Chapter 10 - The Blue Ledger
The blue ledger appeared three days later, not at the police station but at Marisol's print shop.
A courier left a package with no return address.
Marisol called Daniel before opening it.
Inside was the missing notebook, wrapped in oilcloth, with a note that said, "Keep the innocent names out of the headlines."
Daniel arranged for forensic copies and documented the chain of custody as carefully as he could.
The ledger listed project payments, substitutions, and transfers to scholarship accounts.
Its most troubling pages showed repeated withdrawals labeled as administrative expenses.
Several aligned with payments to consulting businesses owned by relatives of university trustees.
Bea traced the lines with her finger.
The sums were not simply lost numbers.
They were medicine students had gone without, meals skipped, and books borrowed too late.
At the back of the ledger, however, were signatures that complicated the story.
One belonged to Elena.
Another to Carmina.
A third belonged to a woman named Lucinda Reyes.
Hannah went still when she saw the name.
"That's my aunt," she said.
Lucinda had worked as an accountant for the foundation before moving overseas.
Hannah had never known why her aunt left so abruptly.
Amina checked archived minutes and discovered that Lucinda had protested the expenses at a finance meeting.
Her dissent had been omitted from the final approved report.
Meanwhile, Celeste Velasco contacted Bea through Jonah.
She requested a private meeting and insisted that her scholarship award had been legitimate.
Bea hesitated.
Celeste was not the person who signed Bea's name, but she had benefited.
They met in a quiet cafe with Hannah nearby.
Celeste arrived looking pale and frightened.
"I didn't know there was another applicant," she said.
"They told me the award was a family education grant."
She showed Bea her own award letter.
It bore different eligibility criteria and a stamped amendment signed by Victor.
Celeste also revealed that her tuition account had received far more money than she ever used.
"I asked where the balance went," she said.
"Uncle Victor told me not to worry."
She reached into her handbag and produced a bank statement.
"Then I checked again."
May you like
On the last page, the unused funds had been sent to a company bearing Victor's initials.
