Union Jacked

by Diane Vallere

  “Shouldn’t you be at the hospital with him instead of here?”

  Taryn pressed her lips together, and her eyes filled with tears. I remembered her standing over his body while Eddie used his cat hat to apply pressure to Harvey’s wound. Taryn had seemed helpless then too. But people react to crisis differently, and paralytic shock wasn’t abnormal.

  “He’ll be okay,” I said. “He’s got excellent care.”

  “When the press reports that employee lives were risked thanks to unfair working conditions, there’s no way management can ignore the issue.” She shook her head.

  “I don’t think you should make people think the two incidents were connected. The police have a working theory. Your brother wasn’t the target.”

  “You were here?” She asked. She squinted her eyes. “Wait. I remember you. You were under the flag with Victoria.”

  “For you, it was a rally. For me, it was a day of work.”

  She stepped backward. “I can’t believe you have the nerve to show your face here. Tonight of all nights.” She turned her head to see if anybody was paying attention and raised her voice. “While my brother is battling an injury sustained while standing up for better benefits and working conditions for his peers,” she called out over the heads of the crowd.

  “The Ribbon hospital is a state-of-the-art teaching facility,” I said in a regularly modulated voice. “They’re the number one employer in the city.”

  “You small town people with your small town views,” she said, her voice low again. “You don’t know anything. Now that Harvey’s practically unconscious, it’s up to me to make sure the store coughs up the money they should have been paying their employees all along.”

  “I think you’re confused about what’s going on with Tradava.”

  “I’m confused about nothing. I talked to one member of the visual department who said he can’t remember the last time he earned overtime. Those are abhorrent working conditions.”

  Taryn’s raised voice held the crowd’s reaction. I didn’t know if it was misplaced anger over the shooting or if she’d compartmentalized her emotions and was leveraging the moment for the cause, but she successfully shifted the lens onto the lesser event from the day. People who’d quietly stood with their candles in both hands now raised them in the air and formed a crowd behind her.

  “The member of the visual department you spoke to was Eddie Adams. He’s their director. Do you know why he can’t remember being paid overtime? Until two weeks ago, he was on salary.”

  Taryn’s eyes narrowed, and her face squinched in anger. “Don’t try to talk about things you don’t know. I’m intimately aware of the background of every person who participated in our strike, and I will make sure the attention from what happened today will get us what we deserve.”

  She jabbed her lit candle toward me, and the flame swept the fuzzy threads of my sweater. I swatted at it before the fire caught. Taryn’s candle went out. The look on her face suggested she could reignite her candle without a match. She stormed away and left me wondering if her rage was how she dealt with the tragedy, or if it indicated something worse.

  8

  Management

  I backed away from the group and found myself in the company of Frank the sports reporter and his cameraman. “Did you hear any of that?” I asked.

  “Hard not to. Is any of what Taryn said true?”

  I shrugged. “I am management, if that’s what you’re asking.”

  “What department?”

  “Corporate. I used to work in the advertising department, but when the store started having trouble, they closed advertising and gave me a temporary assignment.”

  Frank squinted at me. “I wondered how you managed to keep your job after that mafia situation went down in January.”

  “After Carl’s profile on me, I ended up with a certain amount of job security.”

  The short version: the local paper had done a profile on me. What should have been a feel-good puff piece that featured Tradava’s upcoming collection turned out to expose facts that brought down the retailer. The store couldn’t fire me without it looking like a direct response to my involvement, and since I’d almost died at gunpoint, their lawyers had probably advised them that the lesser evil was keeping me on the payroll.

  It was the poetic irony of my professional life. I’d spent ten years employed by a luxury retailer, had worked my way up to senior buyer for ladies’ shoes, and earned a six-figure income. I wore high fashion bought with an employee discount, lived in a glamorous apartment, and traveled to Europe four times a year.

  My inappropriate flirtation with one of my designers fed my ego, and my occasional dates with the deli counter guy kept me in cold cuts. But when my parents announced they were selling the house and moving to the other side of the country, I knew the only thing I wanted was to feel like I belonged—and I didn’t belong in the life I was living.

  I accepted a job offer at Tradava and moved into the house where I’d grown up. It should have been simple. Local girl returns to her roots. But when the man who hired me turned up dead on my first day, I was suddenly without a job, without security, and without a future. Four years later, I was married to the designer I’d inappropriately flirted with and had iron-clad job security. My cold cut drawer was on the empty side, but for the sake of marital bliss, I paid retail for salami.

  A more paranoid person might have thought the shooting was about her.

  Since my background was in buying, that’s what Tradava now had me do. They flexed me from department to department to oversee and approve orders. For the past month, I’d been the fashion advisor to the existing buyers in an attempt to give the store assortments a sense of continuity. Thanks to the grand reopening, we were slated for a shipment of Union Jack sweaters, Hello London! handbags, and a triple order of Jacob’s Twiglets. If all went as planned, Loncar’s party would serve the double purpose of giving Tradava a much needed sales bump just as Piccadilly Group was making their final decisions on staffing.

  “You said you were going to write a human interest piece,” I said. “Is that still your plan?”

  “Do you have a different angle?”

  “I might. It’s too soon to tell. But can you hold off on painting anybody as a victim until I check a few things out?”

  “I can’t print anything about the victims until I confirm their identity and condition. Right now, everything’s hush-hush.”

  “There might be a reason for that. What else do you know about the shooting?”

  We walked to the back of the news van, and Frank pulled open the doors. He filled two cups from a thermos and handed me one. “Hot chocolate,” he said. “I’m not much of a coffee drinker.”

  Frank, it turned out, knew less than I did, but that didn’t stop him from picking my brain to get caught up. I described the events of the morning in as much detail as I could recall but left out the conclusions I’d reached that should go to the police first.

  “What about you?” I asked. “Did you pick up on anything since being here?”

  Frank shook his head. “Mostly just people standing around talking. Taryn handing out candles. The cops have been staying out of the way. Two of them went to Brothers Pizza before you got here.”

  “The cops? Where?” I asked. He pointed to the security guards. “Those aren’t cops. They’re security officers. You can tell by the identification patch on the sleeve of their jacket.” Sports beat or no sports beat, I was surprised Frank had made such a rookie mistake.

  “They’re cops moonlighting as security officers,” he said. “Tradava doesn’t have a lock on underpaying their employees.”

  I stared at the men in uniform. I hadn’t paid much attention to them when I arrived, mostly because I assumed they were independent contractors hired to keep an eye on things overnight.

  But the closer inspection paid off. I recognized Bob Pennino, the portly cop with the porno mustache who’d given me a hard time in the hospital l
obby. He and the officers with him must have come here while I was melting down in the OBGYN wing with Dr. Emma.

  I put my hand on my abdomen and closed my eyes. I was calmer than I’d been in days, and why? It was like Emma had said. I needed a project. Something to focus on instead of myself.

  Frank swirled his hot chocolate a few times and then swallowed what was left. He took my empty cup, stacked it in his, and put them both inside a black plastic garbage bag behind him.

  I promised Frank I’d share anything of value that I discovered, and we exchanged phone numbers. I left the van and walked back to Nick’s truck.

  “Well, lookie here. If it isn’t public nuisance number one.” Bob Pennino stood a few feet away from me. He rocked back on his feet and his security jacket opened, displaying his ample belly. “Get in your car and leave. We don’t need help from the amateur sleuth society.”

  “Are you sure about that?” I asked. “Seems to me you have a major problem and can use all the help you can get. Isn’t that what the police advocate? See something, say something?”

  “Doesn’t apply to you.”

  “What is it with you people? I’m not breaking the law, and I’m not in anybody’s way. I want the same thing you want.”

  He grinned and narrowed his eyes, the effect making him look like a stoned Oliver Hardy. “Doubtful.”

  “Okay, then call Detective Madden. I have information I’d like to pass along to him.”

  “Call him yourself.”

  “Yo, Bob!” shouted one of the other security guards. “You wanna grab a beer?”

  “Be right there.” He turned back to me. “Mind your business, Ms. Kidd. We haven’t caught the shooter yet, and I would hate for you to get caught in a follow-up display of violence.” He shoved his meaty hands into his pockets and walked away.

  Eddie was waiting on my porch swing when I got home. Logan was on the windowsill on the other side of the bay window, swatting at the back of Eddie’s head.

  “Hey,” I said.

  “Dude,” he replied. Apparently Nigel was on temporary hiatus.

  I unlocked the front door and led Eddie inside. The power drill was still on the dining room table, and whiteboards were scattered around by the baseboards. It felt like a year had passed since I’d dug them out of the closet to mount down here to start an investigation into who had shot Loncar, but it had been mere hours.

  Eddie pulled two glasses out of the cupboard. He uncapped a large jug of kombucha that he’d left in my refrigerator for occasions like this out and filled his glass. “You want some soda? Wine?”

  Eddie was the healthiest eater I knew. If he drank kombucha, then maybe I should too. “I’ll have some of that,” I said.

  Eddie didn’t move. His eyebrows slanted in suspicion. For a few seconds, the only sound was the ticking of the kitchen clock on the wall.

  “It’s from my podcast,” I said. “Get PoPT! says we should try new things.”

  “You’re a creature of habit. Trying something new means pepperoni on your pizza.”

  Eddie knew me well. We’d first met in high school, though we didn’t become close friends until I moved back. We were able to communicate via a verbal shorthand that occasionally included “Yo,” “whoa,” and the ever-present, “dude.” When Nick and I spontaneously decided to marry in a Las Vegas wedding chapel last July, I Skyped Eddie in for the ceremony. But still, I couldn’t figure out how to tell him that I thought I was pregnant. It was one thing telling Nick. With Eddie, it was a whole different ball of wax.

  He once confronted me over my inability to confide the imperfections in my life. He claimed by not telling him what was going on, I didn’t trust him to help me through my problems. As the various ways my life was going to change swirled around my brain, my stomach twisted again.

  “Don’t leave me hanging,” I said. I held out my glass, and he filled it. I drank the contents, and it took every ounce of restraint not to make a face. “Do me a favor?” I choked out. “See if there’s anything about the shooting on the news.”

  Eddie left the kitchen, and I chased the kombucha with three gulps of birch beer. I joined him in the living room. He scrolled to a national news channel. A woman in a sleeveless dress and long brown hair curled into sausage ringlets addressed the camera.

  “A shooting in the parking lot outside of Tradava department store in Ribbon, Pennsylvania, has left a community shocked. Employees of the store gathered earlier today to take a stand over unfair business practices that were rumored to be enforced at the store, recently acquired by British private equity firm Piccadilly Group.

  “Two victims were rushed to the local Ribbon hospital, where they remain in intensive care. The police have confirmed that one has reached stable condition. The other is being monitored closely. They are not releasing the names at this time. If anyone has information that can help lead to the capture of the person behind this horrible crime, please contact Detective Madden at the Ribbon Police Department.” A phone number appeared on the bottom of the screen.

  Eddie dropped onto the sofa. “Cop shooting. When they catch this guy, he’s never going to see the light of day. If you ask me, this has nothing to do with Tradava. It’s probably one of those nutjobs with a bunch of photos taped to the inside of their van.”

  I stared at Eddie. I hadn’t talked to him since this morning, and I’d been so busy reacting that I hadn’t stopped to consider that maybe the situation had been unfolding in front of my eyes.

  I flipped the folder open and scanned the same paper I’d looked over last night. “This is a list of every person involved in the strike,” I said. “Captain Valderama said Loncar was part of a task force to investigate pop-up drug trafficking rings. Harvey was cooperating with the investigation. Did he say anything about that to the strikers?”

  “No, but he and his sister were on the need-to-know wavelength. It’s not like they told us their master plan. Why?”

  “It says here he had something big planned. Something that would make the police show up and the news take notice. Now he’s in the hospital and Loncar’s in a coma. What if this is all about Harvey? What if he was the target and Loncar was the accidental victim?”

  9

  Double Agent

  I handed Eddie the folder, and he scanned the contents.

  “Where did you get this?” he asked.

  “Harvey brought it to Victoria this morning. It was right before they went into Tradava to negotiate. He tried to give it to her, but she didn’t take it. When they went into Tradava, he must have picked up my folder instead of his.”

  “What was in yours?”

  “Plans for Loncar’s party.”

  “Where are they now?”

  “I don’t know. Does that matter?”

  “I guess not.” Eddie flipped through the pages from Harvey’s folder. “You said he brought this to Victoria?” I nodded. “That doesn’t make sense. They were negotiating against each other. Why tell her what he was planning?”

  I didn’t have an answer to that question either. Considering Harvey and Victoria were on opposing sides of the negotiations, his gesture didn’t make sense. “Unless she’s unofficially working with him to get the demands met? Maybe she’s the double agent.”

  “Dude,” Eddie said. “You have got to stop watching shows about the CIA.”

  I took the folder and flipped it open again. “Victoria and Harvey left together. Loncar showed up and asked me a bunch of questions about what I was doing. That’s weird, right? He’s not in the habit of hanging around the store. He certainly wasn’t there for the two-for-one sale on dress shirts.”

  Eddie tapped the folder. “Did you tell anybody about this?”

  “I told Detective Madden everything I knew, but I thought this folder was full of my plans for Loncar’s party. I didn’t know it wasn’t mine until I brought it home.”

  “That’s not what I mean. Management would have taken that file and used it to damage the effectiveness of the s
trike. You having it and not telling anybody could be viewed as you protecting Harvey’s plans.”

  My stomach roiled. What Eddie said was all well and good—or it would have been, if not for the shooting. If I’d taken that file to the senior management of Tradava, then they would have run interference and the shooter wouldn’t have had an opportunity. And I didn’t want to say it, but Eddie was right.

  The truth was when there was a battle between employer and employees, I sided with the support team. Regardless of my pay structure, my job was in support of the store’s business. I didn’t oversee anybody. I worked behind the scenes to make sure we were stocked with dark chocolate peanut clusters and three packs of cotton panties and Eagles jerseys and prom dresses.

  “I need to give this folder to Detective Madden,” I said. “Maybe it’s important. Maybe not. It’s not up to me to decide.”

  I fished out the card Madden left with me and called. “This is Samantha Kidd,” I said when he answered. “Have you heard anything about Detective Loncar’s condition?”

  “No updates. If anything changes, I’ll let you know.”

  “Detective—” I said before I lost my nerve. “I need to talk to you about what happened at Tradava earlier today. This isn’t me inserting myself into your investigation. I have—I may have—a lead. I think it’s best if you decide.”

  “Where are you calling from, Ms. Kidd?”

  “I’d rather not say.” Eddie held his hands up and mouthed Why Not? I pointed at the dry erase boards mounted around the walls of my kitchen, and he nodded his understanding.

  “Why don’t we meet at—” my mind went blank. I scanned the papers scattered on the table for help. Amidst the plans and the lists was the ad I’d seen for the band I’d been hoping to hire for Loncar’s party. The Ex-Pistols at Whiskey Mick’s. They went on stage at nine.