“You can speak again once everyone has had a chance to express their opinions,” Derrick told her. “Just go back to the end of the line.”

Fred Winters, the barber, lightly touched her shoulder. “Don’t worry. I got this.”

Trixie stepped aside and Fred moved into her place. “Fred Winters, owner of The Hair Force. I also want to know how this was approved. Aren’t businesses supposed to provide adequate parking? The town had to do a traffic impact report when I wanted to expand my shop from three chairs to five. And I was turned down because there supposedly wasn’t enough available parking, even though I wasn’t bringing in any new customers, I was just hiring an extra barber so we could cut the customers we do have faster. How did these guys skate by? Was there a report done? Because, if so, I want to see it.”

Nods of agreement, expressions of “Yeah!”

“Time,” Lacy said.

Derrick sat there listening as speaker after speaker expressed the same concern: how had the bank been granted a business license so quickly, without a public hearing or community input? The problem was, neither he nor anyone else on the council could explain why or how such a thing had occurred. The Planning Commission had recommended approval of the new business, as it often did. The council had rubberstamped the recommendation of the Planning Commission, as it often did.

Only…

The council’s approval had been given in a closed special session, a rare move that quite possibly wasn’t legal. And the Planning Commission had made its determination in an unannounced meeting without hearing from anyone other than the applicant, which was definitely illegal.

And, astonishingly, it had all happened only last week.

Derrick should have known at the time that this wasn’t proper, but for some reason neither he nor anyone else involved noticed anything inappropriate in their actions, and none of them had made any effort to follow the correct and usual procedures.

It was coming back to haunt them now. The established businesses in town were outraged by what they considered to be favoritism shown to The First People’s Bank, and he had to admit that they had a point. No other enterprise or individual, to his knowledge, had had such an easy time of it.