Chapter 9

Ned took the notebook out of his coat pocket. It was small, gray, and soft at the corners, and he opened it flat on the cashmere counter, beside the scarf and the gloves and the candle and the receipt timed 8:47 p.m.

"Seven fifty-eight," he said. "Main floor. A cardholder named Alma Reyes, seventy-one years old, asked for the customer elevator. She was directed to the freight elevator at the back of the store, past the stock doors. She made the trip. I have her name because I introduced myself afterward, as a fellow shopper, and asked if she was all right."

The woman in emerald velvet had put down her champagne.

"Eight twelve," Ned said. "Watch salon. A young father in a sweatshirt was told the salon was by appointment only. It isn't. He was walked to the door by a seasonal associate who was told to walk him to the door."

"Eight thirty-one," he said. "A stock associate, Marcus Dell, nineteen, was corrected on the sales floor for a mispriced candle display, twice, in front of customers."

"Eight forty-nine," he said, and looked up. "A shopper who had paid for three items at register four was accused of theft in front of forty cardholders, and the receipt was folded in half without being read."

Reggie's voice, quiet: "That's four lines in my notebook this month. Three before tonight, and that one."

"And three in mine, before it," Ned said. "Four in one evening. Four in one month."

He turned a page.

"The parent company has received forty-three complaints about this floor in fourteen months," he said. "Thirty-eight of them were routed through the regional office and closed without contact with the customer. Five of them were routed to my employer, the Ardenne Group corporate ethics office, because the complainants wrote directly to the top. That's why I'm here. That's why tonight was chosen."

"Why tonight," Nadia said.

"Because the regional team was on the floor," Ned said. "Pressure shows behavior. It isn't a trick. It's just the only way to see what a person does when they think nobody above them is watching, and everybody beside them is."

Sloane found her voice. It came out thin and quick.

"This is a setup. This is a setup, and Reggie was in on it - Reggie, you've been writing about me for a month, you-"

"Ms. Ashford," Nadia said.

"I have six years on this floor. I built this floor. Six years, and you're going to take the word of a-"

"Sloane." Nadia's voice cut clean. "Your desk drawer."

Sloane stopped.

"There's a coaching notice in it," Nadia said. "From corporate. It requires acknowledgment. When was it sent?"

No answer.

"Reggie," Nadia said, without turning. "Would you go up and get it."

He was back in ninety seconds with a long white envelope, and the flap was still sealed, and he held it out so everyone close enough could see. Nine days old. Unopened.

Sloane looked at the envelope, and then she did the one thing Ned had not expected. She looked at him - directly, for the first time all evening, at his face and not at his clothes - and asked, in a completely different voice, "How many of them were mine?"

"All of them," Ned said. "Every complaint named you."

Nadia held out her hand. "Your badge, please."

Sloane gave it to her at 8:55 p.m. She didn't argue. That was the part Ned would remember: not the shouting, but the last ninety seconds, which were silent.

Nadia turned the badge over once in her fingers, front to back, and then looked at Ned.

"How many more names are in that report?" she asked.