A day later Paige’s attorney contacted the inspector to arrange a statement.
Paige said Celeste had asked her to monitor deliveries to our address, claiming an important scholarship notice might be sent incorrectly.
She had refused to approach our mailbox.
But she had written a note for Celeste identifying the return address and my name.
“I thought she was helping a family,” Paige told the investigator.
“I didn’t know anybody would break a mailbox.”
Her account mattered because it connected Celeste’s interest to the letter before it disappeared.
It did not make Paige the person who took it.
A different witness emerged after a neighborhood mechanic saw the police bulletin about property damage.
His name was Rowan Keene, and his shop repaired utility trailers near the highway.
On the morning after the break-in, a customer had brought in a dark sedan with damage to the lower edge of its rear bumper.
The customer wanted a bent metal bracket straightened without paperwork.
Rowan had refused because he was already behind on booked repairs.
He remembered the man saying his aunt needed the car fixed before a charity event.
The man’s name on the appointment request was Felix Caldwell.
I had met Felix only twice.
He was Celeste’s nephew, thirty years old, charming when sober, and notorious in the neighborhood for borrowing tools he forgot to return.
Evelyn asked Rowan for the appointment message.
He preserved it.
A week later investigators obtained further evidence about the car through lawful channels.
I did not receive those details immediately.
I only knew that Felix had been near our neighborhood during the time my mailbox was damaged.
It made him a person worth interviewing, not automatically the culprit.
Felix came to our house on a Tuesday morning wearing a baseball cap and carrying a bag of groceries.
He said he was delivering food for Celeste, although we had not asked for any.
I stood behind the screen door.
“You should leave,” I said.
“I’m trying to be neighborly.”
“Then stop coming to my door.”
He glanced at the new mailbox beside the road.
“Nice replacement.”
“The old one wasn’t broken by weather.”
Felix looked at me for a moment.
“People are making a lot of noise over a metal box.”
“A person opened my mail.”
He shrugged.
“Maybe your daughter didn’t like what was inside.”
I felt the temptation to step outside and force an answer.
Instead I held onto the doorframe.
“Don’t discuss my daughter,” I said.
