Chapter 21: After the Room

The auditor set up the card terminal at the ballroom doors herself.

She put it on a high-top table with a white napkin under it, and she did not smile.

"Cash, card or phone," she said. "We take all three."

Carson stood in front of it with a hundred and forty phones pointed at him.

His mother had already left. His father held the back of a chair and stared at the floor.

"Twenty-two thousand four hundred," I said. "And nine thousand for the deposit."

"Vic." His voice was low and tight. "Not here."

"You picked here."

"I can't move that kind of money from my phone."

"You moved it from your phone on Friday, at 4:12 in the afternoon."

The vice president had stopped three feet away, with her coat over her arm.

She said nothing. She only waited.

Carson took out his phone.

His thumbs shook. It took him three tries to get past the screen.

Then the auditor's terminal chimed, and chimed again, and a receipt began to print.

She tore it off and handed it to me without a word.

Thirty-one thousand four hundred dollars. Approved.

"There," Carson said. "Are you happy?"

"No," I said. "But I'm paid."

Behind him, Cass was trying to slip through the side door with her parents and her little white box.

The bartender came out from behind the bar and stopped in front of her.

He held up a long paper tab.

"Odd one out buys the round," he said.

He nodded toward the crowded bar.

"Your fiancé's busy, ma'am, so it's you."

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