Save Me (27 page)

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 go 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.”

Rose saw her opening to talk about Bill Gigot. “I heard from Trish that there was even a guy who got killed here, around that time.”

“Yep. Bill.” Juanita’s mouth made a grim line. “He was on the night shift, where you’ll be. I remember, because I was worried sick about Christmas. We didn’t know what we could afford to get the kids or how long I’d have to take less pay.” Juanita eyed the X-ray screen. “Finally, we started back with the chocolate-filled, and even though we don’t make the peanut-filled nuggets or crackers anymore, we still don’t put peanut-free on the bags. We can’t take a chance, on account of the FDA and the lawsuits.”

“I heard he had a forklift accident.”

“He did.” Juanita pointed to the left. “Right over there. You can see the loading dock.”

“Creepy.” Rose turned around, but she couldn’t see around the corner. “Do accidents like that happen a lot, here?”

“A fatality, at Homestead? No way.” Juanita eyed the X-ray screen. “Forklifts can be dangerous. Bill came over here from the big plant, wait, lemme think, I don’t know exactly when he started”—Juanita positioned the next box—“but I know he was here by July. I remember because of the holiday. We had a company picnic, and he was the new guy, over from the big plant. The peanut people always stuck together. That was our joke.” Juanita chuckled. “Bill was a nice guy, and he’d been with the company a long time. Then all of a sudden, I come in, I hear he died.”

“I wonder how that happened. I guess he wasn’t experienced on the forklift.”

“No, he was. Very. Drove a forklift at the big plant, too.”

Rose didn’t get it. Mojo told Julie that Bill wasn’t experienced. “So isn’t that strange that he could have an accident, even though he’s so experienced?”

“No, accidents happen to experienced people. I think they happen more, because the experienced guys don’t watch as much. My neighbor is a roofer thirty years, and last week he fell off a ladder and broke his leg.” Juanita shook her head, closing the flaps on the next box. “Still, I was so sad when Bill died.”

“I’m sure. Did anybody see what happened, that night?”

“No, there weren’t any other employees around. We were down to a skeleton crew at night because of what I told you.” Juanita closed another box. “They didn’t find him until it was too late. He bled to death.”

“Yikes. Who found him?” Rose was verifying her facts.

“The Director of Safety. Joe Modjeska. Mojo.” Juanita sent another box on its way. “Great guy.”

Right
. “Did you have a lot of interaction with him?”

“Mojo was here all the time. He was in our building so much, we called him Mr. Peanut.” Juanita smiled, moving the next box along. “He resigned but I heard they asked for it. The captain goes down with the ship.”

“Why was Mojo here so much? Did you have more safety problems than the big plant?” Rose didn’t want to sound too inquisitive. “I don’t want to work in a place with a lot of safety problems.”

“Don’t worry, the new guy hardly ever comes by.” Juanita eyed the screen again. “Mojo just liked us, that’s what he said. He thought we were more fun, and we are.” Juanita smiled, and Rose joined her, but she was dying to get a look at the loading dock, to check the rest of Mojo’s account.

“Can I take a bathroom break, boss?” she asked.