"That was decent of him."
"It was. It was entirely like him. His daddy was the same way." Another pause. "But I do need to say something to you as chairman, and I want you to hear it as chairman and not as Pinckney Prioleau's friend."
"Go ahead."
"We have three hundred animals out there. Every one of them that goes out the door on an adoption contract goes out with a promise from us that the dog is theirs. If we start pulling dogs back after the contract's signed, because somebody turns up late with a sad story—and I'm not saying it isn't true, I'm sure it's true, they're all true this fall—then every adopter in this county is going to wonder whether some family's going to knock on their door in January. And they'll stop coming. You understand what I'm saying."
"I understand it," Toomer said. "I've been saying it to myself since four o'clock."
"Then you know where the board stands."
"I know where the board stands," she said. "The dog hasn't been released, Lanier. There's a tattoo. And the mother hasn't even said she wants him."
"Well," said Fontaine, after a moment. "Well, then. That's a different kind of problem, isn't it." He sighed. "Do what you think is right, Marguerite. You always do anyway. Just do it in a way I can explain at the meeting."
At six-forty on Saturday morning she pulled the shelter van into the lot of the Palmetto Motor Lodge on Rivers Avenue.