Chapter 1

At 12:10 on a Friday, with eleven people eating, Rufus Tillery pressed a red CLOSED placard against the door of Kimbro's Kitchen and stepped back to look at it.

Inez Kimbro had a spatula in her right hand and a chicken breast half-turned on the flat top. She set the spatula down. She wiped her hands on her apron, slow, the way she did everything.

"Mr. Tillery."

"Mrs. Kimbro." He held the clipboard against his chest like a hymnal. County health polo. Khakis. Boots polished to a shine. Lanyard with his own picture on it. "Your walk-in cooler's been holding at fifty-eight degrees since this morning. That's temperature abuse."

The dining room went quiet the way a small room goes quiet - not silence, but a hundred small sounds stopping at once. Ellis Ward set his tea glass down without drinking. Junior Pate stopped chewing with his mouth open.

"That door's been propped all morning while we carried chicken in," Inez said. "Bay had it open twenty minutes, maybe. Give it ten and read it again."

Rufus wrote on the clipboard. Didn't look up.

"Mr. Tillery. I'm asking you to open that cooler door and put your own eyes on it."

"I've got what I need."

He peeled the backing off the placard. It stuck to the glass with a sound like tape on skin. He pressed the corners flat with two fingers.

"You're closed until this is corrected. Monday, eight a.m. Appeal goes to the department."

"You never opened my cooler."

"I documented what I documented."

The bell over the door jingled when he left. Cheerful. Stupid. Through the window she watched him cross the square toward the annex, unhurried, nodding to a man on the courthouse steps.

Bay came out from behind the register with her phone already up. "Grandma. He didn't open it. I watched him the whole time. He didn't even look at it."

"I know."

"Everybody in here saw."

"I know, baby."

Inez untied her apron and folded it. Forty-one years she'd cooked on this square. Started at nineteen under her aunt Faye, bought the place with Curtis in '86, buried him in '09, kept the lights on through two recessions and one bad roof and a summer the air conditioner quit on the Fourth of July.

She retied the apron, reached up, and snugged the red bandana down over her gray hair, the way she did before every hard thing.

On the counter by the register sat the bank notice about back taxes. In the drawer under it sat the third letter from Kettle Creek Markets, a number with a comma in it, for the corner lot Curtis left her.

She turned the placard over. Under the seal, in the box marked TIME OF INSPECTION, someone had typed 9:40 A.M.

Bay leaned in and read it upside down. Her face changed.

"Grandma. Nobody from the health department came in here at 9:40. I was on that register since six o'clock. Nobody came in here until him."