Chapter 6

Celeste closed the folder.

She didn't wait for Grady Pruitt to come through the door. She walked out - past the coffee bar, past the boy and girl standing awkwardly beside a car they would not be buying, past Curtis with his brochure, and past Wade, who said her name twice, sharply, like a man calling after a dog that has stopped obeying.

The rain had thinned to a fine cold mist. She crossed the wet asphalt to the rusted van, unlocked it with the antique key on her brass ring, and climbed in behind the wheel. The seat was damp. The heater took its time.

Pruitt's car pulled into the visitor row, headlights still on, and he got out without an umbrella - a heavy man in a good coat, already talking on his phone. Wade met him at the door.

Celeste rolled the window down.

"That van isn't in your way, Mr. Banner," she said. "It's parked on my pavement."

Both men stopped.

Pruitt turned, saw her face in the van window, and Celeste watched the exact moment the name caught up with him. She had seen it before, at the lease signing two years back, when he had shaken her hand and told her she'd bought the best corner in Broughton County. He crossed the lot in the rain and stood at her window with water running off his forehead.

"Ms. Marlow," he said. "Tell me what happened."

"Your manager took a paid contract off my delivery desk, crossed my name out of your sales journal, wrote his own commission code beside it, put another couple in my vehicle, and called security to boot my pantry van." She said it flat, without heat, the way she'd once read a class list on the first day of school. "Then he told me to come back tomorrow and he'd find me a fair number on something I could afford."

Pruitt closed his eyes for one second.

"Give me ten minutes," he said.

It took twenty.

She sat in the van with the heat on and watched through the misted windshield. Pruitt went in. Doyle came out and, without being asked, picked the boot up off the ground where he had left it and carried it back to the security closet. Inside the showroom, through the glass, she could see the shape of it: Pruitt with the journal open, Sonia holding her clipboard up like a witness, Wade talking fast with his hands, then slower, then not at all. Twice Pruitt put his phone to his ear and walked toward the service bay door, jaw working, and twice he came back.

At 6:10, Wade Banner walked out through the service bay with Doyle beside him and a cardboard box of desk things in his arms. He did not look at the van.

Pruitt came back to her window, his coat dark with rain.

"Suspended pending review, effective tonight," he said. "His system access is already dead. The falsified delivery record goes to the state dealer licensing office, and my attorney gets a copy of that journal page by courier tonight. The Hendersons have been told the vehicle is sold. Sonia's write-up is void, and she runs the delivery desk starting Monday." He paused. "The lease is yours to enforce. I'd rather you didn't."

"I'd rather I didn't either," Celeste said. "So it depends on how the next one treats a woman in a raincoat."

"Understood."

"Then we'll let it stand."

She took delivery at 6:40. Sonia brought her the key on the black felt tray, both hands steady, and made her sit through the whole walkthrough even though Celeste had read the manual twice. The boy and the girl came over to apologize, and Celeste told them it wasn't their fault, and meant it.

She hung the antique van key on the mirror of the silver SUV, where the brass ring clicked softly against the glass.

Then she drove out past the guest bay, where the pantry van sat exactly where she'd left it - nobody's trash, nobody's problem - and turned north toward the church lot where the Thursday run loaded.

The rain had stopped. The pavement was black and shining, and every inch of it, as far as the eye could see, belonged to her.