Chapter Fifteen A: The Rental Yard at Closing
Becca Rowan did not look relieved when Evan told her they believed she had been deceived.
She kept stacking chairs until the steel legs formed a crooked tower beside the loading dock.
Claire waited beside the truck with her arms folded against the cold.
The yard was closing, and a man in a reflective vest had already switched off half the lights.
Becca pointed toward a smaller building behind the warehouse.
“We can talk there, but I need you to understand something first,” she said.
“I took the banner because Nolan asked me to, but nobody forced me to enter your house.”
Evan had expected another excuse, and her admission made him hesitate.
“Why would you risk your job for him?” he asked.
Becca pushed open the office door.
“Because he gave me the job after I lost everything at the first festival.”
Inside, a space heater clicked beneath a desk covered in equipment tags.
Becca took three paper cups from a cabinet and filled them from a bottle of water.
She did not offer a dramatic confession.
She sat down and told them how she had started renting tables from her father’s garage when she was nineteen.
The first festival was supposed to be her largest contract.
She had hired two friends and borrowed a truck she could barely afford to insure.
When the event collapsed, vendors demanded their deposits back from everyone whose name appeared on the promotional materials.
Nolan had introduced her as the equipment coordinator, and angry customers assumed she controlled the entire event.
She refunded money she had never collected.
She sold the truck to cover the remaining bills.
Six months later, Nolan offered her steady work at his company.
“He told me he felt responsible,” she said.
Claire looked toward the window.
“He told me he had saved you.”
Becca gave a bitter laugh.
“Maybe those are the same story when he tells them.”
Evan asked about the blue jacket she wore in Iris’s recording.
Becca explained that the jacket belonged to the rental yard, not Nolan.
She had worn it because she expected to carry dusty canvas through the basement.
“Did you know Iris was upstairs?” Evan asked.
“I didn’t know anyone was upstairs.”
“You stepped on her school model.”
Becca looked at her hands.
“I know.”
She said the broken cardboard had made a crunching sound beneath her boot.
She had stopped, lifted the crushed house, and tried to straighten its roof.
Then a car horn sounded outside, and she had hurried away.
“I should have put it back properly,” she said.
“You should not have been in the house,” Evan answered.
Becca accepted the correction without arguing.
A truck backed into the yard, its warning signal echoing between the buildings.
Claire leaned forward.
“When you gave Nolan the banner, what did he say after he searched the seams?”
Becca considered the question.
“He said Dennis had been smarter than he thought.”
Claire looked sharply at Evan.
“Dennis had already died when Nolan came looking for the banner.”
“That’s why I remember it,” Becca replied.
“He was talking about him as if they were still arguing.”
Evan asked whether Nolan had mentioned the brass tags.
Becca shook her head.
“He kept asking about a second list, one that showed which vendors were told to arrive late.”
Claire stood so quickly that her chair scraped the floor.
“There were two opening times,” she said.
“The sellers Nolan favored came early, and everyone else was told to arrive after the gates opened.”
Becca remembered trucks waiting on the access road while the preferred vendors occupied the best spaces.
She had assumed the delays were caused by traffic.
“He wasn’t only selling booths twice,” Claire said.
“He was choosing who got to claim them first.”
Evan realized that the problem was larger than a drawing with too many rectangles.
The second market might have been designed to create the same chaos at a precise hour.
He asked Becca whether she would tell Priya what she knew.
Becca stared at the equipment tags on the desk.
“If I do, Nolan will cancel every contract I have.”
“If you don’t, other people will pay for spaces they cannot use,” Evan replied.
She took a long breath and reached for her phone.
“Then give me Priya’s number.”
