Chapter Ten: The Wrong Enemy
Evan called Marla from the theater lobby and told her he had found Claire.
Marla cried when she heard Dennis had tried to stop the double bookings.
Then she asked a question Evan had not expected.
“Why is Nolan doing this now?”
Claire answered when Evan put the phone on speaker.
“Because he’s organizing another fair.”
She explained that Nolan had recently secured permission to run a large craft market in the next county.
He was using the same temporary booth system, the same subcontractors, and the same promise that early payments guaranteed the best locations.
“People are paying him again,” Claire said.
Marla spoke through tears.
“Then we have to warn them before the doors open.”
Evan felt the shape of the problem change.
The old festival mattered because Nolan was preparing to repeat it, not because somebody might finally win an argument about the past.
He asked Claire whether she would speak to the new vendors.
She looked back at the unfinished moon hanging above the stage.
“I’ll speak,” she said.
“But I won’t let my father make me disappear again.”
Chapter Eleven: The Market Office
The craft market was scheduled to open Saturday morning in a converted exhibition hall.
On Thursday, Evan and Claire visited the hall and found workers painting booth numbers onto the concrete floor.
A young organizer named Priya Shah listened carefully as they explained what had happened three years earlier.
She did not immediately believe them.
“We have contracts and a payment platform,” she said.
“Everything is documented.”
Claire asked whether the organizers had independently assigned the booth positions.
Priya admitted that Nolan’s team controlled the final layout.
Evan asked to see the floor plan.
The plan showed eighty numbered spaces, but the exhibition hall contained only sixty-four marked rectangles.
Priya stared at the discrepancy.
“Nolan said the remaining spaces were in the east wing,” she said.
The east wing was locked because the roof had been under repair for months.
Claire pointed toward the closed doors.
“Please don’t wait until Saturday to find out what’s behind them.”
Chapter Twelve: The Woman with the Keys
Priya called the building superintendent, who arrived carrying a ring of heavy keys.
He opened the east wing while two security guards watched.
The room contained stacked chairs, folded barriers, and a dozen empty display cases.
There were no market booths.
Priya called Nolan immediately.
He answered on speaker and told her the east wing would be ready before opening.
She asked why the floor plan showed occupied spaces inside a room that could not legally hold visitors.
Nolan accused her of misunderstanding a preliminary drawing.
Claire stepped forward.
“Hello, Dad,” she said.
Silence filled the room.
Then Nolan hung up.
Priya stared at her phone and asked the superintendent to close the east wing again.
“We need to contact every vendor tonight,” she said.
Evan felt relief for the first time since the mailbox attack.
It lasted until the superintendent looked through the glass doors and announced that Nolan had arrived in the parking lot.
