They went out through the bell and into the night. The snow had started an hour before, when she'd been standing over the open trunk of the Volkswagen, and now it was coming down in earnest, big wet flakes that slanted gold through the light of the lot's single lamp. The parking lot was nearly empty. Her Beetle sat in the corner like a frightened green beetle. A pickup truck — a blue Ford, rust on the wheel wells, a ladder rack across the bed — was parked nearer the door. And under the lamp, beside a long two-toned Oldsmobile the color of cream and plums, the old woman in the lavender coat was standing with the turkey in her arms and her car keys in her teeth, trying to work the door lock with one gloved hand.
She did not look like a thief. She looked like somebody's grandmother, which is what she almost certainly was. She looked like a woman who had been doing things on her own for a long time.
"Ma'am," the firefighter called, crossing the lot with his long stride. "Ma'am, let me get that for you."
The old woman took the keys out of her mouth. She looked at him, and then past him at Nora, with a pair of very clear, very blue eyes that had absolutely no apology in them whatsoever.
"Calvin Dombrowski," she said. "I know exactly what you're doing here. Leo Ruddock sent you."
The firefighter stopped short. Nora, coming up behind him, nearly walked into his back.
"Mrs. Pruitt," he said. His voice had changed completely. All the ease had gone out of it, and something like a schoolboy's guilt had come in. "I didn't — I didn't recognize you in the hat."
"I've worn this hat for eleven years."