The Roadside Diner Sells Alibis

How it begins

June Carter sold a breakfast to a man who had never eaten it.

He paid cash, asked for a receipt and left before the eggs touched the pan. She put the eggs back. There were worse transactions on a road the new bypass had taught people to avoid.

By Thursday, receipts outsold coffee.

Ray Mercer noticed because he delivered the coffee.

'You expecting a crowd?' he asked, lifting the unopened sack from last week.

'I'm expecting a miracle.'

'I'll bring a smaller sack.'

He looked at the till. Three tickets lay beside it, each for a full meal, each bearing the same careful correction to the time.

'The clock wrong?'

'The customers are particular.'

June wiped the counter. Beyond the window, rain made the old highway look recently abandoned, though people had been leaving it for years.

Ray picked up one receipt.

'I delivered to this man yesterday.'

'Good for you.'

'At eight. Sixty miles away.'

The receipt said seven fifty-eight. June set down the cloth.

He gave it back without making a speech. That was one reason she had tolerated him through three suppliers and a marriage neither of them discussed.

The first man had said he needed proof of travel expenses. The second wanted to show his employer he had stopped for food. June had believed the excuses in proportion to the money left in the saucer.

Now a police car passed without stopping. Both watched it until the taillights vanished.

'Tell me you kept copies,' Ray said.

She opened the drawer beneath the till. A paper roll lay there, recording every convenient breakfast.

At the bottom was a ticket she had not printed. Her own name, her own diner, a meal she had supposedly eaten at the exact time somebody broke into the pharmacy across town.

June looked at the eggs. For once, they were the least perishable thing in the room.