Sheriff Daniels checked his notes again. "Statement came from a Colton Ashford, who says he stopped by briefly last night and observed Miss Voss near the register appearing, in his words, unusually nervous."
Harper stared at him, stunned. "He wasn't even here last night. He was the one driving the truck that hit the window."
"We have no confirmed evidence connecting Mr. Ashford to that incident," Sheriff Daniels said. "As for the missing funds, given the seriousness of the complaint, I need you to come down to the station with us, Ms. Voss, and answer some questions."
The diner had gone completely silent, every remaining customer watching the scene unfold with wide, uncomfortable eyes. Harper felt humiliation burn through her, sharp and hot, though she stayed calm exactly the way Emmett had trained her to stay calm under far worse pressure than this.
"Am I under arrest?" she asked quietly.
"Not at this time," Sheriff Daniels said. "This is voluntary for now, but I'd strongly advise cooperating."
Millie stepped forward again, furious. "This is ridiculous. You're doing this right before the ceremony? You really expect anyone to believe this isn't connected to what happened last night?"
Sheriff Daniels' expression hardened slightly. "I'd be careful with accusations like that, Millie. I'm simply following up on a formal complaint, same as I would for anyone else."
Harper untied her apron slowly, setting it on the counter, her hands trembling faintly despite her outward composure. "I'll come," she said quietly. "I have nothing to hide."
As the officers led her toward the door, Harper glanced back once toward the corner booth where Emmett Doyle sat, jaw tight, eyes burning with quiet fury he was carefully holding in check. He gave her the smallest nod, a silent promise that this wasn't over. But as the diner door closed behind her, and she was led towards the waiting patrol car, Harper couldn't shake feeling that Colton and Gerald Ashford had just done exactly what they'd set out to do. They had made certain that on the one day the whole town gathered to talk about honor and sacrifice and truth, the person holding the most important piece of truth would be sitting in a police station instead. Her reputation already beginning to unravel beneath a lie.
The questioning at the station lasted nearly 2 hours. Harper answered every question honestly, explaining again and again that she'd been outside helping Roger Hendris at the exact time the money supposedly went missing. That Millie could confirm her whereabouts, that the accusation didn't line up with the timeline, no matter how you looked at it. The officers stayed polite, professional, but clearly following a script that had already been written before she'd even walked through the door.
By the time they finally released her, just after 11, they informed her the investigation would remain open and that she was for the time being suspended from her position pending the outcome. Millie hadn't suspended her, of course. That decision had come straight from the officers, citing standard procedure for any active investigation touching an employer.
Harper stepped out of the station into the gray afternoon, chest tight with a mixture of anger, humiliation, and something close to despair. Word she already knew would travel fast through a town this size. By the time the memorial ceremony began at 2, half of Ridgefield would already have heard some version of the story. Waitress accused of stealing charity money. Waitress questioned by police right before the town's biggest day. Whatever truth existed in her father's old notebook was in danger of being buried under gossip and suspicion before she'd even had a chance to present it properly.
She sat down on a bench outside the station, staring blankly at the courthouse square across the street, where workers were still setting up chairs, hanging banners, building a stage for a ceremony that suddenly felt less like an honor and more like a trap slowly closing around her. Emmett found her there 20 minutes later. Having walked over the moment he heard what happened, he sat beside her without a word for a long moment, letting the silence settle.
"They're good at this," Harper finally said, "making things disappear. Making the truth look like a lie."
"They're desperate," Emmett said. "There's a difference. Desperate men make mistakes," Harper. "Careful men don't panic like this."
"Doesn't feel like a mistake," she said bitterly. "Feels like they just won."
Emmett turned to look at her, his gaze even. The same evenness that had carried her through 10 years of quiet, difficult training. "You remember what I told you?" he said. "The very first day we started all those years ago."
Harper managed a small, humorless laugh. "You told me a lot of things."
"I told you," Emmett said, "that someday you'd face a moment that felt impossible, a moment where doing the right thing seemed like it had already cost you everything with nothing left to show for it."
Harper looked down at her hands, still faintly marked with the fading burn from Tuesday's coffee. "This feels like that moment," she admitted.
"I know," Emmett said. "But I told you something else that day, too."
"What's that?"
His eyes softened slightly, though his voice stayed even. "I told you the moments that feel most impossible are usually the ones right before everything changes."
Harper looked up at him, uncertainty flickering behind her exhausted eyes. "You really believe that?"
"I do," Emmett said simply. "And I think somewhere out there, your father believed it, too. Enough to write down every single number in that notebook, even knowing it might take years before anyone understood why it mattered."
He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out an old worn cassette tape, holding it carefully between two fingers. Harper stared at it, confused. "What is that?"