Loretta's Griddle occupied a low brick building beside a gravel parking lot. There were six pickups outside, a delivery van with one headlight patched in clear tape, and a battered sedan parked beneath a sycamore tree. A hand-painted sign promised HOT BREAKFAST ALL DAY, though one letter in BREAKFAST had faded enough to make the promise less certain.
Malcolm pulled into a space by the window. He checked his phone and sent Sutton the diner name, the address, and a quick message saying that he and Elijah were stopping for breakfast. The message showed delivered. A reply came back warning him to keep the visit brief and keep his phone on, and Malcolm typed a small salute before placing the device in his pocket.
"You got scolded by your security officer?" Elijah asked.
"No."
"You absolutely got scolded."
They walked toward the diner together, the bell over the door ringing above their heads. Malcolm was thinking about coffee, his mother's goodbye, and whether his brother would insist on splitting the bill after ordering twice as much food. He was not thinking about a body camera, a booking desk, or the fact that the simple decision to eat breakfast in an unfamiliar town could become the first defining test of his new office.
Loretta Gibbons had owned the diner for twenty-seven years, although she often said the diner had owned her for most of them. Her husband, Ray, had bought the property when it was still an old filling station with a lunch counter attached, and the two of them had spent a summer removing oil-stained floorboards and installing booths purchased from a restaurant in Roanoke. Ray had died nine years earlier, leaving her a small life insurance payment, a pile of unpaid invoices, and a building filled with memories she could neither afford to lose nor bear to sell.
At sixty-six, Loretta still arrived before five each morning to switch on the grill and count the overnight delivery boxes. Her hair had turned almost entirely white, but she kept it tied back in the same loose knot she had worn in her wedding photograph. She knew which truckers wanted their eggs over easy, which retirees needed decaf, and which farmers would order the full breakfast without bothering to look at a menu.
The diner had survived a highway bypass, two recessions, and a kitchen fire that destroyed the old grease hood. It survived because Loretta paid bills in the order they threatened to become emergencies and because people in Barlow had grown accustomed to knowing a familiar face would be there when the screen door opened. She was proud of the place, though not proud of everything that happened inside it.