Steeled for Murder (30 page)

I sat at the end of one of the crowded tables. No one said anything to me, and I didn’t start up any conversations.

Arnold, looking sour as ever, came around. He stopped beside me. At my eye level, he clutched his clipboard tightly in a bent and gnarled hand. The hand seemed to be only part of a hand; it had the stubs of two fingers and a thumb. Had he been injured in an industrial accident? I’d heard rumors of the old days, before most of the safety regulations, when injuries were commonplace and workers’ comp hard to come by.

I finished up my bologna sandwich, courtesy of Tiffany’s sixty dollars. Without that unexpected windfall, I most likely would have been out of even peanut butter and bread this long after my last paycheck.

“Jesse.” He consulted the clipboard.

I turned to look up at him. “Yeah?”

“I hear you done good,” he said. His mouth moved in a grimace that might have been his idea of a smile.

“Thank you,” I said, brushing some crumbs from the table into onto the plastic wrap I’d used for my sandwich.

“I got the forklift crap set up. You and two guys from this shift are gonna take the classroom portion of the training this afternoon. Then tomorrow, you start driving.”

“Okay.” I looked up at him. “How long’s it going to take?”

“Classroom training is mandatory. After that, you practice until you pass the driving test.” He gave a quick grin. “Or until Mac, the trainer, gives up on you. And he don’t give up easy.”

After lunch, the three of us assembled at a scuffed table in the back of the shipping room, where the equipment noise was a dull roar instead of an ear-shattering din.

Mac, an older man with gray hair and a limp, arrived carrying what looked like elementary school workbooks. He handed them out and stood glaring at us.

“You two, I know,” he said, nodding at my companions. “You, I don’t. You gonna go back to midnights when you finish the training?”

“I think that’s the plan,” I said.

“You gonna take Mitch’s place on that shift?”

“Somebody’s got to,” I said.

Mac rocked back on his heels and peered down his nose at me. “Ain’t you the guy killed him?”

No good answer to that, but I said, “Wasn’t me killed him.”

“Ain’t you a murderer?”

That kept coming up. “Do have a murder conviction,” I said.

“Skin charges, too, I hear.” Mac scratched his nose.

My gut tightened. I got a grip on my anger. I wished that rumor hadn’t gotten started. “That’s wrong. Never charged with sex offenses.”

The other two men turned to look at me. One moved almost imperceptivity farther away from me.

Mac scowled. “And yer out on parole?”

“Yeah.”

“And now yer gonna take Mitch’s job?”

“Look.” I sat up straight and squared my shoulders. “I didn’t ask for this job. I’m doing what I been told to do. If you don’t want to train me, just tell Arnold you don’t think I’ll ever make a lift driver, and they’ll have to find someone else. I’m not going to argue about it. And I’m not going to beg you to include me in this class.”

Actually, I might beg, if it meant my job. But not to this guy. If Radman wanted me to drive the forklift, for whatever reason, I had to learn to drive it. Life as an unemployed parolee looked pretty bleak. And short.

Mac shrugged. “Nothing to me. I just train whoever they send me.” He dug in his pocket, brought out short stumps of pencils with no erasers, and handed them out.

The method of instruction consisted basically of Mac reading the workbook to us, letting us complete the exercises, and moving to hands-on training.

The workbook part came easy to me. All those hours spent reading. I had no trouble with the exercises. I finished and waited patiently for the others to catch up.

Driving the lift was another matter. At first, it seemed to have a mind of its own about where to go. I finally realized that because its steering wheels were in the back, not the front like a car, it could pivot on a dime. I had to adjust my expectations of what the front end would do when I tried to steer it.

At least I wasn’t the one who knocked over a whole stack of pallets. The rest of us jumped back away from the tumbling pallets and saw first-hand that the protective cage over the driver’s seat was a pretty good idea.

When we got the results of the written test, I discovered I’d aced it. Mac read over the answers in my test booklet and nodded. He moved on to the next one. Glancing up at one of the other men, he said in disgust, “What’s the first rule about driving a forklift?”

The guy shifted uncomfortably on his feet. “I dunno.”

“What did you put down?”

Looking sheepish, he said, “Don’t run down the foreman.”

Mac frowned. “You think this is a joke?”

“No. I just didn’t know the answer. So I put down the first thing that came to mind.”

Mac turned to me. “What’s the answer?”

I didn’t like to show anybody up, but I answered, “Run with your forks down.”

“Right. If you do hit somebody—and Lord knows you better not—you don’t want to run a fork through their gut.”

We spent the next three days loading trucks, moving parts, stacking containers in the warehouse. On Friday afternoon, all three of us passed the driving test. I felt like I needed more practice, but Mac seemed satisfied.

Had to pay more attention to what I was doing than most of the jobs, but it was a lot easier than running a plater.

Friday afternoon. People milling around the time clock. Everyone else got a paycheck; vacation pay for the holiday week off. I stuck my hands in the pockets of my jacket. I had the monitoring fee for next week and not a whole lot else. But I had two slices of bologna, a big jar of peanut butter and a loaf of bread. And some instant coffee. I’d make it.

“Congratulations.” Arnold, the day shift foreman, handed me a manila envelope. “You passed all the tests. Yer certified on industrial trucks. I talked to John; yer to report on the midnight shift Sunday night.”

“Thank you,” I said to Arnold, taking the envelope. Great. That wouldn’t give me time to get in touch with Mr. Ramirez to adjust the time by Sunday night. Maybe I could just call and leave a message. Tell him I would go ahead with the schedule change unless I heard back from him.

I was tired. I turned toward my apartment. Weak winter sun glittered on the dirty ice patches on the sidewalks.

“Jesse.” A familiar woman’s voice came from behind me.

I swung around.

Kelly stood there, dressed in a clean hoodie and jeans, next to her parked car.

I stopped and looked toward her. What did she want? I hadn’t been near her or her kids. My stomach clenched in a knot. I tried to keep my voice calm. “Yeah?”

Kelly looked down at her boots. “I figured you’d be getting off now. I wanted to talk to you.”

I kept my distance and nodded.

“Wanna go get something to eat?” she asked.

I tried to smile, but I don’t think it worked. “I don’t know what you’re getting at, but I’d be totally crazy to go somewhere with you. And I’m not that crazy.”

“What do you mean?”

“Look, I appreciate you not calling my PO about what you think I did to Brianna. Or to you. But I’m not gonna put myself in the position of being alone with you. I don’t need no more rumors started.” I shivered and pulled my jacket tighter around me.

“Yeah. That.” Kelly pushed her hair back from her eyes. “That’s what I wanted to talk to you about.” She looked around uncomfortably. “This isn’t a good place.”

“It’s the only place. Out in plain sight. Look, I’m sorry it happened. I didn’t do what you think I did. But I can’t blame you for thinking it. What else is there to say?”

“I owe you an apology.”

My turn to ask, “What do you mean?”

“When I was talking to the kids about going with their Dad this weekend, Chris assured me he wouldn’t say anything about me drinking and falling asleep before I got my nightgown on. I asked him what did he mean.” Kelly looked down at her boots and shifted her weight.

“What did he say?”

“He said Christmas Eve, when he and Brianna got home from their grandmother’s, they’d gone up to get ready for bed. Evidently I was asleep on my bed, mostly undressed. An empty bottle was on the floor. He said I hadn’t managed to get my nightgown on.”

“Yeah. You’d grabbed it, and you were holding on to it for dear life. But that was about as far as you got with it.” I grinned at the memory, realized how that might look, and wiped the grin off my face.

Kelly smiled. “So I take it I must have been pretty drunk.”

“Well, you weren’t sober.” No point mentioning the snoring if the kids hadn’t.

“Chris said you went in my room after he and Brianna were in bed,” she said. “He was worried, so he got up and watched. He’s seen me and his daddy get into some real fights when we were both drunk. You didn’t close the door. He said you straightened me out on the bed and covered me up. Otherwise, you didn’t touch me.”

“Well, I did roll you over, too. I didn’t want you to choke if you puked.” I was still cold, but I’d stopped shivering.

“Thank you,” she said.

“Anytime.” Stupid thing to say.

“Then I asked Brianna exactly where you kissed her when you ‘kissed her all over.’” Kelly didn’t meet my eyes.

“What’d she say?”

“She pointed to both cheeks and her forehead.”

“Yeah. That’s about right.” Muscles in my shoulders and neck that I hadn’t realized were tense relaxed.

“Just like her daddy used to do, she said.” Kelly looked sheepish.

“Wouldn’t know about that.”

“She said she had to show you where to kiss her.” Kelly rubbed her nose with her gloved hand.

I nodded.

“I guess it looks like I jumped to the wrong conclusion,” Kelly said, raising her eyes to my face. “So I guess I owe you an apology.”

“Don’t worry about it. You were looking out for your kid. Right thing to do.” I didn’t point out that drinking that much and leaving the kids with someone she didn’t know all that well was not exactly looking out for her kids. Maybe she’d learned something.

“It would have really hurt you if I’d called your PO.” Kelly bit her lip.

“But you didn’t. No real harm done.” How much had she said to people at work? And to her father? That might cause real harm, but it couldn’t be undone.

Kelly took a step toward me and planted her feet defiantly. “I really want to say I’m sorry.”

“Apology accepted,” I said. Didn’t change the rumors, but it was probably the best she could do. And she didn’t have to do that. I turned to go.

“I meant it about getting something to eat,” she said.

“And I meant it about not being totally crazy. I’m not getting in your car right now.”

“How about I meet you at the diner? Their suppers aren’t as good as their breakfasts, but they’re not bad. I usually get a hot roast beef sandwich and mashed potatoes.”

That sounded good. But I had no money. I wasn’t going to eat yet another restaurant meal paid for by a woman. “I got to get home. I’m back on the monitoring.” I didn’t add that I had a while before I had to check in.

Kelly nodded.

I wanted nothing more than to sit across the table from Kelly and feel her knee brush against mine. Time, though, to make a smart decision. Who knew what Kelly might say next time she was drinking? And who she might say it to? “Maybe another time.”

Kelly looked like she might cry.

I felt like somebody had punched me in the stomach. But I turned and walked away.

I spent most of the weekend wishing I could have gone with her but glad I had enough guts not to.

Sunday night—really, Monday morning—at work, I looked around for Kelly. What would I say if she talked to me? But she was nowhere to be seen.

John glanced up from his clipboard when I approached him. His face was expressionless. “So now you’re certified as a driver, huh?” he said.

“Yeah. Do you want me to start tonight?”

“Might as well. Simon can work with you for tonight, show you what needs to be done. You’ll have to pick it up quick. After tonight, you can ask Kelly if you need help.” He put a mark on his papers on the clipboard.