Chapter Nineteen – Working Overtime at the Factory
Gloria bought much of my BS on the ride home to her place. I succeeded partly because it’s human nature to want to believe that all of your problems will soon be solved, so Gloria bought into that promise. The other part of my success, I have to admit, is that I’m a great BSer.
After putting the horses up and arriving back at her home, Gloria served us a delicious dinner of some kind of Thai food she’d prepared earlier. This time we sat inside her house, rather than out on the precipice. The great room was lit only by candlelight and fire light, as the sun finally set leaving the once visible rock cliffs cloaked by a blanket of soft darkness all around the outside of the house. Apparently, Gloria never closed the drapes on the floor to ceiling windows that spanned the back of the house.
At nine PM, I rose from the table, called my dog, who was lying with Kachina and Kiva by the crackling fire, and informed Gloria I needed to go—mainly because I had to wake up bright and early to work Saturday overtime in her factory pumping out Yellow Flower and catching the culprit in the act. What a crock! I thought. But who can ever know what the morrow holds? Miracles can still happen. I sincerely hoped so, and I had Gloria convinced that miracles would happen. Now, all I had to do was deliver.
I woke up late on Saturday morning, hit the shower and shoved myself into semi-clean jeans and a clean long-sleeved, form-fitting lavender T-shirt that I only sort of liked; that’s why it was clean—I never wore it. I slashed on a lot of mascara and matching lavender eye shadow, spiked up my hair, checked Snack’s water, dumped some dry food in his bowl, and dashed out to the Mazda to try and make it on time for work, speeding slightly through traffic, racing through the gowning room and badging my way onto the factory floor just as the clock struck 8 AM—at which point I stopped dead in my tracks.
Sitting at Ancient Annie’s desk typing furiously on Ancient Annie’s computer was Marissa, the Schizoid Admin, in living color. Say what?! This threw me. What was going on? Had they let Annie go again? And inserted in her place this twisted woman who couldn’t even lead a herd of lemmings to jump off a cliff together?
I decided to sneak up behind her the best I could to see what she was doing. She was typing away on some kind of blog site about vampires and ghouls. Chains dripping in blood wrapped like a frame around the blog-site. As usual, she was pounding away violently at the keyboard as if she were driving pilings into hard ground. Such an intense, imbalanced young woman! Her black frenchie hair kept falling in her face and she’d whip her head back in an angry gesture so she could see to continue her furious typing.
I leaned in to see if I could glimpse what she was typing. Her typing was rapid and very proficient, well over ninety words a minute from my uneducated guess. Too bad none of her skill set seemed to be serving any constructive purpose. Bang, bang, bang, the fonts emerged on the page with angry precision: you lousy, asshole son of a bitch. How dare you, you motherfucking fool … I liked her use of alliteration, but I wanted to know what was going on. I interrupted the flow of typed bile pretending I hadn’t seen anything, “Good morning, Marissa. This is the first Saturday I’ve worked overtime and I was expecting Annie to be here.”
She quickly minimized the ghoul site. Spun her chair around to face me. In a perfectly singsong, high-pitched voice, like an automaton, she informed me, “Annie doesn’t usually work Saturdays because she performs volunteer work for the homeless on the weekends, so I take her place. Since you’re new, you wouldn’t know that I used to be a supervisor for the Yellow Flower line before I was promoted to the front office. How may I help you?” Her voice trilled back and forth like a metronome. I almost expected her to break into song, some kind of springtime ditty in iambic pentameter.
Obviously she’d been too drugged out at the party to remember our bedroom encounter. Or was she just pretending to have forgotten? I continued, “Oh, no, thank you, Marissa, I was just concerned about Annie; that’s all.” I wandered back to my station glancing over my shoulder as I went. Marissa had spun her chair back to face the keyboard, her head and hair bowed over it like a virtuoso beginning a piano solo in a concert hall. Then she flipped her hair back in an angry toss and began pounding the keys again.
I arrived at my station immersed myself in the capping process, but at the first possible opportunity, I shifted up the line to where TMI Trinity sat running bottle loading, “Hey, Trinity, has Marissa been the Line Leader for most Saturday overtime for Yellow Flower?”
Trinity kept her eye on her job, responding in a lowered tone, “Hi Parker. Marissa has been the Line Leader every single Saturday, not just this one. That’s why our production is lower on Saturdays. She never helps out like Annie does. She just sits there typing away on the computer doing God knows what for the entire day and getting paid time-and-a-half while she’s doing it! It really irks me, but I’m not even sure she’d know how to help out on the line if she had to, she’s so detached.”
Trinity and I had bonded when we’d worked so hard together post BYOE Hump Day Party. We’d become buds. I matched my tone to hers, “Yeah, I was thrown for a loop when I didn’t see Annie at her desk. I thought something might have happened to her. Okay, thanks for filling me in, Trinity. Let me know if you need me to spot you or something.”
“Thanks, girl. I will. I’m good for now though. See you at break.”
“See you then.” I hurried back to my station because the whirr, thunk, whirr, thunk sounds had stopped completely. Sure enough, some caps were hung up. I realigned the cap machine and re-started it. The familiar whirr, thunk cadence returned. Success.
Now if I could just achieve success in my real job, I thought, as I watched the capper do its thing. I began to sort through the investigation in my mind. If Marissa were here every single Saturday, it rearranged my thinking about her potential as the acid lacer. I began to give that possibility much more credence. Marissa was definitely a weirdo, but was she weird enough to inject acid into the Yellow Flower line? And why? What would be her motive? Plus, she just didn’t seem together enough to pull it all off. She’d have to go buy the hydrofluoric acid somewhere. I wasn’t sure if she needed to apply for a permit in advance. I’d have to ask Geo. It was a highly corrosive liquid that would need to be handled with care. How would she get it into the factory, first of all, and secondly, how would she then inject it into the Yellow Flower line itself? And when?
Well, we know when, at least to a degree, I ruminated. We know it was on a Saturday. My guess would be during a break, at lunch or right after work. She could tarry behind and do the job at the end of the day after everyone had left. Who would be the wiser? The facility had no cameras then—nor did it now, but the cameras were at least on order—and the quality checks were random and at the end of the process, with no spot checks in between. Geo had said that approximately fifty percent of the Yellow Flower product had shown signs of acid contamination. I imagined that the factory’s labeling system was time stamped in some way. I should have asked Sally Snort about it. I decided to ask her at the first opportunity if she was in the plant on a Saturday.
My opportunity to seek out Sally arose soon when it became time to wheel my first big load of product into Distribution. I shoved the cart along and banged through the entrance doors. Sure enough, there stood Sally Snort carefully checking product.
“Hey, Sally, I have some questions for you.” I rolled my big cart up beside her.
When I wheeled up close, I realized she didn’t look as cheery and bubbly as the time I’d first met her. I peered in more closely. In fact, she looked downright nervous and wired. Maybe she’s the culprit? popped into my head. She certainly has total facility and product access with no questions asked.
“I have a question for you, Sally,” I said again to gain her attention and get her to focus. She seemed distracted, but I persisted. “I realize every one of these bottles has a UPC code. Is there some kind of a time-stamped numbering system that goes along with that?�
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My question stopped her up short. Her distracted air vanished instantly as her eyes lasered in on my face. I’d grabbed her full attention with a single question. Interesting.
“Why do you want to know?” she shot back suspiciously.
Time to BS fast. “I know I’m new here, but I’ve been thinking about my career progression. I’m considering a role in management or quality control, so the more I learn about the process the better. Wouldn’t you agree?”
Sally Snort’s blue eyes squinted even more narrowly at me. “You’re the first production team member in the history of the company, or as long as I’ve been here, who’s asked me anything about our numbering and time system. To answer your question, yes, we can tell exactly when each product was produced by the way we stamp it.”
“For instance, from your numbering and time system, would I be able to figure out for the Yellow Flower line, working overtime on a Saturday, which bottles were created in the morning and which in the afternoon?”
Sally Snort’s cherubic countenance, with its sprinkling of freckles like brown sugar dots, contorted so rapidly in response to this comment she became unrecognizable. Her eyes, lips, forehead, freckles, everything all contorted inward as if a piece of paper were crushed into a ball, ready for the trash. My weirdo-alert shifted into hyper-drive and I became wary. Maybe I’d been barking up the wrong trees in the wrong room altogether? Wouldn’t be the first time. I thought in a rare moment of self-deprecation.
Sally Snort sidled up, right into my face, except she was so short that she sidled up right into my tits, and I had to look down at her contorted face, with her freckles all smooshed up in a little ball, while she glared up at me from chest height. She muttered in a voice that sounded like she was possessed by the devil and in immediate need of an exorcism, “You need to come with me. Right now!”
Holy shit! Now what? This was a strange turn of events. Her voice had transformed so much, I feared her head might start spinning around. I began to review the acid events in my head. Sally Snort had been the original discoverer. If Sally were also the perpetrator, she would have gained three advantages by alerting Gloria and her quality manager, Theresa Anderson, to her quote unquote discovery. She’d immediately throw suspicion off herself. She’d continue to have easy and even greater access to the facility, and last but not least, she’d buy herself more time, while she concocted whatever evil scheme she had in mind for her second act.
Then a fourth, ugly possibility popped into my mind. She could also try to throw suspicion onto someone else. As in moi! Of course, I’d argue vehemently that I hadn’t even been here for the first incident, but a lot of precious investigation time would be wasted while everything got sorted out.
She grabbed my arm gruffly and began dragging me towards the exit door. Why the exit door? Why wouldn’t she be dragging me into her boss, Theresa Anderson? Or into Fake Freddy, the head of Security and HR all rolled into one? Oh, right. I knew the answer to that one. Fake Freddy wasn’t even in that day because he’d soon be heading up I17 to Sedona to visit Gloria for an afternoon ride and a little talkin’ to. All these thoughts skittered through my mind while Sally kind of kneed me in the rear and shoved me toward the exit door. I looked around while she kept kneeing me from behind. Of the skeleton crew that ran Distribution on a Saturday, not a single soul even noticed or cared what was happening to me at the hands of the Quality Department. Strong evidence that quality, as the mantra went, truly was “number one” at Glory’s Organic Lotions and not to be questioned. I’d have to tell Gloria the good news one day—if I lived to tell the tale.
I’d already sized up Sally Snort and figured I could whip her ass easily in a knockdown, drag out fight, but the truth was I wanted to know where she was taking me and why she was taking me there, and the only way I could find out was to let her knee me out the back door. What I didn’t know was if she were carrying a weapon or if she had an accomplice. Either situation would greatly lesson my odds of getting unharmed in this rapidly emerging situation. These thoughts streamed through my mind as she propped open the exit door and kneed me roughly through it out into the November sunlight.
I quickly glanced around assessing my surroundings and options. Sally was kneeing me across a back parking lot normally used as access to the Distribution loading docks. From previous observation, I knew that during the week huge distribution trucks would back up to the open docks hourly and all the pallets the factory crew had worked so hard to fill were loaded on and driven to Goodyear, a town just up the I10 where an Amazon distribution center was conveniently located. But right now, Sally Snort was forcing me away from the loading docks towards a shiny black van with completely darkened windows parked sideways across three parking spots in the back lot.
I admit my thinking was becoming redundant because for the second time in the last few minutes the words Holy Shit! passed through my brain. Now what? Should I allow myself to be hustled into the van for the sake of the case? Or should I wrench myself free, just report Sally to Gloria and hope we could find evidence linking her to the acid lacing? That seemed like a lame choice. This shoving incident would just be my word against Sally’s. What did it prove? Nothing. Besides, I needed to know who was in the van. Sally obviously had an accomplice. I needed to know the identity of her accomplice.
The thought of identifying both perpetrators filled me with energy and excitement. Finally, I was just about to blow this case wide open! Buoyed by that thought, I decided to take my chances with at least peeking into the van and making my decision as to what to do next on the fly, using what Sylvester Swane called my amazing intuition and Geo called my dumbass luck.
I did have my phone with Geo, Hayden and others on speed dial. While we made our way across the parking lot, I gently sneaked one hand down into my gown pocket closing my fingers around my phone. If I didn’t have time to dial it in the impending situation, I could at least bong Sally over the head with it or throw it full force at her accomplice once he or she unveiled themselves—that unveiling was imminent as Sally shoved me toward the backseat passenger side door rather than the rear-end double doors where a corpse might go. A good sign.
Sally wrestled me up against the side of the van, clutching me tightly, and smashing my cheek and hips against the door, while she attempted to simultaneously open the side door. No luck. I kept wriggling about and making it difficult for her pretty much as a matter of pride. I knew I could whip her if I needed too because, let’s face it, she was a lot more cherubic than I was. Cherubs don’t fare well in hand-to-hand combat with semi-bad girls like Parker Bowe and/or Sammy Dick.
Sally tried twice more to open the door with no luck. I was just about to say, “Do you want some help with that?” when she finally managed to heave the door open and thrust me inside. I would have exclaimed Holy Shit! to myself one more time with feeling, but even I was becoming bored with that cliché. Besides I was too interested in trying to make out anything at all in the dark interior after the blinding November sunlight. I’d kind of slumped over on the seat as she shoved me in, so I immediately raised myself up to prepare for what lay next. The first thing I saw as my vision adjusted to the dark interior was a gold Phoenix Police badge staring me in the face. I squinted more closely at the name tag. It said Montaigne Devereux. Mountain!
I didn’t say Holy Shit! this time. I said out loud, “What the fuck! Mountain, what the hell are you doing here?”
“I thought you said you wanted some assistance on your acid-lacing case, Sammy?” Mountain replied calmly. “So when I saw the request for help come in from the factory’s quality department, I took it.”
The van was set up with bench seats in the rear that faced each other. After shutting the side van door behind her, Sally Snort slid into the rear-facing seats right across from us and started throwing her questions into the dog-pile of confusion, along with mine.
“Sammy? Why is he calling you, Sammy? I thought your name was Parker? Parker Bowe,” she demanded
. We’d thoroughly pissed off the cherub.
I was starting to get pissed off too. What the hell? Here I thought I was going to unveil two of the bad guys at the eleventh, more like the thirteenth hour, and all I’d unveiled were two of the good guys and one of the good guys was my friggin’ boyfriend, for fuck sakes! Plus my last day to work undercover and solve the case was rapidly sliding away—right out from under me, along with all the money Geo and I desperately needed to earn. All of it was at risk. On top of that, I’d lose Sylvester’s esteem for me, not to mention Gloria’s and any more lucrative future cases. Shit! Shit! Shit!
“Enough of this,” I retorted angrily to her. “My name is Sammy Dick, and I’m a private, undercover investigator. I’ll leave you two here together for Officer Devereux to explain the details to you, Sally, but right now, I gotta go and solve a case while there’s still time! See ya.” On that harsh note, I tried to slide open the van door and spring out. No such luck. It stuck.
“Son of a bitch!” I muttered forcefully, throwing my weight against the door handle. It still stuck.
Mountain leaned over and said, “Do you want some help with that?”
“Hell, no. I don’t want help with anything. Because your help is not help. Your help is a hindrance. I have a job to do and money to be made.” I tried the damn door again. “And why in the fuck is this door still stuck!”
Mountain leaned over and opened it. I leaped back out into the crisp, clear November day, strode in long, venomous strides back across the parking lot, through the exit door, re-entering my badge, found my cart, shoved my pallets onto the appropriate shelves and swung back out through the huge double doors whamming them harder than ever with the empty cart blasting out onto the vast factory floor, ready to try and find the illusive bad guy or guys once again. All the sand in my hour glass had dribbled down to a few solitary grains of time left before they too dropped through to the bottom, and Geo and I were completely out of luck. WTF!
Trudi Baldwin - Sammy Dick, PI 02 - Acid Test for Yellow Flower Page 15