Chapter 7

The commission annex was a long room with wood paneling, a row of folding tables up front, and a coffee urn in the back that had been sitting since four. It smelled like coffee and floor wax and rain, because a storm was coming and the windows had been shut.

Ora Dell sat in the second row in her navy skirt and white blouse with the cameo pin on the collar, her old leather purse on her lap with the Barlow card inside, her reading glasses hanging on the beaded chain around her neck.

Lurlene sat behind her. Trent Mabry came in at six-oh-five and stood along the back wall with his cap in his hands. Wanda Fray sat down in the third row, which nobody expected.

Up front: Chairman Hoyt Pruitt, Commissioner Ruth Ann Deel, and three others, with Inez Ratliff at the clerk's table and the county attorney at the end.

Marlon Teague wore a deacon's suit. He had the scanner on the podium table in front of him, and he had a folder.

And in the right-hand aisle a deputy stood holding a leash, and on the end of the leash was a brown hound with his ribs showing and his tail tucked, and the moment Bud saw Ora Dell he came up off his front feet and the deputy had to brace.

The agenda ran twenty minutes. Then Chairman Pruitt said, "Appeal of disposition. Sizemore."

Marlon went first, and he was smooth. He held up the intake page. He read Dalton Fray's statement aloud. He held up the public notice. He said the animal had been a stray, that the required hold had been observed, that the animal had been humanely euthanized Tuesday morning, and that he was sorry for the family's grief, but the county could not make exceptions.

"Now," he said. "Mrs. Sizemore has asked that we run the shelter's scanner, and I've brought it, because I have nothing to hide. I'll tell you right now that this unit has a battery issue and has been unreliable for a month."

Ora Dell stood up.

"May I run it myself?"

Chairman Pruitt looked at the county attorney, who shrugged.

"Go ahead," Pruitt said.

The deputy brought the dog up the aisle. Bud was shaking, and his nails clicked on the linoleum, and he never once looked at the deputy. He looked at Ora Dell.

She knelt down, because she wasn't going to stand over him, and she ran the wand down his back the way she'd seen it done twelve years ago, along the shoulder blades, slow. The room was so quiet she could hear the coffee urn ticking.

Beep.

The screen came up green in the dim room, and Ora Dell turned it so the commissioners could read it, and Inez Ratliff read it out loud, because she was the one with the good eyes.

"SIZEMORE, ORA DELL. Implanted 06/14/2011. Barlow Animal Clinic."

Marlon was already talking. "That's an equipment error. That unit's been giving false reads for a month, I told you-"

"Mr. Mabry," Chairman Pruitt said. "You asked to speak."

Trent Mabry came down the aisle with his cap in both hands. He said he'd bought the dog Tuesday, eleven-forty in the morning, seventy-five dollars cash off the front counter, from the director personally. He said he'd asked for a scan and been told the battery was dead. He said he'd been given no receipt and told one would be written when he picked the dog up. He said he'd gone back Wednesday because the dog wouldn't eat.

"You're the one who spoke up at my counter," Ora Dell said.

"Yes, ma'am."

Then Wanda Fray stood up and held out her phone, and Inez Ratliff walked it up to the commissioners, and on the screen was Dalton Fray in a rented tuxedo with his sister on his arm, in Ridgely, at two in the afternoon on Monday.

The county attorney leaned over and said something to the chairman.

Marlon said, "That's a different Monday."

It was Ruth Ann Deel who said, "Marlon, sit down."

Ora Dell put the Barlow implant record on the clerk's table. She put Lurlene's photocopy of the whited-out page on top of it, and Lurlene's timecard on top of that, and Lurlene stood up in the back and said, out loud, in front of everybody, that the initials on that page were not hers.

Then Marlon did the thing that ended him, and he did it because he was a man who had never once in twelve years stood in a room where the numbers were not his.

"All of this," he said, "over a dog. And the same woman stands up here and wants us to believe she cares about this shelter, when this shelter runs on donations from people who actually-"

"Mr. Chairman."

It was Curtis Bane, standing at the end of the table with the green binder open, and he didn't raise his voice at all.

"I have a question about the Angel Fund."

The room went still. Marlon turned his head.

"The shelter's donation account," Curtis said. "The one that pays for vaccinations and spay and neuter. It's been running a long time. My review shows the ledger doesn't reconcile with the bank, and it hasn't for years." He looked at the page. "There's one donor of record who's been giving to that fund for eleven years. The deposits are listed under initials only. R.D.S."

Ora Dell stood up.

"That's me," she said. "Ora Dell Sizemore."

Nobody moved.

"My husband was Robert Dell Sizemore. Everybody called him Earl. I've mailed that fund a money order every month since the fall of 2011, from the post office in Ridgely, because I didn't want anybody in this county knowing my business, and because I didn't want a thank-you." She looked at Marlon Teague. "Eleven years. And I never once set foot in your office to ask what you did with it."

Marlon said, "That's a coincidence."

"Is it," Curtis Bane said, "because there are deposits in that ledger that never hit the bank. I can show you eleven of them."

The commission took the shelter's accounts off Marlon Teague's desk that night. They voted four to one to suspend him pending a hearing, and they took his county keys and his fuel card, and the county attorney said the animal would stay at the shelter as evidence in an open matter until the suspension was finalized.

Marlon Teague walked out through the side door while people were still talking. He was still employed. He still had his title. His truck was still in the lot.

Ora Dell drove home alone with an empty leash on the seat beside her.

At ten-twenty she pulled the shoebox out from under the sink and set it on the kitchen table to count the stubs for the auditor, the way you count anything that matters - in order, out loud.

She got to the bottom.

There was one stub in there she had never mailed.

Eleven thousand dollars. Dated the third week of September, the week Earl died.

She turned it over.