Chapter 10

The clerk came back in eighteen minutes with a folder and set it in front of the chair.

Chair Sizemore opened it and read and passed it down. Voss read it. Prewitt did not ask for it.

"Dr. Voss," the chair said. "You want to summarize?"

"State conference, capital, Wednesday through Saturday. Travel authorization signed by Commissioner Prewitt." Voss turned a page. "Commercial air, round trip, county paid. Departure from the capital, Friday, ten thirty-five a.m. Return to the capital, Friday, four fifty p.m. Same day, both directions."

"Same day," the chair repeated.

"Nine forty a.m. Friday, Mr. Tillery was three hundred miles from this county." Voss closed the folder. "He could not have inspected a walk-in cooler in Marrow County. And he could not have written that report from this building, because the report was transmitted from a hotel wireless network at four forty-seven p.m. Friday afternoon."

Rufus said, "I want to explain-"

"Sit down," the chair said.

Inez stood up one more time. Her knees hurt and she stood anyway.

"Madam Chair, one thing. The man in the photograph. On the left. Half out of the frame. He's wearing a county commission badge."

She looked down the table.

"Commissioner Prewitt. You were in that ballroom. You signed his travel. You knew he was in the capital when I called you Saturday, and you knew it Sunday night when you sat at my counter and told me about the parking variance on my lot."

Prewitt's face went the color of an old nickel. "I signed a travel authorization. That's my job."

"Then tell them what else you did."

He didn't.

The chair let the silence sit for a while, which was worse for him than anything Inez could have said.

The vote took four minutes.

The placard at Kimbro's Kitchen was rescinded, the inspection report voided, the appeal granted. The health department's independent inspection authority was suspended pending state review, effective immediately, and every pending county inspection was transferred to the state office. And Commissioner Dean Prewitt was referred to the state ethics board and removed from the health and finance committees by a motion from the chair herself.

Rufus Tillery packed his desk that afternoon while a deputy stood in the hallway. When he came out he was carrying a cardboard box and, on top of it, the engraved award placard with his own name on it, because nobody in the building had offered to keep it.

He had to walk past the lobby.

Inez was standing there, by the empty hook where the framed photograph used to hang, the picture already taken down and leaning against the wall face-in.

He didn't say anything. Neither did she. He went out the door and down the steps and across the square, past the bank, past the monument.

At 10:30 the flatbed truck pulled away empty, the cooler still humming at thirty-eight. At 10:45 Hollis Bean came and took the red placard off the glass and handed it to Inez, and she folded it in half and put it in the trash can by the register.

At eleven o'clock, Kimbro's Kitchen opened. Same menu. Same prices. Ellis Ward ordered the meatloaf. Junior Pate ordered two pieces of pie and said the second one was for his wife.

That afternoon, Bay got out the register and a fresh index card.

"What do I write?"

Inez thought about it while she wiped the counter.

"Voss," she said. "Still no charge."