He Already Talked To Her

"I already told her what happened."

Ryan said it before I'd even set my bag down, phone pressed to his ear like he'd been rehearsing the sentence since sunrise. He hung up and gave me the look he saved for conversations he'd already decided to win.

"Told who?"

"Priya Anand. The investigator." He said her name easily, the way you say a name you've already used more than once. "She called the shop line an hour ago. Figured somebody should get ahead of it before this turns into a mess."

"You gave a statement. Without me."

"Somebody had to." He picked up a rag and wiped his hands on it, even though they were already clean. "I told her what I know. Which bay, which ticket, who closed it out at the register."

"Which is me."

"Which is you." He didn't blink. "I'm not saying you did anything, Dana. I'm saying the paperwork says what it says, and she's going to see it eventually whether I tell her or you do."

Mike came out from the back then, wiping grease off his forearm, and looked between the two of us, already bracing for a conversation he didn't want to referee. "What's going on?"

"Your brother told the insurance investigator I closed out Vic Delgado's ticket," I said, "before I even knew there was an investigation."

"I was trying to help," Ryan said, to Mike now instead of me. "Somebody's going to get named on this claim. Better it's handled straight, from the start, than dragged out."

"Handled straight would have been calling me first."

He didn't answer that. He just picked his phone back up and walked toward the bays, the conversation already over on his terms.

That evening my phone rang with a number I didn't recognize. Priya Anand introduced herself in three clipped sentences and asked if I could come in Thursday for a formal statement. I said yes before she'd finished the sentence, because saying no would have confirmed exactly what Ryan had already told her to expect from me.