Save Me

by Lisa Scottoline

  Linda started her spiel. “So, Homestead Snacks started with the Allen family and today it’s a multi-national food producer, which owns seventy-five hundred acres of land in Reesburgh, including the Reesburgh Motor Inn, Reesburgh Visitor Center, the Potato Museum, and other things.”

  Seventy-five hundred acres? Rose looked over at Linda, amazed. That was practically the whole county.

  “Homestead employs almost four thousand people in its Reesburgh headquarters, and many more in its thirty-five branches throughout the Mid-Atlantic states.” Linda gestured to the window. “Here you see the first step of our pretzel baking, which is when the dough goes into the kneader, gets mixed up, and is extruded, which means pushed through…”

  Rose tuned her out, eyeing the factory floor, below. It was a large, well-lit space, filled with huge lines of stainless steel equipment. The walls were white cinderblock, and the floor a dull red industrial tile. Oddly, there were only six employees, performing various tasks in their yellow jumpsuits, earplugs, and hairnets.

  Linda asked, “Any questions before we move on?”

  Rose caught her eye. “You have so many employees, but there are only six for this whole pretzel operation. Is that typical?”

  “Good question!” Linda answered, officially perky. “Most of our employees are route drivers, and we have a fleet of one thousand trucks and vans on the road. And the machinery does all the baking, so our employees don’t have to slave away in those hot temperatures. Also, you’re seeing only a third of our plant employees at any one time, because we work around the clock, on three shifts; 6–2, 2–10, and the night shift, 10-6.”

  Rose wondered how many people would have seen what happened the night Bill Gigot was killed. “Do the same number of employees work on each shift?”

  “No, many fewer work the night shift. Now, let’s go!” Linda shuttled them to another window that showed superwide belts of uncooked pretzels moving slowly into a large oven.

  “What are those things?” asked a little boy with glasses, pointing to red hoses that came from the production machines.

  “Those are wires. Now, before we see the potato chips, we have a few offices to pass and we’ll go by them quickly. Here’s the office of our Quality Assurance Manager.” Linda pointed through the window at an older woman in a hairnet and labcoat. “That lady eats potato chips five times a day. Who wants her job?” The kids hollered, and Linda hustled them ahead. “This is the office of our Director of Safety. As you see, all of our employees wear hairnets and earplugs, and there’s even hairnets for beards!”

  The kids erupted into laughter, but Rose was thinking that it was Mojo’s former office, a small box of white cinderblock with a cluttered desk. No one was inside. She asked, “Does the Director of Safety make rounds at night, to check on things?”

  “I’m sure he does.” Linda smiled in a pat way that let Rose know her welcome was wearing thin. “Now, let’s move along to our packing operation and warehouse.” She ushered them past the office that read DIRECTOR OF SECURITY and onto a second-floor deck, which overlooked an expanse of floor-to-ceiling Homestead boxes.

  “See all these boxes?” Linda took her place at the window. “They go for blocks and blocks! All these boxes will get shipped out tomorrow, not only all over the United States, but to Latin America, Mexico, Jamaica, and the Caribbean, too. You see that number on the side of the box? We know where every ingredient in the pretzels came from, where we bought the yeast, flour, salt, and malt, following strict FDA regulations.”

  “I have a question.” Rose raised a hand. Julie had said that Bill Gigot worked in the peanut building, whatever that meant. “Is there a peanut building here, that’s separate? My older son has mild peanut allergies, and I understand you make peanut butter crackers.”

  Another mother nodded. “My son has a peanut allergy, too. Very severe. We have to watch everything, or he goes into anaphylactic shock. He and another child have to eat alone at school, in the classroom. If they even breathe peanut butter, they could die.”

  A third mother added, “My daughter has a gluten allergy. It’s a lot of trouble, but at least it’s not lethal.” The rest of the mothers started talking about their kids with soy and other allergies, and Linda raised her hand to get a word in edgewise.

  “To answer your question, we do not use any peanuts in the preparation of our products, and they’re all peanut-safe. We provide an extensive list of which of our products are allergen-free, soy-free, and gluten-free, and we also make kosher products, which are certified under kosher laws.”

  The other mom frowned. “But you do make peanut butter crackers. I saw them for sale, in the Acme.”

  “We don’t make them, but we sell them under the Homestead name. They’re made by another company, out of state.”

  Rose was thinking about Bill Gigot. “But you used to make peanut butter crackers here, didn’t you? I heard there was a peanut building here.”

  “Yes, and we also made peanut-filled pretzel nuggets, but not in this building.” Linda gestured behind her. “We used to make peanut-butter crackers and peanut-filled pretzel nuggets on the other side of the access road, behind the train tracks. That was called the peanut building, but it’s been repurposed to make chocolate-filled pretzel nuggets. Now, time for the potato chips!”

  “What’s that?” asked the little boy with glasses, pointing at a long hook on a metal rod, hanging on the factory wall.

  “That’s what we use if something gets stuck in the machine.” Linda led the group down the hall. “It’s like a big, long toothpick.”

  Rose followed the group, lost in thought. It was entirely possible that Mojo had killed Gigot. It had happened on the night shift, in a smaller operation and a separate building. There would have been only one or two other employees there, and as Director of Safety, Mojo would have had free rein. It wasn’t impossible to make a forklift injury look accidental. Mojo could have hit Gigot on the head, killing him, then sat him on a forklift and sent it over the side of the loading dock. And Mojo would have known how to disable any surveillance cameras, with his electrical expertise.

  The tour ended, and Rose walked to her car, getting out her keys and chirping it unlocked. She couldn’t stop wondering about Bill Gigot and if he’d been murdered. She wasn’t sure what to do to find out more, and she still didn’t know what his death had to do with the school fire, if anything.

  She crossed the visitors parking lot, which was less full now, with the kids lining up to board their buses. It had to be after one o’clock, for them to get back to school in time for dismissal. She checked her watch, and it was almost two o’clock. She was about to get into her car but looked across the access road, where employees were leaving their cars in the parking lot and heading inside the factory. The second shift was starting at two, and she eyed the employees, wishing she could get inside the factory, to learn more about how Bill Gigot had been killed and see the loading dock in the peanut building.

  Rose stowed her purse in the car, chirped it locked again, and slipped her car keys into her pocket, then walked toward the access road. She didn’t know how she’d get inside the peanut building, but she’d play it by ear.

  It was a potato chip factory, not the C.I.A.

  Chapter Sixty-six

  Rose followed the walkway to the other side of the corporate campus, across the access road. The land sloped down, and the walkway forked, with the right leading to the main plant and the left leading to a smaller building, also of corrugated metal, painted white with a yellow stripe. Next to it lay a single train track with round black tank cars, so it had to be the peanut building, where it was almost time for the second shift.

  A small parking lot sat to the left of the peanut building, and employees were getting out of their cars, greeting each other, and heading together in a steady stream toward an entrance on its left side. There weren’t many of them, maybe twenty or so, which meant she would stand out, unfortunately.

  She developed
a plan on the fly and took the left fork, noticing yet another building, large and sprawling, with several satellite buildings attached to it by walkways. When she got closer, she was able to read the HOMESTEAD CONFERENCE CENTER sign, decorated with pumpkins and a spooky scarecrow. A parking lot to its right was filling up, and she guessed it was the people arriving for the Harvest Conference.

  She reached the steps down to the peanut building, crossed into the employee parking lot and approached the entrance, two yellow doors. Employees swiped in with the laminated ID cards they wore on their yellow lanyards, and Rose fell into step behind two women, one older white woman and one younger black woman, chatting away. The young one swiped her ID card and started through the door, then her friend followed, then Rose.

  She found herself standing in a hallway with the two women, who each took a card from a yellow tray on the wall and swiped it into a time clock. Next to that was a sign: NOTICE: HEARING PROTECTION REQUIRED IN ALL PRODUCTION AREAS, and a less official, SAFETY IS EVERYONE’S JOB!

  The older woman turned to Rose, smiling politely. She had a halo of curly gray hair and bifocals. “Can I help you?”

  “Yes, thanks.” Rose pushed up her glasses. “Is this where you make the chocolate-filled pretzel nuggets?”

  “Yes, but you can’t come in here. It’s not open to the public.”

  “I’m not the public. I’m Annie Hightower. I’m new.”

  “A new hire?”

  “Yes.” Rose smiled in a way she hoped was convincing. “I’m supposed to start working here next week, near the loading dock. I’m Tricia Hightower’s cousin, in PR. Do you know her?”

  “Sure, I’ve met Trish, but there’s no job opening that I know of.” The older woman turned to her young friend. “Right, Sue?”

  Sue looked nonplussed. She had clear green eyes, dark skin, and a pretty smile. “Not that I know of. We should call Trish.”

  “We can’t.” Rose hid her case of nerves. “She’s busy with the Harvest Conference. She told me she’d meet me here and show me around, but she must have forgotten. Oh no, maybe I spilled the beans. It’s a job that’s going to be open. I was supposed to come and look around before I start.”

  “Uh-oh, I understand.” Sue grimaced. “Somebody’s going to get fired. Who? Do you drive a lift?”

  Jeez! “No, wait.” Rose wasn’t about to fake-drive a forklift. “Did I say this shift? Sorry, I meant the night shift. That’s why I’m here now. Trish wouldn’t send me to look at a job that somebody was working, right now. She said I’d be doing the same job, but I’d replace somebody on the night shift.”

  “Oh, good.” Sue grinned with relief. “If you don’t drive a lift, I’d bet you’d be a screener. That’s right next to the loading dock.”

  “I knew it!” Her older friend looked over. “Francine’s gonna get the boot, and she deserves it, for sure.”

  “It’s about damn time.” Sue nodded in agreement, and the older woman turned to Rose, smiling and extending a hand.

  “Annie, I’m June Hooster, and welcome to Homestead. You’ll love it here, it’s a great company. Juanita screens on this shift, and I’ll introduce you to her.”

  “Great, thanks.”

  “Wonder what Trish was going to do with you? Put you in a uniform?” Sue eyed Rose’s loafers. “And you got the wrong shoes on. You need ‘shoes for crews,’ that’s what we call ’em.”

  “Sorry, she didn’t say.” Rose stepped aside as another employee walked in the door, punched in, then headed toward a room at the end of the hall. “I hate to go home after I drove all this way. I even got a sitter.”

  “Now that’s a different story.” Sue laughed, patting her shoulder. “Don’t waste a sitter, I never do. I take the long way home if I have a sitter, just because I can.”

  June smiled at Rose. “Come with us, and we’ll get you a uniform and show you the ropes. We’re not allowed to have cell phones or purses on the floor, so you can stow your valuables in a locker.”

  “Thanks, but I left my purse in the car.” Rose followed them down the hall and through the door that read WOMEN’S LOCKER ROOM. She felt bad lying to them, but it was hard to stick to a diet.

  Especially in a potato chip factory.

  Chapter Sixty-seven

  Rose stood on the factory floor next to Juanita, feeling like her twin in an identical yellow jumpsuit, earplugs, and hairnet. Only ten employees worked in the immense room, which contained four huge lines of machinery that almost fully automated the production process, making chocolate-filled crackers and pretzel nuggets, then dropping them counted into bags which were sealed and packed into cardboard boxes. The boxes then traveled via a waist-high track of stainless steel rollers to Juanita and Rose, who X-rayed them.

  “This job is easy, and don’t let it intimidate you.” Juanita kept her eyes trained on the X-ray machine. Its screen glowed an odd green hue, showing twelve ghostly circles. Juanita pointed to the image, her nail polish bright red under her clear plastic gloves. “Look. All you gotta do is make sure there’s twelve bags in each box. Like right here, see?”

  “Yes.” Rose nodded. “Do you count them?”

  “Yes, you got to, starting out. When you’re experienced, you can eyeball it and tell. But in the beginning, you gotta count ’em.”

  “Okay.”

  “Watch.” Juanita was already closing the box and sending it along the roller track. “If it’s okay, you close the box. If it’s not, you take it off the line and put it back here.” She gestured to a wheeled table behind them, just as another box rolled in front of her and she had to feed it through the X-ray machine. The green screen came to life. “See, this one’s okay, too.”

  “It’s tough to keep up the pace,” Rose said, meaning it.

  “It is. You gotta be quick. The main thing here is production. We got to keep the lines moving. No stopping.”

  “It’s like Lucy and the chocolate factory, huh?”

  “Sometimes it is.” Juanita smiled.

  Rose hadn’t realized how stressful a factory job could be. The boxes came at a relentless clip, and the room felt overly warm despite large industrial fans mounted on the ceiling. A low-level hum filled the air, challenging her earplugs, and the floor vibrated from the heavy production machinery.

  “The other day, one of the lines broke down, and the engineers fixed it so fast it could make your head spin. Like they say, time is money. If a single line is down a day, it costs us a hundred thousand dollars.” Another box appeared, and Juanita fed it into the X-ray machine, checked the green screen, then closed the flaps. “You can’t let a box go through with less than twelve bags. Then an account paid for twelve, but only got eleven.”

  “That’s bad.”

  “Sure is. Bad for me.” Juanita pointed to a black number code on the side of the box. “This number tells which lot it was, and they can trace it back to which shift the mistake happened on, and then Scotty comes to me and says, ‘Juanita, you’re the screener, you screwed up.’ You get a few warnings, then you’re out, like Francine.”

  “Who’s Scotty?”

  “Our boss. Frank Scotty. He’s the shift super.”

  “Is he around?” Rose hadn’t counted on a supervisor.

  “He stops by usually, but he’s crazy with the Harvest Conference. They have their prom with all the muckety-mucks.” Juanita rolled her eyes. “You can meet Scotty when he stops by. We’ve been working together ten years.”

  “That’s a long time.” Rose realized that Juanita had been here when Bill Gigot was killed and could still have information about his death, even though they hadn’t been on the same shift. “You know, Trish told me this used to be called the peanut building, back then, right?”

  “Yep. We made peanut butter crackers and peanut-filled pretzel nuggets here. Had to keep ’em separate from the other products, because there’s no peanuts in the big plant. You know, for the allergies. We’re not peanut-free, there’s a lot of real complicated rules, so we just g
o with there’s no peanuts, like lots of companies. But that’s now.” Juanita sent the box on its way, then X-rayed the next one. “Then, we had all sorts of procedures, everything had to be separate. We were so careful, it was a pain. Look.” Juniata pointed to the X-ray screen, and in the corner, there was empty space where a bag should have been. “Missing one. No good, right? Deal with it.”

  Rose grabbed the box and set it on the table behind them.

  “Good job.” Juanita smiled. “Anyway, back then, the peanut allergy thing was getting bigger. The orders went way down. Schools stopped buying anything with peanuts. Moms didn’t want to take a chance and bring in a snack that could get the other kids sick. A kid can die from a peanut allergy, you know.” Juanita shuddered. “I’d never want to be responsible for a child’s death. I couldn’t live with myself.”

  Rose flashed on Thomas Pelal, but suppressed the thought. She had to bring the conversation around to Bill Gigot.

  “The peanut business went bust, especially the peanut-filled pretzel nuggets.” Juanita positioned a box in the X-ray machine, then screened it, and sent it on its way. “We had four lines dedicated to peanut products, and we didn’t get the orders, and they’d be sitting still for days. Meanwhile, the chocolate-filled nuggets were selling like crazy, especially in Latin America and the Caribbean, I think because it’s so hot there. With the chocolate inside the pretzel, it doesn’t mess up your hand, like M&Ms.” Juanita turned with a wink. “We didn’t have enough machines in the big plant to fill the orders for the chocolate-filled nuggets, and these machines here, in the peanut building, sat doing nothing, because they could only be used for peanut.” Juanita screened another box. “We were losing money, hand over fist.”

  Rose had to get Juanita off the subject, but she was so chatty. “If you were here ten years ago, did you know—”

  “Those were the bad old days. The bosses wanted to switch from peanuts to chocolate, make crackers with chocolate and fill the nuggets with chocolate, but it took time, switching over. We couldn’t use the peanut machines right away for the chocolate.” Juanita closed another box. “We had to get them completely cleaned, then we had to get them inspected and whatnot. The machines sat still, like they were broken. We had no work, we worked in the big plant. We ran the tours. We filled in. We swept. But the pay wasn’t the same, and the managers were going nuts and so were the supers. We were down almost six months, this was seven years ago, I remember because my youngest was three, and he just turned ten.”