Chapter 3 - THE PHOTOGRAPH IN THE GLOVEBOX
I didn't take Emma back to class. I put her in the passenger seat of my SUV and buckled her in.
“Are we going home, Daddy?” she asked quietly.
“Yes, sweetie. We’re going to take a mental health day. Maybe get some ice cream.”
She gave a small, hesitant smile. “Can we get Lily ice cream too? She was crying when Mrs. Carter yelled at me.”
My heart ached. “Not today, honey. But I promise, I’m going to make sure Lily gets her books back.”
I closed her door and walked around to the driver's side. As I pulled out of the school parking lot, my mind was racing.
Marcus’s money clip in the empty storage room. Principal Coleman with a flight to the Caymans. And a teacher who was terrified to speak.
They hadn't exchanged the books. They had sold them.
New, sealed textbooks were incredibly expensive. Two thousand of them could easily fetch seventy or eighty thousand dollars on the secondary market. If Marcus and Coleman were working together, they were using my company’s charitable donations to line their own pockets.
I needed proof.
I drove us home, a quiet suburban house I had bought after my wife passed away five years ago. I set Emma up in the living room with her favorite movie and a bowl of popcorn.
I went into my home office and locked the door.
I called Marcus.
It rang four times before going to voicemail.
I called the logistics company that handled our freight.
“Hey, Dan,” the dispatcher, a guy named Rick, answered.
“Rick, I need a favor. I need the delivery logs for the Brookfield Elementary drop-off last week. The textbook donation.”
Rick paused. “Uh, Dan. We didn't deliver those.”
I froze. “What do you mean? I signed the invoice before I left for Chicago.”
“Yeah, but Marcus called and rerouted the trucks at the last minute. He said the school didn't have space, so he had us drop the pallets at a private storage facility downtown.”
“Which facility?”
“Harbor Point Storage. Unit 42.”
My jaw clenched. “Thanks, Rick.”
I hung up. Marcus hadn't even let the books get to the school. But if the books never made it to the school, why was Marcus’s money clip in the school’s empty gym?
Unless he was there meeting with Coleman. Paying him off for his silence.
I walked back out to the living room. “Emma, I have to run an errand. Mrs. Higgins from next door is going to come sit with you for an hour, okay?”
Emma looked at me, holding her torn science book in her lap. She had tried to tape the pages back together.
“Daddy?” she said softly.
“Yes, baby?”
“Mrs. Carter didn't want to tear my book.”
I stopped putting on my coat. “What do you mean?”
“Before you came in,” Emma said, looking down. “When she took my book, her hands were shaking. She whispered that she was sorry. But Mr. Coleman was standing in the hallway watching her.”
The breath left my lungs.
Mrs. Carter wasn't a cruel teacher on a power trip. She was a hostage. Coleman forced her to destroy the book in front of the class to set an example. To make sure no student dared to bring outside materials in, which would prompt questions from parents about where the new books were.
I called my neighbor, secured Emma, and drove straight to Harbor Point Storage.
It was a bleak, industrial stretch of waterfront. I found Unit 42. There was a heavy padlock on it.
I grabbed a tire iron from my trunk and shattered the lock.
I rolled up the metal door, expecting to find walls of cardboard boxes filled with books.
The unit was empty.
Except for one thing sitting in the dead center of the concrete floor.
A single cardboard box.
I walked toward it cautiously. It was open.
Inside wasn't a textbook. It was a thick manila envelope.
I pulled it out and opened the clasp.
Dozens of glossy photographs spilled out.
I picked one up, my stomach dropping.
It was a picture of me. Taken from across the street. I was sitting at a diner in Chicago last week, looking over construction blueprints.
I picked up another one. It was a picture of Emma, walking into school yesterday.
Someone had been following us.
Then I looked at the bottom of the box. There was a handwritten note on a piece of heavy stationary.
Daniel,
If you’re reading this, you figured it out too late. The books were just the beginning. Check your company accounts. Then check your glovebox.
I dropped the note. I sprinted back to my SUV.
I threw open the passenger door and ripped open the glovebox.
Sitting on top of the registration papers was a thick stack of banded hundred-dollar bills. At least fifty thousand dollars in cash.
A police siren wailed suddenly from the street behind me. Two patrol cars swung into the storage facility, their lights flashing, blocking my car in.
May you like
I had just found the payoff money for the stolen books.
And it was sitting in my car.
