I confirmed that I had.

Thomas pulled out a chair without asking.

“Then you should know that Marjorie blamed Evelyn for something that happened in the firehouse basement.”

My stomach tightened.

I asked what had happened.

Thomas folded his rough hands together.

“A cabinet disappeared, and so did the last list of people who had asked for help.”

Chapter 4: The Basement Cabinet

Thomas remembered the winter of 2005 because his own boiler had broken during a week when temperatures stayed below freezing.

He had applied to the emergency fund for a replacement part that cost six hundred dollars.

The committee sent him a letter approving the repair, but the contractor never arrived.

When he asked Marjorie about the delay, she said his application had not been approved.

He showed her the letter.

She took it to the firehouse office and promised to investigate.

He never saw the paper again.

“I was angry then,” Thomas admitted.

“Later, I realized other people had gotten the same answer.”

Evelyn contacted him privately and asked for a statement.

He gave her a copy of the approval letter because his wife had insisted that they make duplicates of important documents.

A week later, a metal filing cabinet was removed from the basement office.

Thomas had been working in the building that morning.

He saw a small moving truck parked beside the rear entrance and two men carrying a gray cabinet through the loading door.

He assumed the committee was relocating records.

That night, Evelyn came to his house and asked whether he had seen the truck’s license plate.

He had not.

He could remember only the company emblem painted on the door, a white bird inside a circle.

“She looked scared,” Thomas said.

“Not angry, like she was when people ignored the rules.”

I asked why Evelyn had left town.

Thomas looked toward Celeste.

She set down a newspaper folder and answered for him.

“Her husband became ill, and the family said they were moving nearer to relatives.”

That had happened years after the cabinet disappeared, so it did not explain why the fund records had vanished.

I asked whether anyone contacted the police.

Thomas nodded.

“Evelyn did.”

He looked down at his hands.

“Then the neighborhood started calling her a thief.”

I found the accusation in a letter to the editor printed in February 2006.

It said that Evelyn had manipulated records to make the committee appear dishonest.

The letter had no signature, only the words CONCERNED RESIDENT.