Chapter 8

For a long moment the only sound in the annex was the rain on the window and the projector fan.

"I know whose badge that is," Voss said. "I was at that table."

He said it plainly, without heat. Commissioner Wade Halloran had been seated two chairs down from him at the luncheon in Capitol City on Friday, May sixteenth, and had said hello to him by name.

Halloran didn't deny it. He said he'd been there on county business.

Delia Fannin pulled the travel file without being asked. Reimbursement request, Halloran, W., Capitol City, May fifteenth and sixteenth, mileage and one night's lodging, six hundred twelve dollars and forty cents, approved by the chairman's signature.

"Then you knew," Pelfrey said. "You knew where he was on Friday."

Halloran said he didn't know anything about an inspection.

"Mr. Chairman," Delia said. "There's something else you should see."

She had the appeals log. Four years of it. Three appeals that had been filed by county businesses and never reached the commission floor - a barbecue stand in 2021, a daycare kitchen in 2023, a produce market in 2024. Every one of them had been pulled from the agenda by a commissioner's office. Every pull slip had the same initials on it. The barbecue stand had closed. The daycare kitchen had moved to the next county. The produce market had sold.

And underneath the log, the department's monthly inspection reports. Rufus had made his quota every month for four years. Halloran had signed off on every one of them without a single note.

Pelfrey took his glasses off. "Mr. Tillery, you'll surrender your credentials to the clerk before you leave this room."

The vote was four to nothing. Halloran abstained, and then, twenty minutes later, stepped down off the dais and did not come back.

The commission suspended the health department's independent inspection authority pending a state audit. It voided the May sixteenth inspection and any citation arising from it. It referred the matter to the district attorney's office.

Rufus stood up. He walked to the display table by the door, picked up his Inspector of the Year award because it was his, and carried it out past the chairs. Nobody offered to keep it. Nobody said a word to him, and he didn't say one back. At the door he looked at Inez for about half a second. She looked back at him the way she looked at a pan she'd already decided to throw out, and he went through the door into the rain.

At 8:47 Inez walked two blocks to the square with Bay beside her.

She peeled the placard off the glass herself, working a thumbnail under the corner, and it came away with a long sticky sigh. Underneath it the glass was clean. Inside, the cooler hummed at thirty-eight degrees.

At nine o'clock Bledsoe's flatbed pulled up in front of the diner and the driver got out with a clipboard.

"Pickup," he said.

Inez handed him the voided order. He read it, looked at his phone, looked at the door, and got back in the truck.

At ten-thirty Doreen Sizemore called and said she'd heard, and that the bank could restructure the escrow, and that she was sorry about the question she'd asked on Saturday. Inez said it was all right, and meant it.

At ten-forty Trent Bagby from Marlow's called. Inez said no thank you, and he said he understood, and she believed him.

At ten fifty-five Bay flipped the sign to OPEN and propped the door, and the bell swung.

At eleven they came. Otis Priddy took his stool and ordered the meatloaf special. Lurlene Baker and her sister took the corner two-top and Lurlene cried a little and apologized and Inez told her, again, that there was nothing to apologize for. Both linemen came in on their lunch break and paid this time, and Inez let them.

The same menu. The same plates. The same handshake credit on the wall.

At four o'clock, when the room had emptied, Inez opened the register and lifted the tray and looked at the lid. The old card was still taped there, soft and yellow, in her handwriting from a decade she had to think about to place.

She cut a new one from the pad, wrote Voss - still no charge in blue ballpoint, and taped it beside the first.

Then she closed the register and went back to the flat top, and the bell over the door kept ringing.