Coulter called Gavin Ross the same afternoon the accusation reached him, his voice tighter than Adeline had heard it since the day the bank's letter first arrived. Gavin arrived within the hour, still in his workclo, and listened carefully as Coulter explained what little he knew, that a formal complaint had been filed, alleging years of underreported income, and that a state inspector intended to visit within the week to review every record the shop possessed. Gavins advice was simple and direct. Cooperate fully, hide nothing, and let the numbers speak for themselves, since an honest business with clean records had far less to fear from scrutiny than a dishonest one hoping to avoid it. Adeline, listening from the doorway, felt a strange calm settle over her, the same calm she remembered feeling years earlier the night before she filed her original report.
The quiet certainty of someone who had for once already done the difficult work in advance. An inspector arrived unannounced, demanding records going back half a decade. Records that, thanks to months of Adeline's careful organization, existed in complete and accurate form for the first time in the shop's history. She spent three days walking the inspector through every ledger, every receipt, every reconciled bank statement, laying out a paper trail so thorough that the inspector remarked almost admiringly that she had never seen a small shops books kept this cleanly. Gavin Ross, the lawyer who had helped Coulter years earlier with a minor dispute over a lease, arrived on the second day to sit in on the remaining sessions.
His presence lending a formality that seemed to unsettle whoever had filed the complaint in the first place. By the third day, the discrepancy at the center of the complaint revealed itself not as evidence of fraud, but as a clumsy fabrication traceable to a shell account connected. Through several careful layers back to one of Donovan's companies, Adeline found the connection herself, tracing a routing number through public filings until it led unmistakably to an account Donovan's chain had used for an unrelated transaction two years earlier. A mistake careless enough to suggest arrogance rather than caution. The inspector's findings did more than clear the shop.
They opened a formal investigation into Donovan's business practices, one that would eventually cost him two of his four locations and considerably more of his reputation than he had ever cost Coulter. His name appearing in the regional paper under a headline, far less flattering than any he had grown used to. Word of the vindication spread through town quickly, the way most things did, and customers who had drifted away over the winter began returning, some out of loyalty restored, others simply curious to see the shop that had outlasted a man twice its size. Business steadied, then grew faster than either Coulter or Adeline had dared to hope. It was around that time that Coulter did something Adeline never expected.