She turned toward Emmett, who produced a small battery-powered speaker he'd borrowed from the diner supply closet that morning, connecting it quickly to a portable player he'd retrieved from his truck.
Gerald stepped forward suddenly, his voice sharp. "This is completely inappropriate. You cannot hijack a memorial ceremony with unverified accusations."
"They're not unverified," Harper said steadily. "They're my father's own words recorded before he died."
She pressed play. Daniel Voss's voice crackled through the small speaker carrying clearly across the stunned crowd.
"I've been keeping records about the veteran support fund. Something's wrong with the numbers. I've tried talking to Gerald Ashford directly about it twice now. Both times he brushed it off, told me I was misreading the reports."
The crowd's silence had turned into something heavier now, more charged. Every eye in the square fixed on Gerald Ashford, whose face had gone completely white.
"I don't think I'm misreading anything," the recording continued. "I think money is being moved somewhere it shouldn't be."
Gerald's hands clenched at his sides. "This is absurd," he said loudly, though his voice had lost most of its earlier confidence. "A recording proves nothing. My old colleague may have had concerns, sure, but concerns aren't facts. This is a smear campaign timed deliberately to embarrass me on the most important day of this town's calendar."
"Is it?" A new voice called out, every head turned.
Harold Sims, the retired county clerk, rose from his seat near the back, leaning on his cane, his expression grim and resolute. "I worked in the county records office for nearly 30 years," Harold announced, his voice carrying with surprising strength across the square. "I remember the support fund. I remember when it quietly dissolved into this memorial project, and I remember at the time thinking it was strange nobody ever released a full accounting of exactly how much money transferred and how much simply vanished along the way."
Gerald's composure cracked further. "Harold, you're retired," he snapped. "You haven't worked in that office in years. You have no authority to speak on current town finances."
"Maybe not," Harold said calmly. "But I kept copies of old fund transfer documentation back when I still had access. Habit of a careful clerk, I suppose. I always wondered if they'd matter someday." He held up a thin Manila folder, worn but intact. "I brought them today," he said, "because Emmett called me yesterday and told me what Harper had found. Figured if there was ever a day these old papers might finally matter, it would be today."
The crowd erupted into a low, urgent murmur. Reporters scribbling furiously, the television camera swinging fully toward Harold and the folder in his hand. Gerald's expression shifted from indignant to something closer to desperate.
"This is a coordinated attack," he said loudly, voice rising, "orchestrated by a bitter young woman who was recently under investigation for theft and a paranoid old man clinging to conspiracy theories."
"I was never charged with theft," Harper said clearly, steady, despite the accusation. "Because I never stole anything. That accusation was manufactured yesterday, less than 24 hours before the ceremony. By your own son."
Every eye turned toward Colton, still frozen in the crowd, his face flushed with panic.
"That's not true," Colton said quickly, though his voice cracked slightly. "I never said anything like that."
"You told Sheriff Daniels I appeared nervous near the register," Harper said. "Despite the fact that you weren't even at the diner last night. You were driving the truck that hit the front window the same night an elderly man was injured on the sidewalk."
Gasps rippled through the crowd. Roger Hendris, seated near the front with his wrist still wrapped in a bandage, rose slowly to his feet, leaning on his good arm.
"That's right," Roger said loudly, voice trembling with anger. "That boy's truck near ran me down last night. I saw it clear as day."
"The engine was too loud to mistake," Millie added, standing near the edge of the crowd where she'd arrived just in time to witness everything, "and the security footage mysteriously cut out at exactly the wrong moment. I don't think that's a coincidence."
Colton's face had gone pale, his earlier bravado completely evaporated. "Dad," he said quietly, turning toward Gerald, panic clear in his voice. "This is getting out of hand."
Gerald's jaw tightened, eyes darting between the crowd, the reporters, the cameras, all now fixed intently on him. "Enough of this," he said sharply, some of his old authority returning to his voice. "I built this town's most successful company from nothing. I have served this community faithfully for over a decade. I will not stand here and be slandered by a waitress and a retired clerk chasing shadows."
He reached again for the cord to the covered memorial, movements sharp with barely restrained anger. "This ceremony," he said loudly, "will proceed as planned."
That was when Eleanor Pratt rose from her seat. The crowd quieted again, watching the elderly widow step forward slowly, her expression calm but resolute.
"Gerald Ashford," she said, her voice carrying clearly despite its age-worn softness. "I have known you since you were a boy delivering newspapers on this very street."