CHAPTER EIGHT: THREE PAIRS OF HANDS
Nadia Vale crossed the corridor with the certainty of somebody who had practiced an entrance for thirty years.
Her hair was white, and she used a lightweight cane, but she carried the wooden case herself.
Helen remained beside the exhibit, unable to move.
“You look older,” Nadia said.
“So do you,” Helen replied.
Nadia’s mouth twitched.
“At least you’re still observant.”
Megan stepped back to give them room.
Nadia set the case on a worktable and opened it.
Inside were six tiny figures wrapped in soft cloth, each scarcely larger than a thumb.
Their painted faces were astonishingly expressive.
One carried a basket.
Another held a lantern.
A third wore a blue coat with a missing button.
“I kept them moving,” Nadia said.
“When I couldn’t make the whole theater work, I practiced with whatever parts I had.”
Helen reached toward the figure in the blue coat, then stopped.
“You repaired his arm.”
“Twice.”
“I thought he was broken forever.”
“Some things are worth fixing.”
The words hung between them.
Everett moved toward the table.
“May I see the original figures?”
Nadia shut the lid before he could touch them.
“You can see them when you admit whose hands made them.
”
“The company owned the designs,” he replied.
“The company couldn’t even keep the lighthouse turning without us.”
Everett looked toward the operations director.
“I believe this is becoming a personal dispute.”
“It has been personal since you removed our names from the display,” Nadia answered.
Megan stepped closer to the glass cabinet.
“Can you run your working version here?”
Nadia nodded.
“I brought a portable stage.”
She asked the operations director for a table and a power outlet.
He hesitated, checking his watch.
Sabine spoke before Everett could interfere.
“Our authenticity concerns won’t disappear because the doors open.”
The director finally agreed to a technical comparison in a small room adjoining the gallery.
Everett protested that the buyers would lose patience.
“Then they can watch,” Nadia replied.
The staff wheeled in a table and closed the curtain between the rooms.
Nadia unpacked a modest wooden platform with a curved metal track and a hand-operated control wheel.
Megan helped her steady the case while Helen assembled the little dock.
They worked together awkwardly at first.
Nadia pointed to a hole beneath the bakery.
Helen found the matching peg without being told.
The two women looked at one another.
“You still remember,” Nadia said.
“My hands remember,” Helen replied.
One of the miniature figures toppled when Megan set it down.
Nadia adjusted a tiny weight in the base.
“A figure this small needs a different center of balance than its real-size counterpart,” she explained.
“Otherwise it looks like a person standing on a moving bus.”
Megan steadied the figure and tried again.
This time it stood firmly.
As Nadia tested the wheel, the harbor began to move.
The bakery advanced, stopped, and advanced once more.
A window brightened.
A small boat eased away from the dock.
Then the lighthouse turned, its narrow beam passing over the rooftops.
The movement was gentle, uneven, and remarkably human.
Megan found herself holding her breath.
“That’s it,” Helen whispered.
Nadia did not smile.
“That’s part of it.”
She touched the empty slot where the kitchen panel should have been.
“Iris’s scene is still missing.”
Everett stood at the doorway watching.
“A charming reconstruction,” he said.
“But it doesn’t establish the history of the item for sale.”
Nadia lifted the control wheel.
“It establishes that what you’re selling cannot do what you say it does.”
The gallery director turned toward Everett.
“Why weren’t these people involved in preparing the exhibition?”
Everett spread his hands.
“I couldn’t locate everyone.”
“You found Helen’s address easily enough,” Megan said.
He ignored her.
“We can revise the wording after the preview.”
“The preview is when people decide whether to buy,” Sabine replied.
For the first time, the director appeared to understand the scale of the problem.
He asked Everett for the complete object history.
Everett produced a neat folder from his bag.
Megan could see signed labels and photographs, but she remembered what Nadia had said about collectors trusting the appearance of old scratches.
The folder might explain who had handled the object recently.
It could not make the miniature village move correctly.
“There’s still one thing I don’t understand,
” Megan said.
She turned to Helen.
“You buried a tin under my tree, and he was desperate to get it.”
Helen nodded.
“But if it contains replacement cams, why does he want them so badly?”
Nadia looked toward Everett.
“Because the replacements have something he cannot manufacture now.”
Everett’s head jerked up.
“Don’t,” he said.
Nadia continued.
“They carry three tiny marks that were cut into the wood by the children at the hospital.”
“That’s sentimental speculation,” Everett snapped.
“It’s a fact,” Helen answered.
“I remember the marks.”
She drew three shapes on a scrap of paper.
A small star,
a crooked doorway, and a half-moon.
“The children wanted their own secret street signs,” she said.
“We let them decorate the underside of the cams because those pieces weren’t going back into the stage.”
Megan stared at the shapes.
“So Everett needs them to make his reproduction look like something connected to the original performance.”
Nadia nodded.
“The hospital invited journalists that day.”
She looked directly at Everett.
“One photograph showed a volunteer holding those marked pieces after the accident.”
“And now you want the same pieces so that collectors can match the photograph,” Megan said.
Everett’s silence told her enough.
But instead of celebrating, she felt the weight of the damaged maple waiting back on Alder Street.
“We cannot dig up those pieces today,” she said.
“Then you can’t prove your story,” Everett replied.
Helen surprised everyone by shaking her head.
“We don’t need to damage another thing just to satisfy you.”
CHAPTER NINE: THE BUYER IN THE GREEN TIE
The buyer arrived five minutes before six.
His name was Quentin Dorsey, and he wore a green tie patterned with tiny silver birds.
He moved with a practical confidence that made other people step aside.
“Is this the demonstration?” he asked when he saw the little harbor on the table.
The gallery director stepped forward and began explaining that the exhibit had raised questions.
Quentin held up a hand.
“I’ve heard about those questions.”
He turned to Everett.
“You told me there was a dispute between two former employees.”
“There is,” Everett replied.
“Then why is there a second working stage in the room?”
Nadia placed her hands on the portable control wheel.
“Because your seller is presenting a decorative reconstruction as the original mechanism.”
Quentin examined the harbor and the tiny figures.
“Can you show me?”
Everett tried to speak.
Quentin turned sharply.
“I asked her.”
Nadia began the sequence.
The miniature bakery crossed a shadowed street as a lamp brightened in the upper window.
A figure carrying a basket emerged from a narrow doorway.
The lighthouse swept the harbor once and stopped above a painted boat.
Quentin watched the entire nine-minute performance without speaking.
When it ended, he leaned close to the little stage.
“That is rather extraordinary,” he said.
Everett looked relieved.
“We can incorporate some of those movements into our version.”
“Your version?” Quentin repeated.
“I thought I was buying the original.”
Everett shifted his weight.
“You are buying the only surviving complete harbor set.”
“It isn’t complete,
” Nadia said.
“And it has never performed those movements.”
Quentin straightened.
“I purchase mechanical art because I want to see the engineering, not just display expensive furniture.”
Megan liked him a little more after that.
“Then don’t buy something you haven’t seen run properly,” she said.
The gallery director suggested suspending the sale until a qualified review could be completed.
Everett’s face reddened.
“We’ve spent months assembling this exhibition.”
“That doesn’t make it accurate,” Sabine replied.
Quentin looked at the two older women.
“Are you willing to speak publicly about your work?”
Helen glanced at Nadia.
Nadia did not answer for her.
“I will,” Helen said after a moment.
“But first I need to admit what I did when we worked together.”
Everett stepped toward the doorway.
“A personal confession is hardly relevant.”
Quentin blocked his path without touching him.
“You’re the person asking for my money,” he said.
“You’ll stay while I hear it.”
Helen drew in a breath.
She described the failed hospital performance and Solomon’s decision to run the miniature theater too fast.
She admitted that Nadia had warned him, that Iris had tried to protect the painted figures, and that she had remained silent when Nadia was accused of destroying the show.
Her voice shook at first.
Then it steadied.
“I thought that if I agreed with him, I might keep my job,” Helen said.
“Instead I lost my friends, and the workshop closed anyway.”
Nadia’s eyes glistened, but she looked straight ahead.
“I should have told Helen what I changed,” she said.
“But she should have stood beside us when Solomon blamed me.”
Quentin folded his arms.
“And what does this have to do with the object Everett is selling?”
Nadia gestured toward the false harbor.
“The original show was a collaboration.”
“He is selling a reconstruction under a single man’s name.”
“Those are separate issues,” Everett insisted.
“They’re connected by you,” Megan said.
She held up the printed exhibition brochure, which credited every component to Solomon Morrow.
“You made a design that relies on other people’s work, then erased those people from the story.”
Everett looked toward the gallery director for assistance.
The director instead took back the brochure and studied its description.
Quentin loosened his tie.
“I won’t bid on the exhibit as represented,” he said.
Everett’s jaw tightened.
“You’ll regret walking away from an opportunity like this.”
“I often regret things,” Quentin said.
“I prefer regretting them before I pay for them.”
Megan almost laughed, but her phone buzzed.
It was a text from Rowan Pike, the arborist.
Someone had been seen measuring the distance between the maple and the walkway.
The visitor had left a small orange marker near the curb.
Megan showed the message to Helen.
Everett saw their faces change.
“You think I sent someone to your property,” he said.
“Did you?” Megan asked.
“I have been here for the last hour.”
“That doesn’t answer the question.”
He said nothing.
Megan stepped into the corridor and called Rowan.
He explained that the person had arrived in a commercial pickup truck and claimed to be assessing access for a weekend landscaping job.
Rowan had asked for the property owner’s authorization and sent him away.
“The marker is gone,” Rowan said.
“I removed it myself.”
Megan thanked him.
When she returned, she found Helen standing beside the little harbor.
“We should go home,” Helen said.
“Not yet,” Megan replied.
“Everett has spent the whole day trying to make us leave.”
She looked through the curtain at the crowd arriving in the exhibition hall.
“I want everyone to see what they’re actually being offered.”
