The next week, an investigator noticed that the van in the photograph bore a business emblem distinct from the transport company in the surviving invoice.
That discrepancy opened a new question about who had actually moved the children.
It did not make the reunion less important to Mara.
For one afternoon, she had been allowed to hear her mother described without Richard’s permission.
CHAPTER 24: A Different Van
The emblem in Helen’s photograph belonged to a local charitable transport service that had dissolved years earlier.
Its director had died, but a former driver named Franklin Moss still lived in a rural community south of the city.
Naomi contacted him through an official request and arranged an interview.
Franklin remembered the Alder House route because it had been unusually disorganized.
He had been told to bring the van to a loading entrance, yet nobody was prepared to receive him when he arrived.
A woman introduced herself as the administrator and handed him a list of supplies.
He loaded blankets, boxes of clothing, and two suitcases.
No children entered his vehicle that morning.
He was directed instead to a church storage facility several miles away.
The van in the photograph was therefore a piece of the story, but not proof of a secret transport.
Mara told me she was disappointed when she heard this.
She had hoped the photograph would establish exactly how the children were taken.
I understood the frustration because I had experienced it each time a promising clue became smaller under careful examination.
Naomi explained that the distinction was valuable anyway.
It meant the trust had used at least two transport arrangements around the time of the disappearances.
The surviving invoices could no longer be treated as a complete account of every vehicle at the property.
Lillian remembered that the rear gate had been propped open repeatedly during the final week of operations.
She had complained because children could leave unnoticed.
An administrator told her the open gate was necessary for deliveries.
The maintenance record our father preserved confirmed that the gate’s latch had been broken and repaired twice.
The new information did not prove who ordered the transfers.
It revealed how a series of ordinary safety failures created opportunities that nobody was eager to admit afterward.
That night I attended a neighborhood volunteer meeting at the center and tried to focus on replacing damaged bookshelves.
A young volunteer asked why the old building appeared in so many local articles.
