Chapter Seven: The Second Recording
Iris was waiting on the porch when Evan returned.
She had reviewed her footage frame by frame and found a detail nobody else had noticed.
During the attack, a figure moved briefly behind the basement window.
The figure wore a dark blue jacket with a silver patch on the shoulder.
Evan recognized the patch as the uniform of the street-sign installation crew.
Iris had also recorded the white van driving away after Nolan’s conversation with Marla.
But the van returned ten minutes later, just as Marla raised the axe.
It parked behind a delivery truck, where Evan could not see it from the kitchen.
The second occupant climbed out and walked toward the side of the house.
“That person wasn’t looking at the mailbox,” Iris said.
“They were looking at the basement.”
Evan called the installation company and asked whether a crew had been working on his street.
The receptionist said all employees were at a warehouse training session that day.
When he described the silver shoulder patch, she became quiet.
“That’s our old uniform,” she said.
“We changed it last spring.”
Evan asked who still had the old jackets.
The receptionist hesitated before answering.
“Nolan kept a box of them when he sold the company.”
Chapter Eight: The Festival That Never Happened
The next morning, Evan and Lila drove to the bakery where the festival’s first vendor had once worked.
The baker, Sofia Alvarez, had moved her business into a smaller storefront after losing money on the canceled event.
She remembered Dennis Voss carrying tables, Nolan Price collecting envelopes, and a young woman directing vendors toward booths that were already occupied.
“What young woman?” Lila asked.
Sofia reached beneath the counter and produced an old festival program she had saved for the recipe printed on the back.
The woman in the program wore a blue jacket and held a clipboard.
Her name was Claire Price.
“She was Nolan’s daughter,” Sofia said.
“She looked terrified when the second set of vendors arrived.”
Evan remembered Claire as a college student who had disappeared from the neighborhood soon after the festival.
Sofia turned the program over and pointed at the recipe.
“I kept this because my mother wrote it,” she said.
“But I also kept it because Claire came here after the fair and apologized.”
“What did she say?”
“She told me she had followed her father’s instructions, and she begged me not to blame Dennis.”
Sofia looked toward the front window.
“She also said she had made a copy of the schedule before anyone changed it.”
Chapter Nine: Claire’s Choice
Finding Claire took two days and several conversations with people who had not heard her name in years.
She worked at a small theater outside the city, repairing costumes and painting scenery.
When Evan arrived, she was standing on a ladder beneath an unfinished cardboard moon.
He introduced himself and mentioned the festival.
Claire climbed down without speaking.
“Is my father still telling people Dennis stole the money?” she asked.
Evan explained the smashed mailbox, the basement intrusion, and the missing banner.
Claire sat on the edge of the stage.
“He’s looking for the banner because he thinks I hid something inside it,” she said.
“Did you?”
“No.”
She rubbed paint from her thumb.
“I used the back of the banner to mark where vendors should stand when the official plan fell apart.”
She described the morning of the fair in painful detail.
Nolan had sold premium positions to three different groups and expected the first arrivals to leave when the others appeared.
When Dennis refused to move the tables, Nolan blamed him for the confusion.
Claire tried to reorganize the vendors, but the shouting grew louder and someone pulled the fire alarm at the community center.
“Dad told me to say Dennis had taken the cash,” Claire said.
“I refused, and he told everyone I was having a breakdown.”
She looked directly at Evan.
“I left because nobody believed me, not because I was hiding anything.”
