by Janet Dawson
“Fruits and veggies aren’t all that safe, either,” I pointed out, leafing through the papers I’d found in Rob’s things. “You said salmonella shows up on produce. I’m looking at an article that says E. coli has shown up on lettuce. And don’t forget that company here in the Bay Area that had to recall its products made with unpasteurized apple juice.”
“Pasteurization is the key,” Kaz said. “The food is brought to a certain temperature and held at that temperature for a period of time. There’s a reason our great-grandmothers cooked everything until the meat was well done and the vegetables were mushy. Back in the days before adequate refrigeration, they assumed the food supply was contaminated. They knew that heating food to a high temperature for a long time was the only way to get rid of the bugs. But today people eat sushi and rare meat. Consumers want a fresh, year-round supply of produce, which sometimes comes from countries where farming methods are different.”
“And you get cyclospora on raspberries and hepatitis A on strawberries,” I finished. “So food poisoning has moved away from that spoiled potato salad you were talking about.”
“It’s no longer limited to botulism in Aunt Sadie’s improperly canned green beans,” Kaz said. “Something like that occurs in someone’s kitchen and affects only a few people. Food processing happens on a massive scale, and it affects millions of people. It’s out of the kitchen and into big companies with multiple facilities and wide distribution. That’s why something like an E. coli outbreak spreads so rapidly.”
Multiple facilities, I thought. Bates had them all over the East Bay, like the dairy plant Leon Gomes managed.
Twenty-seven
SINCE PATRICIA WAS THE BATES ATTORNEY WHO handled food law, I wanted to take a closer look at her files. She even provided me with the opportunity for some sleuthing on Thursday morning. As I stepped out of the elevator on the fourth floor, she got aboard, carrying a thick accordion folder under one arm.
“I’m going to a meeting in Nolan Ward’s office,” she said, dispensing with good morning. “I should be back by ten. I left a tape in the rush box. I’d appreciate it if you’d do it first thing.”
The elevator doors closed, blocking her from view. Patricia was certainly spending a lot of time with the head of production. She didn’t say what the meeting was about, so I guessed it was the FDA food-safety proposals she’d mentioned in the legal department staff meeting earlier this week. Given what I’d found out last night, I had a heightened interest in food safety. Patricia’s absence, if only for an hour or so, would give me an opportunity to examine her files.
At the door of Cube City, I met Gladys, who held a stack of filing in her arms and breezily informed me that she was going back to the file room to catch up on the ever-present, unstemmed flow of filing. Nancy was back, she added as she headed down the corridor past Rob’s old office.
I shot Gladys an inquiring look. She shrugged. “I guess she’s over her migraine, but she seems a little grumpy. Of course, she’s always a little grumpy, if you ask me.”
When I entered Cube City, Nancy stood at her workstation sorting through the pile of papers that had accumulated yesterday. “Good morning,” I said, and she returned my greeting.
I settled in at my cubicle. A moment later, I glanced up and saw Nancy looking at me. Her phone rang. She dropped her eyes and reached for the receiver. As Gladys had said, Nancy seemed to have recovered from the migraine that had put her out of commission yesterday. But I was picking up on an undercurrent that hadn’t been present when I’d last seen her, Tuesday afternoon. Did it have something to do with the fact that she’d been asking questions at Rob’s apartment building Wednesday afternoon? Was the migraine in fact a ruse?
I picked up the dictation tape Patricia had left in the rush box, then plugged it into the machine. I began transcribing a series of memos, to Alex, Nolan Ward, and the manager of the canned goods plant in Oakland. It had something to do with a discharge of water from the plant and an objection filed by the local water quality board.
When I’d completed the tape, I removed the memos from the printer and headed for Patricia’s office, hoping I wouldn’t be interrupted. As I stepped into the east hallway, Hank Irvin rounded the corner, carrying his briefcase and a garment bag. He must have come to the office straight from the airport, and he looked preoccupied.
“I thought you were due back from Texas yesterday,” I said.
He glanced at me and smiled. “Got delayed. I’m glad to be back. It was hot down there.”
“Really? What part of Texas were you in?”
“El Paso,” he said, pushing open his office door. “Is Alex here?”
“As far as I know. Though I haven’t seen him.”
Hank disappeared into his office. He hadn’t mentioned his side trip to Carlsbad, New Mexico, but there was no reason why he should share that information. I turned and opened the door of Patricia’s office, wondering what Hank would say if he knew David Vanitzky had asked me to spy on him.
I set the completed memos in Patricia’s in box, then turned my attention to the documents and file folders neatly arrayed across the wide surface of her desk. I saw one file on weights and measures, and another labeled “Environmental Protection Agency.” I didn’t see the file on the Food and Drug Administration’s food-safety proposals. Presumably that was the folder that had been stuck under Patricia’s arm when she went downstairs for her meeting.
I was leafing through Patricia’s calendar when I heard the door open. Quickly I moved to the out basket, scooping up the papers there as Nancy Fong entered the office.
“Hello,” I said, and walked toward the door. “Hope your head is better.”
“I’m fine.” She shrugged, as though the migraine meant nothing, and folded her arms over her chest, wrinkling the front of the blue linen dress she wore. “Buck Tarcher called me this morning. He says you were in Rob Lawter’s office yesterday.”
I gave an offhand shrug as I reached for the doorknob. “I was looking for a file.”
“Did you find what you were looking for?” Nancy said, her face solemn.
“No.” I smiled as though it didn’t matter. “Turns out the file was here in Patricia’s office all along.”
“I’d rather you didn’t go in that office. I’ve told Gladys that, as well.”
“Why?” What I really wanted to ask her was what she had been doing at Rob’s apartment yesterday.
Nancy didn’t say anything right away, as though she had secrets to keep. “Orders from Tarcher,” she said finally, a classic cop-out. “You don’t need to know.”
“No, I suppose I don’t.” I shifted the papers I held from my right arm to the left and stepped out into the hallway. “Guess I’d better get back to work.”
For the rest of the morning, I felt as though eyes were on my back each time I stepped away from the cubicle. One pair of eyes belonged to Buck Tarcher, the head of corporate security. I didn’t think the office help usually had much interaction with Tarcher, unless they were suspected of wrongdoing. At eleven o’clock, I saw him in the corridor outside Alex’s office. Call me paranoid, but I felt as though I were the suspect and Tarcher was bearing down on me.
But it could have had something to do with the trouble surrounding the retirement plan. That was where David Vanitzky and his knowing gray eyes came in. He was taking part in whatever was going on behind the closed door in Alex’s office. When I passed David in the hall as he left, he glanced my way. I knew he was expecting some payback on my implied agreement to spy on Hank.
The third pair of eyes were Nancy’s. Every time I looked up, it seemed as though she was looking away. Maybe it was beginning to dawn that I might not be an ordinary temp legal secretary. Maybe I was being paranoid. Maybe not.
But I remembered a poster I’d seen once. It said, just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you.
I didn’t think Gladys had noticed Nancy’s interest in me. We were all too busy. Now that
Hank Irvin had returned from his mysterious trip, he was playing catch-up, trying to clear away the projects that had stacked up in his absence. He was in and out of Cube City constantly, piling dictation tapes in the rush box. Some of them were agreements, but one was a memo to Alex. The subject line was “Sheffield,” and it indicated that an acquisition was proceeding according to plan, with no anticipated problems. I hadn’t seen Sheffield mentioned before, in any of the papers I’d filed or typed.
Nancy left for lunch at a quarter to twelve, without saying where she was going. At noon, Gladys and I walked over to the deli for sandwiches. I needed some more information, and I was hoping my office mate could give it to me.
“What happens when someone calls in a complaint about Bates products?” I asked while we waited our turn at the counter.
She gave me a sidelong glance. “Why? Did you get a bad box of crackers?”
I extemporized. “No. A friend of mine is going through a hassle with a grocery store about some spoiled meat. It got me to wondering what the process was like at Bates.”
Gladys didn’t answer until after the man behind the deli counter took our orders. “Usually the switchboard forwards those calls to public affairs. But sometimes they come to the legal department. On any kind of call like that, we’re supposed to fill out a call sheet. We make copies, one for the appropriate attorney, one for public affairs, and one for the department that should be handling the situation. If it’s a complaint about a Bates product, the call sheet goes downstairs to production. We used to have a food-safety guy named Al Dominici who handled those things. But he retired in March, and they never hired anyone to replace him. Guess they thought it was more important to eliminate one more position. So now I don’t know what production does with call sheets after they get them.”
“Sounds like you’ve gotten a few complaint calls.”
Gladys rolled her eyes as she popped the tab on her root beer. “Yeah. I hate them. Some people have legitimate complaints, of course. For the most part, they’re reasonable on the phone. It’s the nut calls I hate. That’s what I call ‘em, whether the people are crazy or not. They scream, make threats, call me names. Those are the ones I hang up on.”
So Rob had received eleven calls in a month, I thought. Presumably he’d followed policy and forwarded them to production. Why then had he kept copies of the call sheets, concealed behind the photographs on his desk?
After lunch I found an excuse to visit production on the second floor when I returned from a trip to the mail room. I made my way through the hallways, lined with office doors like those on the fourth floor. I’d checked the company directory, and Sue Ann Fisk was listed as Nolan Ward’s secretary.
Ward’s office was located in the corner where the north and west hallways met. His door was closed, but a woman with curly gray hair sat behind a desk in a nearby cubicle, talking into a telephone receiver. On her desk I saw a plastic photo cube showing snapshots of two young children, a couple in their twenties, and a much older man I guessed was her husband. A glass vase held a drooping collection of pink carnations, and she had a mug at her elbow, with what looked like an herbal tea bag floating in the water.
“Sue Ann Fisk?” I asked, when she’d hung up the phone.
She smiled, showing off lots of laugh lines and some uneven front teeth. “That’s me. Can I help you?”
“Jeri Howard. I’m working up in legal. I wanted to follow up on some call sheets that were sent down here.”
“D’you have dates? And the names of the callers?” She turned to her keyboard, exited her word processing program, and entered a database program.
I’d noted the information on a notepad. Now I took the sheet of paper from my skirt pocket and handed it to her.
“Eleven? That’s a lot.” Sue Ann played with her database for a few moments, then turned and looked up at me. “I’m sorry, I’m not finding any of these names, or these dates, either.”
I frowned. “You’re sure?”
“I’m afraid so. Maybe you’d better double-check on the names and dates.”
“I will. Do you suppose the sheets could have gotten lost in the interoffice mail?”
She took a sip of herbal tea. “I could see losing one or two. But eleven? I don’t think so. Besides, I log the sheets as soon as I get them.”
“So you open the mail,” I prompted. “And log them right away.”
Sue Ann shook her head. “Well, not exactly. I open the mail and take it in to Nolan. We used to have a man who worked in this department named Al Dominici. He was our food-safety manager. Anyway, he followed up on calls. But Al retired a couple of months after Nolan became department head. Now Nolan handles the situation, or directs it to one of the plants. After he’s signed off on the sheets, he sends ’em back out to me, and then I log them.”
So it would be easy enough, I speculated as I looked at Ward’s closed door, for the head of production to intercept a sheet if he didn’t want it logged.
Sue Ann noted the direction of my eyes and smiled, ever helpful. “I can ask Nolan about it as soon as he’s finished with his meeting.”
“Let me look into it on my end,” I told her. “Maybe I don’t have the correct names or dates.”
“You know,” she said. “Someone asked me for a printout of all the calls we’d logged concerning dairy products. It’s been about a month ago. Now who was it?” She thought for a moment, then shook her head. “Can’t put a name to it. If I think of it, I’ll call you. What’s your extension?”
I gave her the number. Then, as I turned to leave, I heard voices, then Ward’s door opened. I saw a fortyish man about my height, maybe shorter. He’d removed his suit coat and loosened his tie, as many of the men here did when they were working in their offices. He glanced out at Sue Ann and me, looking tense and distracted, then back into his office as though he were waiting for someone to leave. I guessed this was Ward. He looked familiar, as though I’d seen him in the hallways.
The man who walked past Ward a few seconds later was more than familiar. Leon Gomes strode through the outer office, dressed in his work clothes with the Bates logo on the breast pocket of his shirt. He looked like a thundercloud just itching to rain on someone, and I didn’t want to be in his path.
Twenty-eight
I DUCKED MY HEAD AND DROPPED THE PAPER I WAS holding onto the carpet. As I knelt to retrieve it, I hoped Leon wouldn’t see me. Or if he did, that he wouldn’t recognize me as the woman who’d visited Carol almost two weeks ago, to pay my respects on the death of her brother.
But he was scowling too hard and walking too fast to pay any attention. He barreled past me and into the hallway. I got to my feet, stuck the paper into my pocket, and smiled politely at Sue Ann. She didn’t see me either, since she was handing Ward a couple of phone messages. He spoke to Sue Ann, asking her when one of the callers had phoned, and his voice was high-pitched, clipped. It didn’t sound like the voice I’d heard on that tape Patricia had dictated.
I went back upstairs, thinking about what I had, or hadn’t, discovered in production. I was sure that Rob would have followed policy, as outlined to me by Gladys, and sent the call sheets downstairs. But what happened to them after that? Had he, too, decided to check and see if anyone was following up on the complaints? Had he found out that there was no record of the call sheets being logged by Sue Ann, and decided to do some investigating on his own? He may have kept copies of the call sheets for his own files, or dug out the copies Patricia should have received. The next step would be to find out if Patricia had them.
Nancy favored me with another speculative look when I got back to Cube City, as though wondering where I’d been. I ignored her as best I could and picked up another dictation tape Hank had put in the rush box. It was a long one, judging from the amount of time it took to rewind. I plugged the earphones into my ears and started transcribing what seemed to be an asset purchase agreement regarding the Sheffield properties. But it didn’t tell me where those properti
es were located. On the tape, Hank instructed me to leave a blank space in lieu of addresses.
At three, Gladys stood up and announced, “I’m taking a break. I’m gonna walk over to the coffee place and get a mocha. You ladies want anything?”
“Nothing for me, thanks.” Nancy picked up an armful of papers and headed across the hall to Alex’s office.
“Sure. I’ll take a latte.” I would have liked to go with her, but I was in the middle of the tape, and Hank had indicated that he wanted the document on his desk before the end of the day. I dug into my wallet for some bills and handed them to Gladys.
“Did you and Nancy have words?” she asked. “She’s been glaring at you all day.”
I’d noticed. But now I shrugged, as though it didn’t matter. “She got upset because I was in that paralegal’s office yesterday, looking for a file. You know, when you came looking for me.”
“Tarcher was there.” Gladys frowned. “Was he hassling you, because you were in there?”
“He seemed upset, too. I don’t understand it. Have I stepped into someone’s turf? I mean, I’m just the temp. I don’t know anything about office politics.”
That wasn’t entirely true. I was soaking up as much information about Bates office politics as I could.
“I don’t understand it, either.” Gladys took the money I handed to her and tucked it in her change purse. “What is the big deal with that office? Rob’s dead. We need to get those files out of there. But Nancy acts like there’s a seal on the door. And I’ve seen Tarcher lurking around in there a couple of times over the past week. Doesn’t make any sense. Anyway, I hope Nancy and her moods don’t get under your skin. You’re the best temp we’ve had. I’d like to keep you around for awhile.”
“Thanks,” I said, smiling at this compliment. Nice to know my skills as a legal secretary were still in demand. Hank bustled into our shared office and pulled some pages from the printer. He turned to Gladys. “I want this faxed right away. And I want you to pull that O’Brien file and—”