The owner of the corner pharmacy had promised to hold it until tomorrow, not next week.
Losing her job had consequences that did not wait for moral lessons.
“You need to leave,” Victor told Thomas.
Thomas folded his phone and put it back inside his coat.
“I intend to, once the situation is clarified.”
“There’s nothing to clarify.”
“Then show me the purchase agreement you signed with Leon Armitage.”
At that name, the chef in the open kitchen looked up.
Claire knew Leon as the man whose photograph appeared on the first page of the employee handbook.
The booklet called him the founder of the Waverly Room and said he had retired to Delaware.
Victor had told new hires that Leon had sold the place to him years ago.
Thomas seemed to know a different version.
Victor put the plate down hard enough to crack its rim.
“I am not discussing business with a stranger in dirty clothes.”
“You were willing to discuss an employee’s dismissal in front of thirty people,” Thomas said.
“You can answer one question in front of them.”
A woman at the window table raised her phone, but Thomas asked her to put it away.
He did not ask anyone to believe him because he had made a phone call.
He asked the hostess for a glass of water and calmly drew a folded paper from the inside pocket of his coat.
The document carried an old-fashioned embossed seal.
Its edges had been softened by handling.
“My name is Thomas Bell,” he said.
“I’m an attorney acting for a family trust that was asked to finance a proposed transfer of this restaurant.
The closing is scheduled for four o’clock.
My client requested an independent visit before releasing the funds.”
Victor’s face took on a confident color again.
“An attorney can’t show up disguised and bait my staff.”
“I didn’t disguise myself,” Thomas replied.
“This is my coat.
I walked here from the bus station after a delayed appointment, and I hadn’t eaten since morning.
Your waitress saw I was hungry.
You saw an opportunity to make an example of her.”
The distinction mattered.
Claire looked at his boots, which had been repaired in two places.
She had assumed he was sleeping outside because his clothes were worn.
Now she realized that she knew almost nothing about him, just as Victor knew almost nothing about the papers he was demanding she obey.
“You should go,” she told Thomas softly.
“I don’t want you in trouble because of me.”
“You didn’t put me in trouble,” he answered.
“You gave a hungry man supper.”
The front door opened, admitting a cold ribbon of afternoon air and a woman in a slate-gray coat.
