…and I waited, polite as you please, until the little red light on the Channel 6 camera came on and the owner was mid-sentence about how his was a “family business built on trust.”
Then I stepped into the shot and held up my piece of paper.
“Since you’re a trust man,” I said, sweet as tea, “maybe you can explain to these folks why the ‘certified’ car you sold a widow has a Louisiana flood-salvage title — right here — that somebody washed clean through three states before it landed on your lot. I brought the original. My granddaughter’s husband pulled it at the county.”
The cowboy hat didn’t have one word ready.
Because here’s what those men never counted on. Washing a salvage title to sell a totaled car as certified isn’t sharp business in Texas — it’s a crime. And that same paper my granddaughter’s husband found on my car, he found on nine others off that lot. He’d already walked it over to the Texas DMV enforcement people and the district attorney a full week before the tent sale.
They refunded every dollar within the month — and then some, because Texas has a deceptive-trade law that lets a jury award triple when a business lies on purpose. The state pulled the lot’s dealer license. Last I heard, the owner’s “family values” were being discussed at the courthouse.
The salesman had called me “young lady” fourteen times and told me my husband should have taught me to read.
Harold did teach me to read. That’s exactly the trouble they got into.
They told a grieving widow her husband should have taught her the fine print — never guessing she’d go home and read the one page in the state of Texas that could take their whole crooked lot down.