Chapter 3 — The Missing Championship Medal
The file was thin.
Yellowed paper.
Old typewritten reports.
A photograph of a trophy cabinet.
Margaret placed everything on a conference-room table.
The incident dated back to June 1998.
Hawthorne had just completed its annual club championship.
Arthur won the men’s final.
The medal in the photograph around his neck was supposed to be placed inside the trophy cabinet afterward.
But the next morning…
it was missing.
Arthur frowned.
“This?”
He pointed toward the photograph he had carried for decades.
Margaret nodded.
The club’s old operations manager, Leonard Price, opened an internal investigation.
Several people had access to the building after closing.
Arthur.
Two cleaners.
A teenage ball boy named Eli Turner.
And Thomas Bennett.
The report contained one sentence underlined twice:
Employee Thomas Bennett observed near trophy corridor after hours.
Another page:
Employee denies knowledge of missing medal.
Then:
Employment terminated following refusal to cooperate with corrective statement.
Ryan looked up.
“They fired my grandfather over a medal?”
Margaret nodded.
“According to this file.”
Arthur stared at the paper in disbelief.
“No.”
“What?”
“Thomas didn’t take it.”
Derek, standing near the door, spoke for the first time.
“How can you know that after twenty-eight years?”
Arthur slowly held up the photograph.
“Because I had the medal.”
Everyone went silent.
Arthur pointed toward the picture.
The gold medal was clearly in his hand.
“When was this photograph taken?” Margaret asked.
Arthur turned it over.
A date had been written on the back.
JUNE 22, 1998.
Margaret checked the incident report.
The medal was reported missing:
JUNE 23, 1998.
Ryan stared at Arthur.
“Why did you have it?”
Arthur closed his eyes.
Then the memory returned.
“The elementary school.”
Margaret frowned.
Arthur had been scheduled to speak at Rachel’s elementary-school sports day.
Thomas asked if Arthur would bring his championship medal so the children could see it.
Arthur agreed.
He removed it from the trophy cabinet with permission from the tournament chairman.
Then posed for the photograph with Thomas and Rachel before leaving.
“I took the medal home that night.”
Ryan stared at him.
“And Grandpa got blamed the next morning?”
Arthur’s face went pale.
“I didn’t know.”
“How could you not know?”
Arthur looked devastated.
Because immediately after the school event, Arthur left for Europe.
His wife had received an emergency call concerning her father.
They were gone almost three weeks.
Arthur gave the medal to Leonard Price’s assistant before leaving.
“I assumed it went straight back into the cabinet.”
Margaret looked toward the old report.
“Apparently it didn’t.”