Chapter 8

At six o'clock Monday morning, a flatbed truck with EQUIPMENT RECOVERY painted on the door pulled up in front of Kimbro's Kitchen.

Inez was already inside, in her apron, with the lights on.

The driver came to the door with a clipboard and a work order. He looked at the placard. He looked at her.

"I'm supposed to take the walk-in and the flat top."

"You're supposed to." She held the door. "But if you take them before eight, you're taking them before the deadline. Sit down. I'll make you a biscuit."

He sat down. She made him two.

At 8:05, the health department's pickup rolled past the window, slowed, and kept going.

At 8:40, Bay printed the photograph on the good paper, four copies, and Inez put them in a folder with the refrigeration log and Hollis Bean's letterhead statement and the index card - which she did not put in the folder. She put that in her apron pocket, against her hip.

The commission room was upstairs in the annex, past the tax office, past the room with the voting machines, up a flight of stairs that smelled like old paper. Wooden pews. A folding table up front. A pull-down screen on the wall that nobody had used in a year.

Chair Nadine Sizemore called the meeting to order at nine.

Rufus Tillery was sworn first. He stood at the table in his polo and his lanyard and raised his right hand and swore to tell the truth.

"Mr. Tillery," the chair said. "This is an appeal of a placard posted Friday at Kimbro's Kitchen. You performed the inspection. Tell us."

"I was in the establishment Friday morning," Rufus said. "Time in, nine forty. The walk-in cooler was holding at fifty-eight degrees. That's a hazard. I posted the placard at twelve-oh-five and I left."

"You opened the cooler door?"

"I observed the reading."

"You opened the door?"

"I didn't need to. The reading was right there."

Inez stood up. She had to hold the edge of the pew to do it. Her knees were bad and her hands were steady, and the red bandana was tied down tight.

"Madam Chair," she said. "I'd like the clerk to put something on the screen."

Prewitt, from his seat at the end of the table, said, "I don't know that we need-"

"Let her," the chair said.

The clerk pulled the screen down. Bay handed up the folder. The projector whirred.

And there it was, four feet wide. Rufus Tillery in a suit, shaking hands with the state director. Round tables. A banner that read ANNUAL AWARDS BREAKFAST. A placard that read INSPECTOR OF THE YEAR. A date stamp in the corner.

Friday. The same Friday.

The room did not gasp. Rooms like that don't. What it did was turn - every head in the wooden pews swinging from the screen to the man standing at the table, one motion, like a field of sunflowers.

Rufus looked at the screen. He looked at the room. His mouth came open and nothing came out of it.

The clerk set the appeal file down on the desk.