CHAPTER TEN B: THE EMPTY WORKSHOP
The next morning, Imani called Nora before the diner opened.
She had located the former Harrow Works premises in an industrial courtyard beyond the fish market.
The property had become a furniture restoration shop, and its owner agreed to answer questions.
Nora asked why Imani wanted her to come.
Imani said that Leona had spoken more freely when Nora was present.
She also admitted that Walter had a habit of asking questions that sounded like accusations.
Nora checked her shift schedule and agreed to meet Imani for forty minutes.
The workshop smelled of linseed oil and wet timber.
A woman named Farah Holt stood beside a workbench repairing the curved leg of a dining chair.
Farah said that she had bought the workshop from the founder’s daughter eight years earlier.
She had inherited machinery, dust, and a surprising collection of unwanted scenery.
Imani asked whether the company had built theatrical frames for the harbor auditorium.
Farah said that the founder had done that work for decades.
She showed them a photograph of the old workshop crew standing beside a painted castle wall.
Nora recognized the theater emblem on a wooden crate behind the workers.
Farah explained that old equipment often returned for repairs under the original company name.
A closed business could remain stamped on scenery long after the business itself had vanished.
That explanation disappointed Imani, who had hoped the label would establish something more precise.
Farah asked what they were really looking for.
Imani described Peter’s injury and the recently recovered bracket.
Farah stopped polishing the chair.
She said that the founder’s daughter had mentioned a dispute about an unsafe counterweight assembly.
The dispute involved a client who wanted a wall made lighter without paying for a complete rebuild.
Farah could not remember whether the client was the harbor theater.
She led them into a back room where several wooden templates hung from hooks.
One template showed a narrow curved brace with a distinctive notch at its end.
Imani said that the recovered bracket had a similar shape.
Farah warned her not to draw conclusions from an old woodworking template.
The same brace could have been used in dozens of productions.
Nora asked whether any former employee might remember the order.
Farah said that most had retired or moved away.
She knew one carpenter named Gideon Mercer who still visited the workshop on Fridays.
He was elderly but fiercely protective of his craft.
Farah offered to ask whether he would speak to them.
Imani thanked her and photographed the template with permission.
Before they left, Farah pointed toward a narrow staircase behind the office.
She said that the old workshop had once stored finished scenery upstairs until a truck arrived.
A delivery could be recorded by a customer’s name or by a production title.
If the theater had ordered a replacement frame, the workshop might have called it The Last Crossing rather than the harbor theater.
Imani wrote that distinction down.
Nora noticed that Farah had not promised a revelation.
She had offered a practical explanation that might lead somewhere or nowhere.
Outside, Imani admitted that the visit had made the mystery more complicated.
Nora said that complicated did not mean useless.
Her phone buzzed with a message from the diner manager asking why she was not already at work.
She showed Imani the time.
They had used fifty-three minutes instead of forty.
Nora hurried toward the bus stop, angry that even an ordinary delay could threaten her rent.
