Chapter 6

Lurlene sat in the folding chair by the shampoo sink with the casserole dish on her knees like a shield.

"I wasn't on shift Monday," she said. "I was at my sister's in Corinth. I put that on my time sheet and Marlon changed the sheet."

"You kept the sheet?"

"I kept a copy of it in my purse." Lurlene's hands were shaking on the dish. "And I wasn't here March fourth either, if it comes to that. Kaylee Dunn wasn't here March fourth. Kaylee works Tuesdays and Thursdays at the Save-Rite in Marlow. Marlon typed that statement himself and had her sign it without reading it, and she came to me crying about it Wednesday."

Ora Dell sat down across from her. "Why are you telling me this now?"

"Because he's going to put it in my lap." Lurlene looked up. "The book's mine. My name's on the intake pages. If it comes out that entry's wrong, he's going to say I wrote it, and I need the job, Miss Ora Dell. I'm sixty and I've got a car payment." Her mouth worked. "But I watched him walk that dog out the back door Tuesday morning with a twenty in his hand. I've been sick about it since."

"Will you say that out loud?"

"I'll say it in that room Monday night if you ask me to." Lurlene set the dish on the floor. "But there's something else, and this is the part you need."

She leaned forward.

"He can call the scanner broken all day long. It ain't broken. He ran it on a cat in August and it beeped and printed the whole thing." She tapped the arm of the chair. "He keeps it taped up so nobody else touches it. He's the only one in that building who's ever run that machine."

Ora Dell's heart was going hard in her chest.

"Monday night," Lurlene said, "the commission does the shelter's annual review. He's got to hand them the fund numbers and the auditor's been sitting in that office all week with a ledger." She stood up. "You ask the clerk to run that scanner in front of everybody. He can't say no in that room with twenty people watching. He'd have to admit he lied about the machine, or he'd have to run it."

"And if it don't beep?"

"It'll beep," Lurlene said. "That dog's got your husband's chip in him. Raymond paid cash money for that. I remember him telling me about it in the feed store."

She went out the kitchen door into the dark without saying goodbye.

Ora Dell sat at the table a long time. Then she got the shoebox down again, and this time she didn't look for a surrender paper.

She counted.