2. Chapter Two
Chapter Two
Jane
D enver, Colorado. Twenty-nine years later
“Hey, Curt, what’s today’s challenge?” I answered my cell, turning my chair toward the floor-to-ceiling windows of my corner office. A flock of geese flew past, moving in graceful unison, their focus determinedly set on the horizon.
“I wish I could say nothing,” replied the Philadelphia plant manager for Bethany Plastics. When it came to Philly, the news was rarely good.
I talked to Curt several times a day—more than any of the other seven plant managers under me, mainly because his facility was not only the largest, it posed a colossal thorn in my side. We were always battling something from the price of electricity to union takeovers to blow molder machines that didn’t produce to manufacturer specifications.
As the geese continued on, vanishing from the picture frame of my window, I wondered what it might be like to be able to fly…with a flock of geese… today .
I checked my watch. “Come on, out with it.”
“It’s bad,” he groaned, sounding like death.
My hackles stood on end. Curt was tough. He’d seen just about everything in this business and if he opened with “it’s bad” then I most likely didn’t want to know why. Except I was the boss—the woman with the ultimate responsibility, bad or good. I leaned forward and cradled my head in my hand. I was leaving for vacation with my daughter in two days and I didn’t have time to deal with a crisis. “What happened? You okay?”
“Hydroade just called. Um…” Curt’s shaky inhale hissed over the line. “Well… ahhhh …they found a bottle with goose shit in it.”
My mouth dropped open, then my tongue went dry as dozens of possible explanations fired across my brain neurons. It couldn’t have come from one of my plants. Not from one of my employees. It had to be from a competitor, right?
Damn.
No one in the beverage packaging industry ever wanted to hear anything that resembled contamination, let alone tampering. “One of our bottles?” I asked barely louder than a whisper.
“Yes.”
Throbbing pain thundered at the back of my head, threatening to bring on another one of my miserable migraines. We had an exclusive contract to supply Hydroade a million plastic bottles per day. “Was it filled?” The only thing worse than a contaminated empty bottle was one that went through the customer’s filling line.
“God, no. Their inspection equipment caught it right after depalletization.”
I still couldn’t believe it. Except there were geese all over the grounds at the Philly factory. Then again, there were geese everywhere. I’d just seen a flock fly past my window and I’m in Denver. “Do they think one of our employees tampered?” I swallowed down three ibuprofen with the dregs of cold coffee.
“There’s no doubt. They had to shut down the line and sterilize the entire plant.” Curt paused while the faint sound of mouse clicks came over the line. “I just sent you a photo—didn’t want you to see it before I got you on the phone.”
I refreshed my email twice before the message hit, then it took me about two seconds to open the jpg.
Fuck! If only I’d left for vacation yesterday.
“Unbelievable.” The haunted tenor from my voice gave me chills as I stared at a picture of the bottom of one of our bottles—facing the foot was an embroidered patch from a Bethany uniform. Our trademark B was front and center, strategically placed beneath a bunch of goose droppings—a blatant statement of contempt.
I grabbed my stress ball, squeezing until it split open. “Disgruntled employee?”
“Looks like it.”
“Who?”
“Hell, I don’t know. That’s the million-dollar question, isn’t it? ”
Even though I was sitting in an office over seventeen hundred miles away, I winced as if I’d been on the receiving end of a sucker punch between the eyes.
This was tampering on a criminal scale.
And it happened in one of my plants.
On my watch.
I threw the ball in the trash so hard it bounced out. “Who knows about this?”
“The folks at Hydroade, me, and now you.”
“Damn!” I balanced the phone between my cheek and shoulder, grabbed my briefcase, and started packing up my laptop. “Where’s the bottle?”
“Hydroade still has it. I’m heading to Allentown first thing in the morning.”
“I’ll go with you. Then we’ll keep the bottle hidden. Do not tell anyone what it contains. We need to conduct an investigation and the less people know, the more likely we’ll be to find the culprit.”
“Should I call the police?”
“Probably. But hold off until we have the evidence.”
“There’s more,” Curt said.
I yanked my power cord out of the wall. “Seriously? Goose shit in a beverage bottle found at the filling plant of our largest customer isn’t enough?”
“You need to know Hydroade is out for blood.”
And we all might be filing for unemployment tomorrow . “Do you blame them? I’ll be on the next plane.”
I grabbed my briefcase and threw my purse over my shoulder, dashing out of my office and shouting at my admin assistant as I walked past, “Get me on the redeye to Philly. I need to grab a bag and swing by my mother’s place. Text me with the flight info.”
“Sure thing, Jane,” she said as I ran down the stairs and out the door, dialing the CEO of Bethany Plastics and making a beeline to my car.
Leon Worthington was a son-of-a-bitch, and this news wasn’t going to be received well. But just like Curt had called before anyone else could notify me of this disaster, I needed to fess up to my boss immediately.
The phone call with Leon hadn’t lasted long, though his message to me was clear: do everything possible to keep the incident away from the media and “bury it.” Of course I’d make sure the disaster was contained. That’s why he hired me for this job. Because I’m fast, efficient, and I don’t take bullshit from anyone.
However, in this case it was goose shit.
I zipped into the parking lot at Mom’s assisted living facility, grabbed her bag of adult diapers, and hustled inside.
Sarah, the director, approached from my right, weaving through the maze of couches. “Hi, Jane. Have you got a moment?”
When it came to my mother and this facility, that was the dreaded question. It wasn’t the staff—they did a thankless job and were topnotch. What did Mama do this time? Shout at the caregivers? Spit out her medicine? Sing at the top of her lungs during the afternoon movie?
Trying not to cringe, I stopped. “A minute? Please tell me my mother has been a model senior citizen ever since my last chat with her.”
Sarah laughed, her gaze shifting down the hallway to the dragon’s lair. “It’s not too bad this time—no bruises at least.”
Thank God for small miracles…I hope. I tried to smile, but only managed to grimace.
“Your mom’s showing everyone a picture of her with a man and telling them the fellow is her husband. She even told me that you’re buying her a new bed so he can come over and have…” Waggling her eyebrows, she made quotations with her fingers. “A ‘good time.’”
If I were thirty years younger, I’d probably be embarrassed, but I’ve been looking after my mother for too long to let anything faze me. But, jeez, the idea of my ninety-year-old mother having sex with anyone was just wrong. “She isn’t?”
“I wish I could say no, but she’s been quite loquacious about it.” Sarah glanced at the enormous fish tank that spanned the wall of the entrance. It usually had a calming effect, but presently did nothing to ease the knots boring into my neck. “Oh, and there are two children in the photo—a boy and a girl. If memory serves, there’s a Christmas tree in the background.”
I gulped, the photo Mom kept beside her bed coming to mind. “I’m sure that’s the one of me and my brother with our parents. Mom divorced my dad when I was a junior in high school.”
“Is your father still living? ”
“No, he passed away years ago—aneurysm. And it’s been seventeen years since my mother’s second husband died of cancer.” Only a month after my stepfather’s death, Mom’s Alzheimer’s had come on with vengeance.
“So, how do you recommend we set her straight?” Sarah asked.
Unfortunately, my mother’s grasp of reality had faded into oblivion. If any of the employees at Ridgeview told her she’d lost her mind and her ex-husband wasn’t only not coming to visit, he was dead, she’d be likely to explode. The vision of Mama using her walker to shatter the glass of the beautiful fish tank gave me heartburn. “It’s a good thing I’m here. I’ll have a chat with her now. She’ll be less volatile if she hears it from me.”
“You’re a lifesaver.” Sarah patted my elbow, her shoulders visibly relaxing. The poor woman, she had a thankless job. “Thank you.”
Honestly, I should be thanking Sarah. I should be kissing her feet. I tried bringing my mother into my home for a couple years—hired a part-time caregiver as well. Needless to say, it was an exercise in grandiose self-flagellation. First of all, as the Vice President of Operations for Bethany Plastics, I travel a lot for work. My absences on top of my mother’s irascibility meant we cycled through caregivers before she managed to learn their names.
“Hi, Mama.” I forced a smile, slipping into her studio apartment which was mostly tidy aside from the assortment of half-finished crossword puzzle books strewn atop every surface.
“Jane!” she said as if she hadn’t seen me in weeks even though I’d visited three days ago.
She held up the Christmas picture which had been on her bedside table. “Do you see this?” She smiled lasciviously, her legs up on the footstool of her recliner. We kept Mama’s hair short because she rarely combed it and today it stuck up at the crown, a sure sign she’d slept on her back. I had her blue eyes but hers had become rather vacant of late. How I longed for the caring mother who’d flown to Australia and had helped to take care of my newborn daughter while I spent two weeks in the ICU after nearly dying from a ruptured uterus.
With little time to sugarcoat anything, I carefully slid the frame from her fingertips. “I’m very familiar with this picture.” Regardless of if my heart was presently twisting into knots, I used my gentlest voice and pointed to my younger self. “This is me.”
Confused devastation filled my mother’s blue eyes. “That’s you?” she asked, voice suddenly childlike. Mama did still recognize me as an adult, though it seemed she had forgotten what I looked like as a tow-haired five-year-old.
“It is.” My finger slid to my brother. “See, that’s Roger. And next to him is Dad. You divorced him—five years before he passed away from a ruptured brain aneurysm.”
Rather than give me sass, Mom leaned back in her recliner, the corners of her mouth drawn downward in an utterly deflated frown. “Oh.”
This woman had been an awesome mother. She’d driven me to my ballet lessons, and baked cookies for a gazillion school functions. She’d always been there with a comforting embrace whether I had a scratched knee, was heckled by the kids in junior high for winning a debate or when I broke up with my sophomore boyfriend. She had always been my rock even though I didn’t appreciate her during the rebellious years. Seeing her fragile, lonely, and unable to remember who my dad was or what I looked like as a child tore me apart as if I’d failed her.
Regardless of how little time I had, I pulled her into my arms, squeezing my eyes shut against unshed tears. Of course, I had mastered the art of not crying thanks to my brother Roger, but if there was a time to cry, this was damned close. “I’m sorry, Mama.” Damn, it took a huge breath to keep my voice from cracking. “I think when you see old pictures you sometimes don’t remember what happened, so you make up stories.”
“I know,” she cried, her shoulders shaking.
I rubbed my palm in circles over her back and held her close as long as I could. “I love you.” I kissed her forehead, my heart in shreds. Old age wasn’t supposed to be like this. It should be filled with grandkids and sugar cookies, quilting clubs, and bingo games. “I have to catch a flight, but I’ll be back soon, okay?”
Mom nodded, reaching for the Alzheimer’s remote control. It only allowed her to turn the TV on, adjust the volume, and change the channels.
It broke me up to leave her dazed and confused, but she couldn’t keep traipsing around the old folks’ home telling everyone she was going to do the dirty with my deceased father. Alzheimer’s was a wicked disease, stealing not only the sufferer’s memories, but turning them into souls who were, at best, shadows of their former selves. Her doctor told me I was lucky because Mama still recognized me. In my opinion, I would have been luckier if she were ninety years old, in her right mind, and full of vim and vigor.
Even with my stopover to see my mother, I waited for my flight for an agonizing three hours. I made use of the time in the airline’s membership lounge, tidying up loose ends, making phone calls, and responding to emails, diverting inventories of bottles from New York to Hydroade, holding the phone away from my ear as I took an ass-chewing from my counterpart at the same company.
I sipped a glass of wine and managed some meditative breathing before calling my daughter, Margaret Lehn Corley, who nearly always went by Meg. She was my miracle baby soon turning twenty-nine. Honestly, I was also Meg’s miracle mom because I managed to survive her birth.
“Why did I get a bad feeling as soon as I saw you on the caller ID?” she asked rather than answering with her usual cheerful greeting.
Closing my eyes, I dropped my head forward and groaned. The last time I had to cancel a vacation with her, she was in college, but Meg wasn’t one to forget anything. I suppose I’d had to cancel a long weekend last year, but that wasn’t a huge deal. At least she didn’t seem to be upset about it at the time. But my daughter knew me too well, maybe better than I knew myself.
“There’s been a development in Philly,” I explained. I’d been looking forward to this getaway for a year. The cruise to Bermuda was her twenty-ninth birthday present. I had paid for a suite.
“Oh, really?” Meg didn’t bother to hide her sarcasm. I didn’t blame her. “When isn’t there a development in Philly?”
“Yeah, but this one is…unbelievably bad.” Nope, I wasn’t even going to fess up about the goose shit to my own daughter. “I’m sorry, Sweetie. I promise I’ll make it up to you. Why don’t you go without me? Take one of your friends.”
“It won’t be the same.”
“No, but it ought to be a lot more fun than going on vacation with your mommy in tow.”
“Excuse me? Is that supposed to make me feel better?”
She didn’t have to say more. My daughter didn’t exactly have the perfect childhood. And though she’d come into herself, occasionally her deep-seated resentment would rear its ugly head—especially when I did something as thoughtless as cancelling a vacation at the last minute.
She blamed me for working too hard. She blamed me most of all for leaving her father. Of course, I’d never told her the reasons because I firmly believed it wasn’t appropriate for one parent to complain about another, even though my ex didn’t adhere to the same values. He complained about me plenty, his nickname for me being The Bitch from Hell (yeah, great Jack, really original, so glad you taught that one to our daughter). Regardless of his immature, pathetic name-calling, Meg didn’t need to know the bastard had been on a seven-year bender, contributing nothing to the family when I finally gave up and divorced him.
I crossed my ankles and sat back in the vinyl low-backed armchair. “Ask someone nice to go with you. I’ll pay the change fees. Most of all, I want you to have a good time. I want you to have a great birthday.”
“Right. I’ll be the pathetic woman sitting alone in our suite, toasting myself with a double tequila sunrise.” Meg chuckled. “Maybe I ought to take Dad.”
Uncomfortable chair or not, my spine shot straighter than a bow staff. Dozens of retorts were only suppressed by pursed lips. The asshole still lived in Australia and I sure as hell wasn’t about to pay his fare to the US. Nor did I relish paying her father’s share of the cruise where he’d most likely drink to excess and ignore Meg. I inhaled deeply and forced myself to smile. “Do you think he’d go?” I asked carefully.
She snorted. “You know as well as I do no one can take him away from his precious horses, not even me.”
Meg was right, of course. The only good thing that had happened to my ex-husband since we divorced was inheriting a horse stud farm in Queensland. As far as I knew, he was happily drowning himself in copious amounts of alcohol while collecting stud fees. “Maybe take someone your age? A love interest perhaps?”
“Love interest? What happened to the word boyfriend? Which, by the way, unless you’ve come down with Alzheimer’s in the past few days, you know I do not presently have a love interest !”
The boarding announcement text for my flight popped up on my phone. “I stand duly corrected.”
“You need to quit that job before it kills you.”
“I know.”
I slid my laptop into my briefcase. I had thought about it, but I was only fifty-nine. And I’d been single for twenty-two years. Being a VP of Operations was my life. After divorcing Meg’s father I’d poured myself into my career and fought my way to the top. What would I do if I left Bethany Plastics? Fall into another vice presidency somewhere? One thing was for sure, there were no easy VP jobs in corporate America. At least none I knew of.
And if this disaster ever leaked to the media, I doubted there’d be a company anywhere on the planet that would hire me.