CHAPTER NINE: WHY CAROL KNEW THE ROUTE

The committee postponed its meeting for ten minutes while the mayor inspected the new evidence.
Daniel found Carol sitting beside the fountain, rubbing a sore wrist.
She had carried the heavy garbage bag farther than he had realized.
“Does it hurt?” he asked.
“Only when I move it.”
“Then stop moving it.”
“That’s not usually an option.”
He sat beside her, leaving a careful distance between them.
“How did you know so much about Victor’s selector?”
Carol watched a child chase a paper ribbon across the plaza.
“I worked with him every summer.”
“As a volunteer?”
“At first.”
She explained that she had been a school custodian when Victor built the first Lantern Maze.
Teachers asked her to help because she knew how to manage a room full of noisy children without frightening them.


Victor valued her practical judgment.
He asked her to walk each maze route while carrying a box, pushing a stroller, and pretending she could not see the colored clues.
“He wanted to know where people would hesitate,” she said.
“He thought a good puzzle should challenge your mind, not punish your body.”
Daniel remembered the narrow ramp and the mirrored dead end.
“So you helped design the safety routes.”
“I walked them until my feet hurt,” Carol said.
“Then I walked them again.”
For twenty years, she had worked at the festival’s quiet control station, helping families when they became confused.
The selector was Victor’s answer to her complaint that too many volunteers lost track of the moving doors.
He built it from scrap brass, a steel strip, and paper discs painted in different colors.


Carol had been the first person to test it.
“When they announced the new competition, I asked to stay on as a guide,” she said.
“They told me I was too old to handle the crowd.”
“Who told you that?”
“A committee member who never met a crowd she didn’t want a photograph beside.”
Daniel nearly smiled.
Carol did not.
“I was angry long before I saw the changes.”
“That explains why you were upset,” Daniel said.
“It doesn’t explain the trash bag.”
“I thought you’d sold the selector.”
“I took it from a scrap crate.”
“You were standing next to Voss when he announced the new maze last month.”
Daniel remembered helping hang banners at the press event.
Voss had thanked the volunteer crew as a group.
“I wasn’t working for him,” Daniel said.
“I barely knew the man.”
“I made a story in my head,” Carol admitted.
“Then every time you ignored one of my warnings, the story sounded more convincing.”
Daniel looked at the brass case.
“I made one about you too.”
“The angry old woman next door?”
“Something close to that.”
Carol gave a dry laugh.
“I did a fine job playing the part.”
They sat in silence while workers carried folding chairs toward the stage.
Daniel finally spoke.
“I still want you to pay for the lock.”
“I know.”
“And I still want you to clean the porch.”
“I know that too.”
“But I understand why you cared about the maze.”
Carol looked at him for the first time since the conversation began.
“Thank you.”
A volunteer hurried toward them.
“The mayor wants both of you at the north entrance.”
Daniel stood.
Carol followed more slowly.
Whatever had happened between them, the afternoon was not over.