Chapter 4 - THE MECHANIC'S RECEIPT
Sarah froze, the gun trembling in her hand. She slowly turned her head, terrified of the woman looming behind her.
"Who are you?" Sarah whispered.
"My name is Maria," the woman said, her voice thick with a heavy, dangerous accent. "I’m Mateo’s mother. And you're the people who tried to expel my son to cover up your stealing."
I stared at Maria in absolute shock. I had never met her before this moment. "How did you know to come here?" I asked.
Maria didn't take her eyes off Sarah. "Because your daughter isn't the only one who talks, Mrs. Mitchell. Mateo told me about the blue boxes. He told me he saw my name on a paper inside one of them. I came to the school this morning to demand answers. I was walking across the lot when I saw this woman pull a gun on you."
Harrington, standing at the school entrance, realized the situation had spiraled completely out of his control. He pulled a walkie-talkie from his belt.
"Lockdown," he barked into the radio. "Code Red. Seal the exterior doors."
The heavy magnetic locks on the school doors slammed shut with a resounding click.
"Give me the gun, Sarah," Maria demanded, tapping the tire iron lightly against the roof of the sedan.
Sarah, realizing she was caught between a furious mother with a weapon and a bloody, unhinged principal, dropped the handgun onto the asphalt.
I kicked it under my SUV, out of reach.
"Get in my car," I told Eleanor and Maria. "Now."
We piled into my SUV. Sarah stood frozen in the parking lot as I threw the car into reverse, hopped the curb to get around her blocking sedan, and sped out of the school parking lot.
My heart hammered against my ribs as I merged onto the main road. Sophie was sobbing quietly in the backseat, clutching Eleanor’s hand.
"We need to go to the state police," Eleanor said from the passenger seat. "Daniel will have the local precinct looking for your car in five minutes."
"We can't go to the police yet," Maria said from the backseat. Her voice was surprisingly calm for someone who had just threatened a woman with a tire iron.
"Why not?" I demanded, looking at her in the rearview mirror. "He killed my husband!"
Maria reached into the pocket of her diner apron. "Because Daniel Harrington didn't forge my name on that paper in the blue box just for fun, Mrs. Mitchell. He was paying someone."
She pulled out a crumpled piece of paper and handed it over the center console to me.
"Mateo grabbed this from the box before the teacher caught him," Maria explained. "It's not a grant application. It's a receipt."
I kept one eye on the road as I unfolded the paper.
It was a standard mechanic’s invoice from a local auto body shop. Riverside Auto.
The date on the invoice was two years ago. Specifically, three days before Mark’s fatal crash.
The service rendered was chillingly vague: Custom brake adjustment — 2018 Ford Explorer.
Mark’s car.
But it was the signature at the bottom that made my blood run cold. The payment of $5,000 was authorized by Daniel Harrington.
And the mechanic who signed off on the work was named Carlos Vargas.
"Carlos is my ex-husband," Maria said quietly, confirming my worst fear. "He’s Mateo’s father. He disappeared two years ago, right after your husband died."
I swerved the car slightly, my mind struggling to process the revelation. Harrington hadn't just followed Mark. He had paid Mateo’s absentee father to sabotage Mark’s brakes.
"Harrington wasn't expelling Mateo because he was poor," Eleanor realized, her voice filled with horror. "He was expelling him because Mateo’s father was the hitman. He wanted your family as far away from this school as possible before the boy accidentally said something."
"We have to find Carlos," I said, my knuckles white on the steering wheel. "If we bring this receipt to the state police, Harrington will just claim it was routine maintenance on a district vehicle. We need the mechanic to confess to the sabotage."
"I know where he is," Maria said grimly. "He drinks at a dive bar across the county line. I've been sending him child support demands there for a year."
"Hold on," Eleanor interrupted, pointing to the silver watch still sitting in the cup holder. "Before we go hunting for a mechanic, we need to know exactly what Mark found. Why was Harrington willing to kill him over a few thousand dollars in stolen iPads?"
I looked at the shattered watch.
"Eleanor is right," I said. "Mark wouldn't have been killed over tablets. There has to be more."
I pulled the car into the empty parking lot of a closed down strip mall. I picked up the watch. The back casing was slightly loose from when I had smashed it into Harrington’s face.
I used my car keys to pry the metal back plate off completely.
Hidden perfectly inside the hollowed-out casing of the chronograph was a tiny, black micro-SD card.
"He hid his backup files," I whispered.
Eleanor pulled a small laptop from her tote bag. "I took this from the administration office before we ran. Plug it in."
I inserted the tiny card into the laptop adapter. The screen flickered to life.
There were hundreds of files. Spreadsheets, wire transfers, offshore account numbers.
But one folder was named simply: THE ENDOWMENT.
I clicked it.
A video file opened. It was a secret recording Mark had taken from inside a dark room. The camera angle was low, probably from his briefcase.
On the screen, Harrington was sitting at a table with three other men.
One was the local police chief. One was the mayor. And the third was the regional director of the State Board of Education.
"The electronics are just a front," Harrington was saying on the video. "We use the charity donations to buy the tablets, report them stolen, and write off the loss. But the real money is in the property deeds. We rezone the failing school districts, declare the buildings condemned, and sell the land to our shell corporation for pennies on the dollar."
My jaw dropped. They weren't stealing thousands. They were stealing millions. An entire syndicate of corrupt officials robbing the public education system blind.
Suddenly, a loud CRASH shattered the driver's side window of my SUV.
Glass sprayed everywhere. Sophie screamed.
A heavy, gloved hand reached through the broken window, unlocking my door and violently yanking it open.
Before I could react, I was dragged out of the driver’s seat and thrown onto the hard asphalt.
I looked up, coughing on the dust.
Standing over me with his gun drawn was the local police chief from the video.
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And standing right behind him, holding my sister Sarah by the arm, was Principal Harrington.
"You found the watch," Harrington said, a sickening smile spreading across his bloody face. "Thank you for unlocking the files for us, Rebecca. It saves us the trouble of hacking it."
