CHAPTER EIGHT — THE PRICE OF A THIRTY-FOUR-YEAR SECRET

Carol asked Daniel to stop at the municipal cemetery on the way home.
Peter Mercer had been buried beneath a modest headstone beside a line of old cedar trees, and Carol stood there without speaking while Daniel waited by the gate.
When she returned, she told him the part of the story she had avoided in the garage.
On the night the figures disappeared, Peter had planned to move them into twelve private gardens until Bellweather agreed to a public settlement.
Carol had helped distribute the sculptures and record their destinations using coded sketches only she understood.
Before dawn, Bellweather’s security manager intercepted the last truck near the railway station.
The manager offered Peter enough money to cover every worker’s unpaid wages if he would return the statues quietly.


Peter refused because the public walkway had become more important to him than the paychecks.
Carol feared that the refusal would bankrupt the stoneworkers and leave their families without work.
She took the money without telling Peter and delivered two genuine sculptures back to Bellweather’s men.
Bellweather promptly claimed that thieves had attempted to ransom the pieces, then withheld the payment he had promised for the others.
Peter discovered what Carol had done only after the story reached the local newspapers.
“He forgave me eventually,” Carol said.
“I never believed he should have.”
Daniel wondered whether the missing two had ever returned to the workers.
Carol said one disappeared again after Bellweather’s death, while the other passed between private collectors under false names.
Peter tried to recover them until a workplace accident left him unable to lift heavy stone.


By then most of the volunteers had grown tired of being dragged into an argument they could not afford.
Daniel asked why Carol had kept the pear seller near his house instead of taking it somewhere safer.
“I promised Mabel’s daughter she’d always know where to find it,” Carol answered.
“The house belonged to Mabel’s family once.”
“And you didn’t tell me?”
“You were a young man who wanted a quiet life, and I had already ruined enough people’s plans.”
Daniel stopped beside his car and faced her.
“You keep making choices for people who never asked you to make them.”
Carol looked down at her hands.
“I know.”
He told her that her fear did not give her the right to destroy his property or dictate what he could know.
She nodded, but he could see that accepting the words was harder than saying them.
Their silence lasted until Daniel asked about the hammer.
“Why did you choose today?”
“Julian sent the brochure, and I recognized the wrong baker,” she said.
“I thought if I broke your pear seller’s plate, Vale would have no reason to come here.”
“But Julian arrived anyway.”
“He’d already found the address.”
Daniel looked at the suburban street surrounding them, with its clipped lawns and identical front steps.
He realized that Carol had spent thirty-four years viewing ordinary houses as possible hiding places for a secret that was becoming heavier with every passing year.
“Who else knows the location of the remaining pieces?” he asked.
“Some of the families know,” she replied.
“Others only know that a carving was handed down with the furniture.”
“Could we ask them whether they want to tell their stories?”
Carol frowned.
“What good would that do before Saturday?”
“It might prevent somebody from selling a story those people never agreed to give him.”
Carol considered the suggestion.
“Vale has buyers with money and lawyers,” she said.
“People have neighbors,” Daniel answered.
She smiled faintly at that.
They returned to the car, where Julian was waiting with news that the gallery’s insurance carrier had asked for an independent condition inspection.
It was a routine commercial procedure, but Vale had refused to provide access to the private storage building.
Julian knew a conservator who could request clarification through the insurer without pretending to be a buyer.
Daniel insisted that they tell the conservator exactly how they obtained their information.
He had lost interest in clever traps that required another person to trust the wrong version of the truth.
Carol agreed reluctantly, then asked him whether they could stop by the hardware store.
“Why?”
“I owe you a statue repair and a new hammer,” she said.
“The old one belongs in the evidence locker if anybody asks.”