Save Me (26 page)

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.

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.