Chapter 4

Wade recovered before anyone else did. That was his gift.

"Whoever that was," he said, loud enough for the room, "that's a leasing office. That's not this store. That doesn't change a delivery."

He walked toward the back hallway and took Sonia with him - not by the arm, just by saying her name and jerking his chin. The two of them stood behind the glass partition by the tower offices, and though the room couldn't hear the words, the room could see them. Wade's hands moving. Sonia's shoulders rising toward her ears. Once she said something, and he pointed at the parking lot, at her car, then at the door.

She came back out alone with her eyes wet and her face set.

"I'm off the delivery roster," she said quietly, to no one. Then, to Celeste: "He's writing me up. Insubordination, for contradicting him in front of customers."

Curtis had found something urgent to do with a brochure.

Celeste felt it land - the true weight of the last twenty minutes. Not the car. Not the insult. This. A twenty-nine-year-old with her whole career in front of her, standing at a desk with wet eyes because a woman in a raincoat had asked for the key she'd paid for.

"I'm sorry," Celeste said. "That's my fault."

"It's not." Sonia wiped her face with the back of her wrist, quick, angry at herself for doing it. "He's done it before. He took a delivery off a man in January. Same thing, different reason." She swallowed. "That's why I keep my own copy."

She reached under the clipboard, where a folded page had been taped flat against the back, and worked it loose. A printout - the delivery log, time-stamped, showing the reservation received under MARCHER COMMERCIAL TRUST, the paid-in-full line cleared Monday at 9:41 a.m., and beneath it a signature block, initialed twice.

Celeste read it twice.

"That's his handwriting."

"WB." Sonia nodded. "He signs off on paid-in-full before a vehicle goes to detail. It's procedure. He signed this Monday morning."

"He told me management never signed."

"He did sign. He just doesn't want it signed now."

Celeste looked at the girl - young, straight-backed, terrified, still handing over the one page that could cost her the job she'd been written up for ten minutes ago. She folded it carefully along its old creases and slid it into her own folder.

"I'll need you to say that again later," Celeste said. "To Mr. Pruitt."

"Mr. Pruitt's not in today."

"He will be."

The glass door opened behind them and cold air came in with the rain. Emmett Doyle, gray uniform, cap beaded with water, walked toward the desk with a wheel boot hanging from his right hand.

He stopped in front of Celeste and did not look at the boot. He looked at her face a moment longer than the question required - the way a man looks at a face he has seen somewhere.

"Mr. Banner wants that van moved," he said. "Ma'am, before I touch it, I need to see some ID."