CHAPTER FIFTEEN B — A PHONE CALL FROM THE WRONG PERSON

I called Calder Finch the following morning.
A woman answered and said he had retired two years earlier.
When I explained the reason for my call, she became silent.
“You should speak to his daughter,” she said at last.
“Why?”
“Because Calder can’t explain himself anymore.”
She gave me the daughter’s number and hung up.
I waited until Nora arrived before making the second call.
Calder’s daughter, Joanna Finch, worked at a bicycle repair shop on the other side of the county.
She agreed to meet us during her lunch break.


We found her replacing a chain on a child’s bicycle.
She finished tightening the wheel before turning toward us.
“My father died last spring,” she said.
“I don’t want you to find that out after you’ve asked ten questions.”
Nora thanked her for agreeing to meet.
Joanna wiped her hands with a cloth.
“He was ashamed of the Crescent job,” she said.
“He never said that in public, but I knew.”
She remembered her father returning home from the theater with an unusually large paycheck and an expression she had never seen before.
He had spent the next week checking the local news.


When Nora’s accident appeared on television, he left the room without finishing dinner.
“Did he tell you what happened?” Ellis asked.
“He said they made him choose between finishing a dangerous installation and losing the money he needed to keep his crew employed.”
Joanna spoke without trying to excuse him.
“He chose the money.”
She led us into a small office behind the workshop.
On the wall hung photographs of restored bicycles and a picture of Calder with his employees.
“Dad kept a tool chest in my garage,” she said.
“I haven’t opened it since he died.”
I asked whether she would allow an independent investigator to inspect anything relevant to the theater.


“I’ll allow that,” Joanna said.
“But I won’t let strangers carry his belongings away without telling me what they take.”
Nora agreed immediately.
Joanna looked at her brace and swallowed.
“I was sixteen when you got hurt,” she said.
“My father made me promise never to take a job just because somebody offered more money than I expected.”
“That isn’t much of an apology,” Nora said.
“I know,” Joanna answered.
“It was the closest thing he ever managed.”
Outside, a customer arrived with a damaged bicycle helmet.
Joanna returned to her work.
Nora stood beside the doorway for a moment,

watching her.
“She didn’t build the stage,” Nora said quietly.
“No,” I replied.
“But she’s carrying part of what happened.”