Chapter 4

Sunday, Inez drove out to Commissioner Dean Prewitt's house.

It sat on four acres off the old mill road, brick with white shutters, a riding mower under a tarp, a flagpole with the county flag and the state flag. She sat in the truck a full minute before she got out.

Prewitt came to the door in a golf shirt with his reading glasses pushed up on his head. He looked at her and his face did the thing faces do when they'd rather not.

"Inez. It's Sunday."

"I know what day it is."

He let her in. The kitchen smelled like coffee that had been sitting since morning. He didn't offer her any.

She laid the inspection report on the counter and told him the whole thing - the placard, the number, the missing handle, the eleven people. He listened with his arms crossed. When she finished, he pushed the paper back toward her with two fingers.

"I can't get in the middle of an inspection, Inez. That's not how it works."

"He never opened the cooler."

"Then file your appeal."

"I filed it Friday at one-twenty. It's at the bottom of a stack."

Prewitt looked at the window. "These things take time."

"Monday at eight, they take my permit. Monday at eight, a truck takes my equipment to the landfill. That's not time. That's a clock."

"I know it's hard."

"Dean." She said his name the way she'd said it for thirty years, from behind a counter, when he came in for the meatloaf special. "You know me."

He sighed and picked up his coffee and didn't drink it.

"Look," he said. "Rufus wasn't even in the county Thursday and Friday. He was up in the capital at the state conference. I signed his travel myself. He got back Friday night."

The kitchen clock ticked.

Inez said, "He was in my kitchen at ten past noon on Friday."

Prewitt set the cup down. "That's not possible."

"I watched him do it. So did ten other people."

"I don't know what to tell you, Inez."

"Then tell me who put that placard on my door."

He walked her out. On the step he put his hand on her shoulder, and she let him, because it was easier than not letting him.

"Think about Teague's offer," he said. "A lot of people would call that a blessing."

She drove home with both hands on the wheel and the radio off.

In the truck's cupholder, where she'd left it since Friday, was the receipt from the health department - two dollars and fifty cents for copies she never got. She'd been holding on to it like it meant something.

Now she knew what it meant.

He wasn't here Thursday. He wasn't here Friday.

Then who stood in her dining room at 12:10 and wrote down 9:40?