Chapter 6 - The Shelter Kitchen
By nine, Damon had requested an emergency board meeting.
He asked the foundation’s counsel to issue a formal preservation notice and requested an independent financial review.
Graham called it excessive.
Elisa called it a betrayal.
Neither word stopped him.
At eleven, Damon went to Saint Agnes.
He arrived without a photographer.
The shelter director, Ruth Alvarez, met him at a side entrance beneath peeling blue paint.
“I have twenty minutes,” she said.
“Then lunch starts.”
“That’s enough.”
“It usually isn’t.”
Inside, the kitchen smelled of onions and industrial soap.
A volunteer was pouring extra water into a stockpot.
Damon noticed.
Ruth noticed him noticing.
“We call it making enough.”
Mara stood at a steel counter slicing bread.
She didn’t stop when he entered.
“Where’s Nora?” he asked.
“In the activity room.”
“How’s your wrist?”
“Sore.”
He waited.
She set down the knife.
“What do you need?”
“To see your delivery records.
With Ruth’s permission.”
Ruth led him into an office barely large enough for three people.
Binders crowded a shelf.
She opened one and laid out handwritten receiving sheets.
Damon compared them with the foundation’s digital summaries on his tablet.
Six hundred meals reported.
Forty-eight received.
Eight hundred reported.
Seventy-two received.
A refrigerator replacement marked complete.
Ruth opened the kitchen door and pointed at an old unit held shut with a strip of tape.
“There’s your replacement.”
Damon said nothing.
Mara folded her arms.
“Are the numbers still confusing?”
“No.”
Ruth sat down.
“I emailed the foundation four times.”
“Who answered?”
“Elisa’s assistant.
Then Graham Voss.”
Damon’s head lifted.
“What did Graham say?”
“That our reporting format was wrong.
He said future funding might depend on better cooperation.”
She slid him a printed email.
There was Graham’s address.
His signature.
A polite threat dressed as a helpful correction.
A knock interrupted them.
Nora stood in the doorway holding a paper plate covered in crayon.
“I made you something.”
Damon took it.
She had drawn a cake.
Beside it stood a tall stick figure bending toward a small one.
“Thank you.”
“Mom says you’re finding the missing dinners.”
He glanced at Mara.
“I’m trying.”
Nora frowned.
“How do you lose a dinner?”
Nobody answered.
Ruth’s phone rang.
She listened, then gripped the edge of her desk.
“What do you mean, suspended?”
Mara stepped closer.
Ruth put the call on speaker.
A foundation employee repeated the message.
“All Saint Agnes funding is on hold pending investigation into irregularities at your facility.”
Damon stared at the phone.
May you like
They weren’t just hiding the missing meals.
They were shutting off the next ones.
