"He always said the numbers justified the method," Evan told Naomi. "I believed him at first because his numbers really were high. But I started noticing that the people he turned away didn't show up anywhere. You can't measure the sales you never give yourself a chance to make."
Peter Sloan acknowledged that he had witnessed several uncomfortable exchanges and had often chosen to smooth them over privately. "I thought if I apologized after Richard left, it would keep a situation from escalating," he said. "I never considered how insulting that must have felt, having to wait for the person causing the problem to go away before someone could treat you normally."
Darius Reed's interview was shorter. He described the sequence of Saturday's confrontation, his refusal to touch the customers, and Croft's order to remove them. Naomi asked whether he had encountered similar requests.
"Twice before," Darius said. "One man was upset about a service bill, and another was a woman who wanted to ask for the general manager. Neither was threatening anyone. I persuaded them to step outside because it felt safer than having the manager shout until the situation got worse."
"Why didn't you report it?"
"I did. Verbally. To operations. The answer was that Richard knew our clientele and I should trust his judgment. After that I figured my job was just to make sure nobody got hurt."
Naomi wrote down the exact words. She asked for no grand statement about loyalty, no expression of gratitude for his honesty, only dates and the names of people who had heard him report his concerns. Darius left the interview surprised to discover that being taken seriously could be a quiet and unremarkable experience.
Croft arrived later that morning with an attorney he had retained himself. He wore the same gray suit as Saturday, but his shirt collar was slightly crooked, and his eyes carried the red edges of a man who had slept poorly. He expected to be confronted about insulting an important shareholder's grandmother. The investigator instead asked him about company training, screening procedures, customer inquiries, and employee complaints over the entire nine months of his management.
"What standard did you use to determine whether someone was a qualified prospective buyer?" Naomi asked.
"Experience. I've spent eleven years selling luxury cars. You learn to read the room."
"Did you require visitors to demonstrate financial capacity before you discussed publicly listed vehicles?"
"Not always. Depends on the situation."
"What made Mrs. Bennett's situation different?"
Croft hesitated. "She wasn't dressed like a typical buyer. She arrived in an older vehicle, and her questions suggested she didn't understand the market."
Naomi read back the questions Christina had actually asked, one by one. Did the listed price include inspection? Was an independent inspection permitted? Could delivery be scheduled for a birthday? Were service records available? Croft agreed those were legitimate questions, then became frustrated when Naomi asked why he had refused to answer any of them.
"Because I believed it would lead nowhere," he said finally. "You can't run a profitable showroom by treating every visitor as a real prospect."