Union Jacked

by Diane Vallere

  “Why did you agree to meet me tonight?” I asked Madden. “You should be working the case. You should be out there knocking on doors.”

  Madden shifted his weight on his barstool. He stared at his glass and spun it around a few times before answering. “I had no plans to talk to you about the investigation tonight. I wanted to ask you about your friend.”

  “My friend?” I looked behind me to see if Eddie had joined us. He was on the lower level by the stage, leaning against a wall outside the restroom.

  And then it hit me. Madden wanted to talk about Cat. He’d brought her up this morning. All of this, the apple juice, the conversation, and making time for me at eleven forty-five on a Tuesday was because Detective Madden wanted a date with my friend.

  “Detective, if you thought you could use a meeting about finding the person who shot Detective Loncar as your own personal Tinder app, then you’re not only off the mark, you wasted your time.”

  I took my handbag from the hook under the bar and slid off the barstool. “Thank you for the apple juice.” I left.

  In terms of exit lines, it wasn’t one of my best. The April air had cooled considerably, and a chilly breeze snapped at my face when the door closed behind me. My eyes responded by watering. I texted Eddie. New intel. Heading home. Call me.

  He wrote back: Roger that.

  It was after midnight, and I was exhausted. Home. Bed. Sleep. I rounded the corner to find Nick’s truck, but the first thing I saw were black leather fringes. It was Bridget. Outside Whiskey Mick’s. And even though we were alone on the street, there was no question that I was in enemy territory.

  12

  Act of God

  “What are you doing here?” Bridget demanded. She jabbed the air between us with her finger, and the fringes on her jacket hopped about like a dancer in a Mitzi Gaynor routine.

  “Meeting a friend.”

  Bridget scoffed. “A friend? In a cop bar? I doubt it. Nobody wants you here.”

  It was the second time I’d been reminded by a member of the police force that I wasn’t welcome. One time, I could have understood. Two? No. Something other than my reputation was at play here, and I wanted to know what.

  “What is your problem with me?” I asked. “I’ve done nothing to you. Nothing to your department. There is zero call for your attitude unless you’re hiding something.”

  She was. She’d pretended to be Loncar’s daughter. But before I could ask her about that, the door to the bar opened, and two men came out. A flash of fear illuminated her eyes, and then she looked away. The men rounded the corner, barely acknowledging us, and disappeared. Bridget relaxed, but moved to the opposite side of me and kept her eyes on the door.

  “I’ve waited a long time for this, and I won’t let you ruin it for me,” she hissed. “You have no idea what’s going on.”

  “Then tell me,” I said. “Why did you pretend to be Loncar’s daughter at the hospital?”

  “How do you know about that?” Bridget squinted her eyes. She looked like she was processing what I’d said—working through whether she could trust me. I needed an ally. I reached out for her leather-and-fringe sleeve and said, “I care about Detective Loncar too.”

  She pushed me away and lowered her voice. “Stay out of my territory, Ms. Kidd.”

  I’d long ago learned it was police protocol to refer to non-police as Mr, Mrs, or Ms. I’d wasted too much energy trying to convince Loncar to call me Samantha before giving in. But this time it hadn’t been said out of protocol or politeness. The vitriol in her voice said everything.

  Bridget turned back toward the entrance. The door opened again, and Bob stumbled out. The scent of beer radiated off him. He’d be a good candidate for a DUI if he didn’t have a get-out-of-jail-free card in the form of his badge.

  “Hey, Bridget,” he said. “Where’s the love?”

  She ignored him and went inside.

  Too many things were buzzing around my head. Why did she dislike me so much? What had I done? And why pretend to be Loncar’s daughter? She was pushing her way into proximity to him, which I could explain away as concern if she weren’t so openly hostile toward me.

  Bob leered at me. “You a badge bunny now too?”

  “What’s a badge bunny?”

  He laughed, this time not bothering to tell me why. I felt like I was being assessed.

  My phone pinged with a text from Eddie. Band still playing. Want me to stay?

  I texted back: abort mission.

  I practically ran to Nick’s truck. I started the engine and called Eddie. “Hold on,” he said while noise raged in the background. A few seconds later, the noise faded. “Okay, I can hear you now. Go.”

  “Harvey Monahan died earlier tonight. I thought he had a flesh wound. I thought he was behind the shooting. I thought he arranged it for publicity for the union strike. And now he’s dead.”

  “Madden told you that?”

  I nodded. “It’ll be in the paper tomorrow. Madden told me because—” I dropped my head and stared at my hands. “He wants to call Cat and ask her out for coffee. He had no intention of discussing the case.”

  “He doesn’t know you the way Loncar knows you. Like all of us know you. Remember how he was when he investigated the murder of Cat’s husband?”

  “I got the feeling Detective Madden is an outsider on the force, and nobody’s going out of their way to make his transition any smoother.”

  “Maybe he’s the one not doing any favors for himself.”

  “He was in their bar. All alone. He told me the place was filled with cops, but I didn’t see one of them talk to him. It’s like he’s trying to meet them halfway and they’re walking backward.”

  “Dude, Madden’s ability to work and play well with others isn’t your concern.”

  “I know.”

  I hung up and drove home. I realized what the feeling was that had struck me when I sat next to Madden. Familiarity. I didn’t know him, and I didn’t need to know him. What I knew was he was having a hard time adjusting to life in a new city. Just like I had. I blamed my hormones for my reaction inside the bar, but nobody knew about that except me, Nick and Dr. Emma at the hospital.

  But the longer I went without telling Eddie, the worse I felt. Like I had this secret that I knew was going to change our friendship. I was compartmentalizing my life like a good secret agent, but it came with a price. I felt alone and desperate.

  I checked the clock on the dashboard and did some time zone math. Nick would be here tomorrow. I needed to talk to Nick about Detective Loncar and Detective Madden and Harvey Monahan and then go from there.

  The next morning, I woke, expecting morning sickness. I’d learned to tolerate the general twistiness in my tummy, but I didn’t want to be lulled into a false sense of confidence. I remained in the bed for fifteen minutes, paying close attention to alien symptoms (don’t tell Nick I called them that) and when I identified nothing other than a growing need to pee, I got up.

  It was ten after eight. Nick would be home later tonight. Nothing would seem so scary once he was here. I just had to keep myself distracted for the next twelve hours, and then I could relax. I called Victoria and left her a message that I’d meet her under the tent. I drank two cups of coffee while waiting for her to call back. She didn’t.

  I searched my new Keep Calm and Carry On sweater for tags to snip. When I didn’t find any, I assumed the support staff hadn’t had a chance to attach them. I pulled the sweater on and paired it with black leather leggings and black moto boots. When dressed, I headed to Tradava. I’d heard nothing about whether the store would be open or closed, so it seemed prudent to assume I still had a job.

  A crowd stood in front of Tradava, but there were no picket signs, no enthusiasm, no cheerleader moves. I drove past them slowly and picked out Frank Mazurkiewicz and his Ribbon Eagle/Times camera crew. He looked up as I passed, and I slowed and rolled down the window.

  “Frank, hi, Samantha Kidd. I was here last night?�
��

  “Sure, I remember.”

  “You heard the news about Harvey, right?”

  “We got the word after you left. I wrote the article in the van and made the deadline.”

  I should have known Frank broke the story. He’d been right here, keeping an eye on the site of the shooting. Harvey’s sister Taryn had been conducting the candlelight vigil. Someone must have contacted her with the news. Where Carl was persistent about getting a story, Frank appeared to accept the bread crumbs that fell into his lap reluctantly.

  “I don’t imagine the union workers are planning to strike today,” I said. “Have you heard anything?”

  “There’s a petition for Tradava to fund Harvey’s memorial service, and somebody mentioned a GoFundMe campaign, but I wouldn’t put much stock in either idea.” He stood up straight and looked at the crowd. “If you ask me, the real victim in all this is Tradava.”

  “They’ve got Piccadilly Group signing the checks. They’ll survive.”

  “Nope, just got word that Piccadilly found a loophole in the contracts. Mass shooting in front of a recently acquired property falls under the act of God clause. All funding was frozen.”

  “Piccadilly pulled out of the deal? Because of what happened here?” Frank nodded. “But if Tradava doesn’t get that money, they’ll be forced to file Chapter 11 and liquidate.”

  “Ironic, isn’t it? Harvey Monahan just wanted to get better pay for half of the store, and because of what happened, everybody’s going to be out of a job.”

  13

  Human Resources

  I left Frank and drove Nick’s truck around the back of Tradava. I called Victoria, and the call went into voice mail. If what Frank said were true, then Victoria would have no official reason to return my call.

  The store was on a skeleton crew. I passed six cartons of Jacob’s Twiglets on my way to the office and a fixture filled with folded Keep Calm and Carry On sweaters like the one I wore. The whole store was stocked with new merchandise that I’d ordered with the Piccadilly x Tradava shopping event in mind. The sweaters, like the Twiglets, were a reminder of what I’d expected to be doing right now, and the layer of dust that covered the fixture indicated how far Life had veered off course.

  There was a single message waiting for me. “Call Human Resources.”

  This was my least favorite message. Has anything good ever come from being called to Human Resources? Though, at this stage, I couldn’t imagine how things could get worse.

  I called. “Hi, this is Samantha Kidd. I got a—”

  “Samantha. There’s an emergency managers’ meeting in HR. Come as soon as you can.”

  Things just got worse.

  I wasted no time delaying the inevitable and arrived in HR three minutes later. John Jones, the HR manager, was waiting for me. With him was Victoria. I hadn’t seen her since she left me in the parking lot to go into the store and handle negotiations with Harvey, and while her presence at Tradava made perfect sense, I was surprised to see her.

  “Simontha,” she said. “Please, have a seat.”

  Today Victoria wore a plaid blazer with suede elbow patches over an ivory silk blouse that tied at the neck. A long A-line skirt that came to mid-calf draped over the top of suede riding boots. Oxford English Professor, I thought. She reached her hand up and tucked her strawberry blond hair behind one ear, displaying a tasteful ring with a small pearl and matching pearl stud earrings.

  “Am I early?” I asked.

  “No,” she replied. “No other managers showed up for work today.”

  Any other day, I would have considered it a good sign that I’d demonstrated my loyalty to the store by showing up, but it seemed the writing was on the wall.

  I caught my reflection in a framed vintage Tradava ad. Dust from the store had adhered to the front of my sweater, and I swatted at it a few times as if brushing away crumbs. I sat in a stiff black leather chair with a chrome frame, and Victoria stood by the front of the reception desk.

  “Simontha, I wish we were speaking under better circumstances,” Victoria said. “I’d hoped for us to establish a working relationship that would see Tradava flourish under our ownership, but I’m afraid that’s not to be.”

  “Then it’s true? It sounds to me like your company never wanted to buy Tradava in the first place. Is that how you do business on the other side of the pond?”

  She looked at her hands. “My employer regrets the turn of events that led us to this moment.” She looked at John. “If you’ll excuse me, Mr. Jones will fill you in on your severance package.” She kept her eyes diverted from both mine and John’s until she was out of the room.

  “What is this?” I said, half to myself. “I thought we were in the clear. Piccadilly’s acquisition of Tradava was in all the trade journals. It was a done deal.”

  “Not exactly.” John leaned against the desk in front of me. He folded his hands and flicked his thumbnails against each other. The tiny movement drew attention to the one part of his anatomy that I, as his employee, shouldn’t have my attention drawn to. I forced myself to look down at his shoes (black wingtip oxfords) and his socks (black with tiny teal squares). “The board of directors reviewed the contract, and there was a clause that allowed Piccadilly to back out with no repercussions.”

  “The act of God clause,” I said. “I’ve heard about it. But isn’t that supposed to mean hurricanes and tornadoes and flooding?”

  “Yes,” he said. “And mass shootings that have the possibility of leaving a negative mark on a physical property.”

  It felt like a weak argument. Since I’d been back in Ribbon, Tradava had been the sight of two murders. The retailer’s name had been in and out of the newspapers, linked to criminal activity. “This store has been through worse,” I said.

  “Piccadilly wrote that off as being related to past management. They expected to take over, conduct mandatory personality tests of the remaining staff, and bring in new employees as positions opened up.”

  What might have sounded paranoid to someone not in the industry was standard practice. Before I’d been promoted at Bentley’s, I’d been instructed to take a series of standardized tests. Everybody in senior management had. The tests determined our problem-solving skills, work ethic, and loyalty to the company. We weren’t dealing in government secrets, but when you’re part of a multi-billion-dollar business, your superiors want reassurance that you’re part of the team.

  The tests, though designed to identify strengths and weaknesses, also called out personality flaws. People who worked well in teams and those who wanted credit for themselves. People who could see the big picture, and those who got lost in the details. People who bought into the vision of the company, and those who secretly resented their position as cogs in the machine.

  Tests like that might have highlighted a person with tendencies to bring a gun to work.

  “Who else knows about the testing?” I asked.

  “It was common knowledge among the senior staff,” John said. “The decision to reclassify the support staff was because those tests might have forced us to cut valuable employees.”

  I felt my forehead scrunch as I tried to understand. “You mean the reclassification of some of our managers to support staff was to protect them? They wouldn’t have had to take those tests?”

  “That’s right,” John said. “We didn’t lower anyone’s salary. We simply determined an hourly rate equal to their current salary. The reclassification would have benefitted people who tended toward overtime. They’d make the same amount of money for a forty-hour workweek.”

  I was surprised that Eddie hadn’t mentioned that, but all along, he’d seemed more annoyed about having to participate in the strike than having his senior management pay bracket changed. Eddie was that rare individual who cared more about his job than anything else. With the strike temporarily paused, I wouldn’t have been surprised to find him in the store assembling a Union Jack display out of colored denim.

  �
��I’m curious. Did Harvey Monahan know about any of this? He was the strike leader and the one heading up negotiations. If he understood about the changes in pay structure, surely he would have known it was better for the staff than the way things were.”

  “Yes, he knew. He had a copy of the contract from Piccadilly. Harvey Monahan wasn’t concerned with the salaries of our employees. The one thing he negotiated against was the standardized testing.”

  “Why would he care about that?”

  “Samantha, before Harvey became the strike negotiator who took on Piccadilly, he was one of their employees. Something in his profile earned him immediate termination.”

  14

  Rude Americans

  My initial thought was that John Jones had no business telling me that. But then I considered what we knew. Harvey was dead. No other managers had shown up to work at Tradava. And in a matter of days, we’d all be out of work.

  “Harvey told me he had an almost one hundred percent success rate with negotiations,” I said. “Do you know if that’s true?”

  “I don’t know. Piccadilly purchased retailers around the country, but companies generally don’t talk about things like that.”

  “I got the feeling he and Victoria weren’t strangers. Like maybe they’ve gone head-to-head before.”

  “It’s possible. Why?”

  “I’m just wondering about the shooting. Harvey and Victoria came in to meet with you, but only Harvey came out.”

  “They didn’t meet with me,” he said. “Whatever negotiations were discussed, they happened without my knowledge.”