether someone else could."

She nodded and wrote that down.

Leon later gave her his file records. The school supplied the matching camera file from the returned recorder. They matched my archived version.

The detective did not promise an arrest.

"We need to establish what left the building and where it went," she said.

The institute's lawyer sent the auction company the loan agreement, identification photos, and a demand to hold Lot 41. The other owners sent similar notices for their specimens.

Voss's lawyer agreed to stop transfers while ownership was checked. The scheduled auction remained advertised, but the disputed lots could not be sold.

That gave us time. It did not put the stones back in their trays.

On Friday, I paid $68 for groceries and moved $1,200 from savings to checking. My first unpaid payday passed without a deposit.

That afternoon, a teacher named June Avery called.

She taught at a small school in Tiverton. Her class had been promised a free planetarium trip through Delphine's fund.

"The bus company says the grant never paid," she said. "Are the visits canceled?"

"I can't speak for Bellwether right now."

"Your name is on the program sheet."

She emailed it to me.

Open Sky had listed six hundred sponsored student seats, with transport and science kits. The total award was $42,000.

My name appeared under "Program Delivery."

I had never seen the sheet.

Nora sent it to the fund's treasurer and the school board. She asked for the grant agreement and records supporting my supposed role.

The treasurer, Evelyn Shaw, requested a meeting through counsel.

We sat in Nora's office the next Tuesday. Evelyn carried a blue folder and kept her bag on her lap.

"I approved payments based on her invoices," she said.

"Which invoices?" Nora asked.

Evelyn laid out three.

There was $11,400 for catalog production, $7,600 for storage and packing, and $23,000 for outreach consulting. All three payments went to Harlan Voss's company.

Together, they used every dollar meant for those six hundred seats.

The consulting invoice claimed I had accepted the finished program materials.

A typed line read "G. Ellery, delivery confirmed."

"That's not my signature," I said.

"There isn't a signature," Nora said. "Who accepted this typed confirmation?"

Evelyn looked down.

"Delphine. She said Graham hated forms."

I looked at the neat rows in my service book.

Nobody laughed.

Evelyn agreed to give investigators the fund's records. She also called a special trustee meeting to remove Delphine's power to approve payments while they reviewed the grant.

"I should have called you," she told me.

"Yes," I said.

She took that without defending herself.

Before she left, Evelyn showed us the fund's original vote. The trustees had approved student visits, not a general payment for whatever Delphine called education.

"She said the catalog would raise more money," Evelyn said.

"Did the trustees approve changing the grant?" Nora asked.

"No. She told me the school had approved it."

Nora asked for that email too.

I watched Evelyn place it on the growing stack. Until then, I had thought of papers as things that kept a machine or a building in order. Here were two sets of papers, telling two groups different stories about the same money.

When I got home, a thick envelope waited beneath my mail slot. The school had set a hearing for the following week.

I read the cover letter standing in the hall.

Delphine's written statement was attached.

She claimed the case switch had been authorized, the recording belonged to the school, and I had kept it to force a cash settlement.

On the last page, she requested my dismissal.