"Did you believe Mrs. Bennett's race influenced how you assessed her?"
"Absolutely not. I treat everybody according to the same criteria."
Naomi showed him an excerpt from his priority-lead instructions that categorized visitors by clothing, vehicle, and what he called visible purchasing confidence. She asked whether the terms had been reviewed by Human Resources or legal counsel before he circulated them. They had not. When she presented a set of complaints from visitors of different backgrounds who reported similar insults, Croft became increasingly defensive.
"Those people were unhappy because I told them what they didn't want to hear," he insisted. "We have a prestigious brand to protect."
"A prestigious brand isn't a substitute for a consistent policy," Naomi answered. "Our question is whether your conduct violated the standards the company claims to apply to everyone."
Croft's attorney asked for a break. During the pause, Croft stood by the window overlooking the very showroom where he had spent nine months acting as if nothing could happen without his approval. Customers moved between the cars, staff answered questions, and the business operated without him. The discovery disturbed him more than he expected.
At noon, Anna Morales sat in the same office and told Naomi what she had heard. She offered her notes, identified the approximate sequence of the exchange, and distinguished the words she remembered precisely from those she could only paraphrase. She admitted to having raised her own voice after repeated insults, and she refused to pretend she had been perfectly composed.
"I was angry," Anna said. "Any ordinary person would have been. But I didn't invent the reason."
"Why didn't you leave when Mr. Croft ordered you to?" Naomi asked.
Anna thought for a moment. "Because Mrs. Bennett was beginning to believe the best way to keep the peace was to disappear. I've watched my own mother do that. She spent a lifetime trying to make difficult people comfortable, and they took her silence as an invitation to keep going. I didn't want this woman to leave thinking nobody had noticed."
Naomi listened without interrupting. Anna added that she wanted no reward, discount, or special acknowledgment. She was not there to become a hero in somebody else's story, she said, only to help establish what happened. The distinction mattered, and Naomi wrote it down.
Other visitors were contacted with their consent, including the Bentley customer who had walked away with his daughter. He admitted that he overheard Croft's comment about Christina not belonging in the gallery and that he did not intervene because he assumed management would handle it. Then he grew quiet and said he realized too late that the person making the cruel remarks was management.
The resulting report was more extensive than William expected. It confirmed the specific allegations from Saturday, identified several prior complaints that had been closed without contacting the visitors, and documented a pattern of inconsistent service decisions influenced by appearance and perceived status. It did not claim that every sales employee was biased or that Croft had deliberately discriminated against every person he dismissed. It established something enough to require action: a manager with authority over staff had repeatedly subjected customers to degrading remarks, and the company had failed to respond when those remarks were reported.