Chapter 7

Monday came in raining. The annex commission room smelled like wet coats and floor wax. Fluorescent light, wood paneling, folding tables, a projector screen pulled down over the back wall, six rows of plastic chairs that were half full by eight.

Inez sat in the third row in her Sunday dress with the index card in her pocket. Bay sat beside her with the phone in her lap.

The commission took the health department's annual review first. Rufus Tillery stood at the podium in his suit jacket and gave them numbers - inspections completed, citations issued, a state quota met for the fourth year running. On a display table by the door sat his Inspector of the Year award, polished and upright, brought in for the occasion.

Chairman Doyle Pelfrey thanked him. Then he said, "Item fourteen. Appeal of a placarding, Kimbro's Kitchen."

Wade Halloran spoke before anyone else could. "Mr. Chairman, I'd move we table fourteen to the next meeting. We've got a budget amendment and we're already past eight-thirty."

"I'd like to hear it," said a voice from the front row.

Every head turned. Dr. Emmett Voss stood up, gray-haired, tall, in a plain suit, holding a paper cup of coffee.

"Dr. Voss, it's an appeal," Halloran said. "It's routine."

"It's on my desk," Voss said. "I'd like to hear it."

Delia Fannin swore the witness. Rufus raised his right hand, affirmed, and sat straight.

"Friday, May sixteenth, at approximately twelve-oh-five p.m.," he said, "I was in the kitchen at Kimbro's Kitchen. I observed the walk-in cooler at fifty-eight degrees. I wrote what I observed."

"Mrs. Kimbro," Pelfrey said. "You're the appellant. You may speak."

Inez stood up. Her hands were steady. She had been steady for three days.

"I'd ask the clerk to put something on the screen," she said.

Delia clicked the remote. Bay's photograph bloomed across the wall - the framed picture from the health department lobby, glare and all.

"There's a date in the corner," Inez said. "Read it."

Rufus looked at the screen. The practiced smile stayed on his face for about two seconds, and then it was gone, and what was underneath it was something smaller.

"That's a photograph," he said. "It doesn't prove where I was at noon."

"It proves where you were at some point that day."

"I could have driven down after."

Delia Fannin spoke without being asked, reading from her laptop. "Awards luncheon, Friday, May sixteenth, twelve noon to one-thirty p.m., Ballroom B. Association gallery photo, twelve-twenty p.m." She paused. "And the conference was in Capitol City."

"Three hundred and nine miles," Bay said from the third row.

Halloran's hand came down flat on the table. "Mr. Chairman-"

"I'll answer that," Voss said.

He walked up to the projector screen and stood beside it, and he did not look at Rufus. He looked at Inez.

"I was at that luncheon," he said. "I handed him that award. I shook his hand for that photograph at twelve-forty in the afternoon, in Capitol City, three hundred miles from this county." He turned to the commission. "So the answer is no. He was not in her kitchen at five after twelve."

The room did not move.

"Dr. Voss," Pelfrey said. "The appeal requires a determination from your office."

"It does." Voss looked down at the appellant sheet in his hand. "Mrs. Kimbro, is that your signature on section four?"

"It is."

"And your name for the record."

"Inez Kimbro."

Something happened in his face. He stood there with the paper in his hand and looked at her, really looked, for a long moment, the way a man looks at a storefront he used to know.

"Kimbro's Kitchen," he said. "On the square."

Inez reached into her dress pocket and took out the index card. She walked it up to the table and laid it in front of him, face up, yellowed and soft at the corner.

Voss picked it up. He read it twice. Then he set it down and put two fingers on it, holding it flat, as if it might move.

"Nineteen ninety-four," he said to the room. "I was a graduate assistant making four hundred and twelve dollars a month. I ate at that counter four days a week for two years. She never let me pay, not once, and I never forgot it, and I never went back to say so."

He looked at the commission.

"The inspection is voided. Mr. Tillery, your inspection authority is suspended pending a state review, effective now."

"You can't do that," Rufus said.

"I can, and I just did, and I'll be reading every report you have filed this year." Voss turned to Delia. "Clerk, mark it."

Rufus sat down slowly. Nobody said anything for a while.

Then Bay stood up in the third row with her phone in her hand.

"Mr. Chairman," she said. "There's one more thing in that picture."

Pelfrey looked at her over his bifocals. "What's that, young lady?"

"The corner," Bay said. "There's a man in the corner of that picture. He's wearing a commission badge."

Every commissioner turned to the screen.

Wade Halloran's hand was still flat on the table.