Marcus, however, did not close his notebook.

He looked at Trish with a patient, slightly narrowed gaze, and said that there was still one thing that bothered him, and that it was a matter of timing.

He wanted to know how long she had known that I had the generator and where exactly she had been standing when she found out.

Laura stayed on the line with Gerald and I could hear him thinking through the receiver.

He said he wanted to be sure of what he remembered because he was an old man in a busy shop and did not want to say anything he could not stand behind.

Then he said he did recall a woman in a long camel coat early that afternoon, well before I arrived.

She had asked about a 7500 W dual fuel unit, the same model I would eventually buy.

He had told her that it was the last one in the building, that it was sitting on a pallet by the loading door, and that the price was the price.

She had looked at the tag, said something sharp about price gouging, and told him she would think about it and be back.

She had not asked him to hold it, and she had not left a deposit.

He said he had offered to put her name on a list for the incoming shipment, and she had declined because the truck was not due until the end of the week.

She left, and about 90 minutes later, I came through the door and he sold the last unit to me at 4:41.

Melissa Grant, standing beside him, took the phone, and her voice was steady and crisp.

She said she had loaded the machine into Mr.

Cole’s truck herself and checked his straps twice.

And then she added something no one had asked.

While they were loading, she had noticed a black SUV parked at the edge of the lot with its engine running and a woman in the driver’s seat watching them work.

When my truck pulled out, the SUV pulled out right behind it.

I felt the whole evening rearrange itself.

The headlights three car lengths back on the county road.

The dark shape at the edge of the gravel lot.

The way Trish had stood at my garage door and known without asking which machine was in my garage and where it had come from.

She had not been mistaken about my house.

She had followed me to it.

She had sat in the dark and watched me pay for the thing she had refused to pay for.