"Is something wrong?"
"No. It's going through." She did not look up. "I have to tell you something, Mr. Cole, and I want you to listen to it like you listened to the buyer's order."
"All right."
"You remember in July when I told you I couldn't sell any cars for a while. That I had a problem with the state."
"I remember."
"And I offered you your money back. All of it. And you said keep it."
"I remember that too."
"The problem was the temporary permits. These." She turned the tablet around so he could see it: a state web page, a form with his name in it, the VIN, the van's description, her dealer number, and a button that said ISSUE TOP. "Every dealer in Georgia prints these off the state system for the people who buy cars. It's how you drive a car home before the plate comes. Two years ago, I had a business partner. My ex-husband's cousin. He handled the back office. He was printing these and selling them to people who never bought a car from us. On the internet. To anybody. Three hundred dollars a permit. Almost two thousand of them before I knew."
Alton did not say anything.
"When I found out, I went to the state myself. He's been charged. I'm not. But the state shut off my permits in July while they reviewed my license, and they turned them back on two weeks ago, and I have a hearing before the board on the twentieth to see if I keep my license at all. I'm telling you because this one" — she touched the button with the pad of her finger, not pressing it — "is the first permit I've printed since they turned it back on. It's going to have my dealer number on it. And there are people, police mostly, who know my dealer number because of what my partner did, and some of them think I'm the same as him. If anybody stops you in the next forty-five days and gives you trouble about this paper, you call me. Here." She took a business card out of a holder and wrote a number on the back of it. "That's my cell. Day or night. And you show them the bill of sale and the title copy. Okay?"
"Okay."