CHAPTER THREE — THE MAN WHO BOUGHT SILENCE
Carol agreed to talk after Daniel promised not to let Julian remove the brass plate without his permission.
She took them to a narrow garage behind her house, where the smell of cut lumber mingled with dried lavender.
A workbench occupied the far wall, and dozens of little wooden boxes stood along shelves above it.
Julian examined a cabinet of old carving tools while Carol pulled a dusty folding table into the middle of the floor.
She told them that Ada Venn had originally designed the figures for a public walkway beside the abandoned railway station.
The project had been funded by donations from local shopkeepers, mechanics, teachers and factory workers.
Each figure represented a resident who had volunteered to sit for Ada while she sketched the shape and movement of ordinary work.
The statues were supposed to be placed along a winding path so children could encounter them one at a time.
Bellweather had offered to pay the remaining carving costs on the condition that his company manage the temporary exhibition.
Then he had moved the sculptures into his own garden and replaced the public installation with a plaque thanking himself.
Julian frowned.
“There are newspaper pictures of Ada celebrating the opening beside Bellweather.”
“There are pictures of her standing beside him,” Carol corrected.
“She spent the whole reception telling people where the statues were meant to go.”
Carol opened a wooden box containing a soft wax model of a little pear.
She said Ada kept one model from each figure as a reminder of the people who inspired her.
After Bellweather closed the garden,
he told the workers that their final payments were being withheld because the exhibition had lost money.
Ada protested until she collapsed from exhaustion during an argument at his office.
She recovered physically but never carved another full figure.
Carol’s husband, Peter, had been responsible for lifting the twelve statues onto Bellweather’s trucks.
When he discovered that the sculptures would be shipped abroad before the workers received their wages, he refused to move them.
Bellweather threatened to blacklist every workshop that cooperated with Peter.
The following week, a storm struck the town, and the statues vanished.
“Peter stole them?” Daniel asked.
“Peter moved them,” Carol said.
“He wanted them somewhere Bellweather couldn’t quietly put them on a ship.”
Julian leaned against the workbench.
“Where?”
“That is the question everybody has asked me ever since.”
She showed them a small photograph of twelve adults standing beside a yellow flatbed truck.
Several held mugs and looked exhausted, while one young woman sat on the truck’s tailgate with her muddy boots hanging over the edge.
Carol was the woman on the tailgate.
Daniel recognized her only by the shape of her eyes.
“I didn’t know you worked with sculpture,” he said.
“I worked wherever there was a job,” Carol replied.
Peter and his coworkers had divided the pieces among trusted households instead of hiding them together.
They believed Bellweather would eventually have to settle with the workers, after which they could return the figures to the planned walkway.
He never settled, and the people holding the statues gradually moved, died or lost touch.
Carol had known where seven pieces went at the beginning, but she claimed she had stopped checking.
Daniel remembered the woman with the pears beside his driveway.
“Did you put mine there?”
Carol hesitated.
“I arranged for it to be there before you bought the place,” she said.
“The previous owner was one of Peter’s friends.”
Daniel felt a hot pulse of anger.
“You watched me spend six years cleaning it and protecting it while you knew somebody might come for it.”
“I hoped nobody would ever come.”
Julian stepped between them and asked whether the other eleven pieces could still be found.
Carol shook her head.
“Some can, but not the way Vale wants to find them.”
Julian’s phone rang before he could ask what she meant.
He answered, listened, and moved toward the open garage door.
Daniel heard only fragments from the caller, including the words delivery truck and replacement sculpture.
Julian ended the call and looked back at Carol.
“Vale has sent somebody to Daniel’s house,” he said.
“He says he’s offering to buy a piece of damaged garden ornament before it becomes worthless.”
Carol swore, grabbed her coat, and hurried out into the sunlight.
