“Amazing!” Rose looked at her reflection and almost didn’t recognize herself. Her long dark hair was gone, dyed a warm red and cut into feathered layers that skimmed her ears. Annie had reshaped her eyebrows, changing their color to a red-brown, and darkening her skin with foundation. Nobody would recognize her from the TV or newspaper, and that was exactly what she needed for her plans today. She set down her coffee. “Thank you so much!”
“One more thing. Wear these.” Annie handed her a pair of large eyeglasses, in pink plastic. “Heinous, right?”
“Yikes.” Rose put the glasses on. “Where did you get these?”
“A vintage store in the Village. They’re circa 1982. Now you’re ready for Main Street, Anywhere, USA. Your distinctive natural beauty is gone, and you’re completely forgettable.”
“This is great.”
“You’re welcome.” Annie put the eye pencil back. “Are your Band-Aids okay?”
“Yes, thanks.” Rose checked her hand and ankle. The burns were healing nicely, and they’d gotten rid of her bandages.
“Now, please be careful and stay in touch. And don’t wear your sunglasses anymore. People look longer at people in sunglasses. Love your hair.”
“Me, too.” Rose shook her head, like Googie drying off. “I feel so free!”
“Every woman does.” Annie gathered up her compacts. “Only women equate a haircut with freedom. We’re free, ladies. We can vote now.”
Rose gave her a good-bye hug. “Mind if I leave you to clean up?”
“No worries. Go get ’em, tiger.”
“I’m off.” Rose went for her purse, but stopped short when she saw the TV. A local newsbreak had come on, and Tanya Robertson’s face filled the screen. On the screen behind Tanya was a school photo of Amanda Gigot. Annie came up from behind, and they both stood watching the news, neither saying anything.
Oh no. Please be alive.
Tanya said, “Young Amanda Gigot remains in a coma, fighting for her life this morning, while the town of Reesburgh reacts this morning to the official report of the county Fire Chief, who has ruled that the school fire was accidental. Students went back for their first full day on Tuesday, and plans are in place to rebuild the cafeteria, as life returns to normal in this lovely community, torn by tragedy and discord.”
Rose shook her head. “They’re not even looking for anything intentional.”
On the TV, Tanya continued, “The District Attorney’s Office reports that they are continuing their investigation, and indictments in connection with the school fire and Amanda Gigot’s injuries will follow as soon as they are complete.”
“That means me,” Rose said, newly worried, and Annie clapped her on the back.
“Get going, and prove ’em all wrong.”
“On it!” Rose grabbed her bag, rallying, and fifteen minutes later, she was back in the car, driving south on I-95. The sun was rising, the sky clear, and the road lay open ahead of her. Her short hair fluttered in the wind, and her resolve was stronger than ever.
She’d be there in two hours.
Chapter Sixty-two
Rose pushed up her fake glasses and walked up to the counter, holding a steno pad she’d bought at a drugstore down the street. The office of the Maryland Occupational Safety & Health Administration was small and cluttered, with an old-fashioned coat rack, a fake ficus plant, and an umbrella stand. Mismatched government-issue chairs were grouped in the waiting area around a rickety coffee table covered with stacks of Maryland Department of Labor forms, a multi-colored brochure entitled Workplace Safety and YOU, and a beat-up copy of People magazine.
“May I help you?” asked an older African-American woman behind the counter, smiling in a sweet way.
“Hi, I’m Annie Adler.” Rose was sure this was going to be her last lie, but it was hard to quit cold turkey. Maybe if they had a patch, or something. “Joe Modjeska sent me. You know, Mojo? He worked here, until about six months ago.”
“Mojo! Of course, how is he? I love that man.”
“He’s doing great, working for Campanile, just over the border, in Pennsylvania.”
“I know. He always said he was meant for better things. A big man with a personality to match.”
“Tell me about it. He shoots a sixty-three now, and it’s all he talks about.”
“Golf, golf, golf! That man lived for golf!”
“Don’t they all? Me, I live for shoes.”
“Ha!” The woman extended a hand over the counter. “I’m Julie Port. How can I help you?”
“I’m a writer for Hunt Country Life, a magazine in southern Pennsylvania, where Mojo lives.” Rose brandished her steno pad. “We’re doing a short profile on him, and I wonder if I can ask you a question or two. He said you might not mind, and the good press would help him out.”
“Sure enough.” Julie checked the waiting room, which was empty. “We’re not busy today, and I can take a couple minutes. If it helps Mojo, I’m in.” She moved to the side, opened a swinging door in the counter, and gestured. “Come with me. We’ll go in the break room.”
“Thanks.” Rose followed her past a few workers talking on the phone and typing on computer keyboards, then they went down a hall to a lunchroom with round Formica tables, hard plastic chairs, and a bank of vending machines.
“Please, make yourself comfortable.” Julie waved her into a chair, sitting down.
“Thanks.” Rose took a seat, put her steno pad on the table, flipped it open to the first page, and slid a pen from her purse. “Now, he began working here about five years ago. He was at Homestead before that, wasn’t he? In Reesburgh?”
“Yes, he was. He was their Director of Safety.” Julie’s face fell into lines, her jowls draping her lipsticked mouth. “He took it very hard.”
“What did he take hard?” Rose didn’t know what she meant.
“He blamed himself, but it wasn’t his fault, any of it.” Julie clucked. “Forklift accidents are among the most common, and it wasn’t his fault that that man died.”
Whoa. Rose realized she meant Bill Gigot. “Mojo has such a big heart.”
“He surely does, and he was an excellent safety manager, I’m positive of that. He’s very diligent.”
“That sounds like him.”
“Yes, and from what he told me, the lighting was insufficient in the loading area where the man worked, and he wasn’t real experienced with the forklift. In fact, Mojo got him a job in the peanut building.”
Rose made rapid notes, for real. “Peanut building?”
“Where they made the peanut butter crackers. They had to use dedicated equipment and such, to protect people with peanut allergies. It’s FDA and state regs.”
“So you were saying.”
“Anyway, to get back to the story, the man didn’t have enough experience operating a forklift. Also, they require forklift travel lanes and the like. You can’t play fast and loose with a forklift.”
“Of course not.” Rose kept making notes.
“Mojo didn’t like to talk about what happened, but I could tell how sad he was, inside. The man went over the side of the loading dock, killed when his head hit the floor. Mojo found him, on his rounds.” Julie clucked. “He made sure the man’s widow got herself a nice check without even having to file or sue.”
“So that’s the kind of man he is, huh?” Rose made another note, and Julie shook her head.
“No good deed goes unpunished, though. Before you know it, Mojo’s tossed out.”
“Oh no.” Rose lowered her voice. “They fired him?”
“I think they asked for his resignation, you know how they do. But he was too proud to let on, with me.” Julie frowned. “Don’t put that in your story, okay?”
“None of this will be in, I promise.” Rose suppressed a guilty pang.
“Thanks.” Julie nodded. “Tell you somethin’ else about him. He came in as a director after his training, but he never lorded it over anybody.”
“What did he do
here?”
“Oh, right. You might not know, because the compliance offices in Pennsylvania are run by the feds.” Julie cleared her throat. “Well, OSHA, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, administers workforce safety out of D.C. But some states, like Maryland, have their own compliance agencies, too.”
“I see.” Rose took notes, and Julie warmed to her topic.
“We cooperate with the feds, and we work hard to ensure that every man and woman in the state has safe and healthful working conditions.”
“So Mojo came here after his training. Where did he train?”
“Baltimore, with everybody else.”
“Why did he need training, if he’d been a safety manager at Homestead?”
“That’s what he said!” Julie laughed. “We train anyway, and he didn’t know the way we do things down here.”
Rose thought a minute. “I didn’t ask him, but was he a Maryland resident then?”
“No, he had to move here.”
Rose hesitated, and Julie leaned over.
“Next, you’re gonna ask me how he got the job, and that I don’t know. He moved to Harford County, just over the state line. I knew he wouldn’t stay forever. He wanted to go back to Pennsylvania, and they were building the house. You’ve seen that place of his?”
“Yes, that’s where I interviewed him.”
“His wife’s family, they got money. That, he told me.” Julie leaned over again. “How else you think he could afford to build custom, especially from that fancy company? He liked it so much, that’s who he went to work for.”
“Campanile.” Rose made a fake note, and suddenly a fluorescent light began to flicker overhead.
“Uh-oh!” Julie looked up, curled her lip in annoyance. “Here we go again. Building Maintenance’s gotta come change that bulb. I don’t know how to do fluorescents, you know, those long, skinny ones.”
“Me, neither.”
“Mojo wouldn’t have any of that, of course. If he was here, he’d get on a ladder, grab a screwdriver, take off that panel, and change that bulb himself, no waiting.” Julie nodded. “Mojo can fix anything.”
“Even lights?”
“Sure enough. That’s something else you probably don’t know about Mojo. You can put it in your article.”
“What?”
“He’s a master electrician.”
Chapter Sixty-three
Rose hit the road on fire, flying up I-95, heading north. Traffic had picked up, and she kept her foot on the gas, passing slowpokes, full of nervous energy. Mojo was looking more and more like a killer; he had access to the school at any time, so he could have planted the polyurethane in the teachers’ lounge, and he knew enough about electrical wiring to rig the microwave, loosen the wiring, and create a gas leak.
Rose sensed that Mojo had done it, but she didn’t know why. Campanile had just built the school, so why would he want to blow it up, especially when lawsuits were likely to follow, against his own employer? She raced down the highway, and the questions kept coming. Why would he want to murder children? Even if he had known that they’d be at recess, it would be an awful chance to take, and he’d killed three staff members.
She steered smoothly around a Honda, thinking back. In a matter of days, there had been two deaths that looked like accidents that weren’t, and after her trip to Baltimore, she felt even more paranoid. She hadn’t realized that Mojo had any connection with Bill Gigot; wherever Mojo went, death seemed to follow, and she was beginning to wonder if Bill Gigot’s death had been an accident, too.
Rose sped home, toward Reesburgh, but she wasn’t sure of her next move. She still didn’t have any evidence that Mojo had committed a murder, much less three of them, so she still couldn’t go to the police. She had called Annie and Leo to tell them what was going on, but neither had answered, and this time, she didn’t leave a message. She was on her own.
She took the exit ramp, and in time, the terrain grew familiar. White clapboard farms and tall blue silos. Sun-drenched stretches of corn and soybeans, their round, dark-green leaves shuddering in unseen winds. She whizzed past the scenery, thinking about Bill Gigot and Homestead. She had never been inside the plant; she and Melly had missed the school’s field trip there, in second grade. Homestead staged the town’s Halloween and Christmas parades, and sponsored a team in its softball and basketball leagues. Other than that, Rose knew very little about the company.
Maybe it was time to learn.
After all, she was a reporter.
Chapter Sixty-four
Rose got out of her car in the visitors’ lot, breathed in the tantalizing aroma of frying potatoes, and eyed the Homestead factory, which was on the other side of the access road. It wasn’t a single building, but a series of five buildings—immense corrugated metal boxes, painted a sparkling white, with a broad yellow stripe. Clouds of steam billowed from metal smokestacks and drifted from square metal vents near the flat rooflines, dissipating into the clear blue sky. Rose had known Homestead was a big company, but she hadn’t realized it was this vast.
She turned around, pushed her fake glasses onto her nose, hoisted her purse to her shoulder, and walked to a sidewalk mobbed with kids on field trips, being shepherded by teachers, aides, and moms into lines for factory tours. She waded through the kids to the entrance of the Homestead corporate offices, a large, three-story office building of a sleek modern design, with a façade of dark brick and smoked-glass windows.
HOMESTEAD SNACK FOODS, read a discreet sign in yellow letters, and she reached the office doors, went inside, and found herself in a two-story waiting area dominated by a modern chandelier of frosted glass. A gleaming reception desk was at the back of the room, but the receptionist was talking on the phone, her head down.
Rose looked around. To her left was a waiting area, where two men in suits sat talking in front of a glass coffee table, and on the right was a display case of Homestead products, next to a bigger one of awards, made of engraved glass and Lucite. A set of crystal spikes were annual safety awards, and Rose could guess which year they hadn’t won: seven years ago, when Bill Gigot was killed.
“May I help you?” the receptionist called out, and Rose turned, then froze. The receptionist was one of the moms from school, though not in Melly’s class. Rose had no choice but to rely on her master disguise.
“Hi.” Rose approached the desk. “I’m Annie Adler.”
“Hello,” the receptionist said, seeming not to recognize her.
“I’m with Home Baking, a new magazine. We’re doing a story on how home cooks can make their own potato chips, and I was wondering if I could talk to someone about baking in the big leagues, like at Homestead. I’d love to know more about your operation here, including workplace safety practices.”
“Of course.” The receptionist smiled politely. “Would you like to make an appointment for next week? Our public relations manager, Tricia Hightower, is busy this week. The Harvest Conference, our annual corporate gathering, is held here at headquarters, with all the executives and top sales reps from all our branches.”
“Thanks, but I’ve driven a long way. Does she have an assistant, or someone else I can talk to?”
“No, Trish handles all press relations personally.”
Rose tried another tack. “Can I speak with someone in production, perhaps a supervisor on the line? I’d love to speak with someone who’d give me the inside track.”
“Sorry, that’s not our policy, and it’s Group Day today, so there’s no admittance to the plant if you’re not with a group. Now, would you like to make an appointment for next week? May I take your phone number and she’ll get back to you?”
“No thanks, that’s past my deadline.” Rose wanted to get out while the getting was good. “I’ll call again. Thank you for your time.”
“Thank you,” the receptionist said, and Rose turned and headed for the door. She hit the sidewalk, breathed in the cooked potato aromas, and walked to the car, preoccupied.
She wasn’t sure what to do next, but she still wanted to know about Mojo and Bill Gigot’s accident. The company would probably have had to file all sorts of accident reports, but she didn’t know how to get them. Being a fake reporter could only take her so far.
“Line up, Jake!” one of the teachers shouted to the mob of kids. “Guys, come on! Behave, here we go!”
Rose threaded her way through the excited children as the teachers and moms wrangled them like runaway calves. A team of Homestead employees helped corral them for the factory tour.
“Excuse me,” one of the employees called to Rose. “Aren’t you with Holy Redeemer? You’re all signed in and your group is leaving now!”
“Me?” Rose answered, then caught herself. She couldn’t get into the factory otherwise, and she wanted to learn more about the loading dock area, where Bill Gigot had been killed. “Hold on, I’m coming!”
Chapter Sixty-five
Rose was herded through a crowded gift shop that contained Homestead snacks, T-shirts, baseball caps, key chains, cookbooks, and stuffed-toy potato chips. The store narrowed like a funnel at the back, into a hallway that reverberated with the noise of excited kids.
“The theater is this way!” called out a ponytailed Homestead employee. “We’re gonna see a movie!”
Rose had no choice but to go with the flow, though the last thing she needed was to watch a corporate video with talking potato chips. Luckily, it lasted only twelve minutes, which was the average attention span of a six-year-old and a mom trying to solve a murder.
“Follow me, I’m Linda!” the ponytailed employee called out, and the group was herded down one hallway and another. The kids giggled, pointed, and pushed each other, and Rose decided there was a special place in heaven reserved for teachers and moms who chaperoned on field trips.
“First, the pretzel factory, then the potato chip factory!” Linda called out, taking them into a wide hallway that had floor-to-ceiling plastic windows, providing a complete view onto the factory floor, two stories below. The Holy Redeemer group merged with two other school groups already there, and Rose breathed easier, since all the moms would think she was with one of the other groups.
Save Me Page 27
