Steeled for Murder (7 page)

I was surprised at how relieved I felt to hear her say that. “Anybody on break when they said he was killed?”

She scowled. “Not that I know of. But that damn Aaron was away from the packing line half the night. Said he had the runs. John finally told him to go punch out if he couldn’t stay and work.”

“So what did he do?”

“He was still there at the end of the shift.”

Definitely not what Belkins wanted to hear. “I was thinking maybe they’d decided it was an accident and that’s why they didn’t charge me.”

Kelly looked at me. “I think it’s pretty clear it wasn’t an accident.” She extracted a dill pickle from her lunch box and broke it in half. “Somebody beat the crap out of Mitch and ran over him with the forklift.” She offered half to me.

I felt my gut tighten up. So Mitch had been murdered. Not good for me. “Why would anybody do that?”

Kelly still held the pickle. I shook my head. It did look good.

She took a bite. “It’s not like Mitch was real popular or anything. Especially lately.” She rummaged further in her lunch box. “Everybody knew he’d been getting crazy. I mean, he’d never been entirely sane, but he’d really gone off the deep end lately.”

“Like how?”

“Lots of things. He’s been forgetting what he’s supposed to be doing. People have been complaining that he’s brought them the wrong parts. And that was just at work.” Kelly shoved the rest of the pickle into her mouth.

“Was he losing it other places, too?” Too bad he wasn’t killed in one of the other places.

“Look at the way he treated his wife. Made her come drop him off wearing a negligee and then made her get out of the van so everybody could see her in her nightie. In this weather. I heard about that. Kissing her and feeling her up like that in front of everyone.”

I nodded. That was the incident that had started all this. At least for me.

“No reason for that but to humiliate her.” Kelly licked pickle juice from her fingers. “Wanted to show everybody what a hot woman he’s got and how he could make her do anything he told her to. Disrespecting your woman like that makes no sense.”

I hadn’t given it much thought. Kelly might be right. At any rate, it wasn’t entirely normal. “Treating her like that was something new?”

“Yeah. Although he’s always been a little weird about her. They live in a cabin on a few acres back in the woods. You know that alley that runs next to the shipping yard?”

“Yeah.”

“That turns into a gravel road a mile or two outside of town. Their house is off of that, about four miles up in the hills. It’s set back off the road. Really isolated. He’d brag about how he never let her go anywhere by herself. If she did have to go somewhere, he’d drive her. She was mostly just stuck up there at home by herself with the kids. I know they—she—has a set of twins and at least one more older one.”

“So why would he have her drive him into work now?” I started on my other mangled peanut butter sandwich. No improvement over the first. “Wouldn’t the kids be home asleep at midnight? Somebody ought to be at home with them.”

“You’d think.” Kelly shook her head. “I know some of the guys had been buying drugs from him. Maybe he had some stuff in that van of his and didn’t want it in the parking lot here. Every once in a while, they bring a drug dog by to sniff. And the dog zeroing in on a vehicle is probable cause, so they can search it.”

“What was he dealing?”

“Rumor had it he could get you anything, but mostly weed and crystal meth.”

I thought about how he’d accused me of looking at his wife. And the sores on his arm. “Meth can make you really paranoid. If he was doing that.”

“Yeah. I wish they’d keep all that stuff away from the plant. Makes trouble for everyone.” Kelly popped a few chips into her mouth and chewed.

“They’d have to be crazy,” I said. “Why would anyone take a chance on blowing a good job like this?”

Kelly licked a drip of mustard from the side of her sandwich. “You have a point there. But some people are crazy. And they don’t stop to think how tough it is to get decent jobs in this economy. They figure they can always pick up another job.”

“Not that easy.” I took a glum look at the remains of my sandwich and stuffed it in my mouth. I was pretty sure that if the state didn’t give a tax break to the company for hiring a paroled convict, I wouldn’t have this job.

“A lot of these guys don’t think like that. Even the ones old enough to know better. Mitch was always bragging that he didn’t need this job.”

“Look at where it got Mitch. Some of the others might learn something from it.” I wiped the last of the peanut butter from my fingers onto my jeans. They needed to be washed anyhow.

“You’d think. But I need this job for sure. And I got to steer clear of anything that even looks iffy.”

Doesn’t sitting with me fall into that category?
I wanted to ask. Instead, I said, “Mitch was certainly in the ‘old enough to know better’ category.” I took a drink of water from my thermos.

“True. But most of his customers are just kids.” Kelly finished her pickle. I wished I’d accepted half. “Although rumor had it he was dealing to some of the office staff, too.” She took a handful of chips and shoved the bag toward me. “Have some,” she said.

They looked good. “That’s your lunch.” I kept my eyes on the table top.

“Yeah, and if you don’t have some, I’ll probably eat the whole bag.”

“Well, they’re yours,” I pointed out. “You brought them.”

“That’s so. But do I look to you like someone who should be eating a whole bag of chips?” she asked.

I risked a brief look at her. She was solidly built. Mostly hard muscle, not fat. Except for those magnificent breasts. Didn’t want to stare at them. I blushed. “You look fine to me,” I said honestly.

She laughed. “How long were you locked up?”

“Over nineteen years.”

She raised her eyebrows. They were the same rich brown as her hair. “Wow. You must have been just a kid,” she said.

I shrugged. “Sixteen. Back then, I didn’t know sixteen-year-olds could be tried as adults. But I learned quick enough.”

“Well, I was going to say that after however long you’d been locked up, probably any woman might look good to you. After nineteen years, that must really be true.”

“Don’t see too many women in a men’s prison,” I agreed. “A few women who work there. But you have to be real careful around most of them.”

“What was the conviction, if you don’t mind my asking?” she said.

“Murder,” I answered. “Only two things get a sixteen-year-old automatically assigned to adult court. Murder and rape.”

She didn’t mince any words. “Did you do it?”

I sighed. I didn’t have to field this question often, but I dreaded it. “Depends on your definition,” I said, putting my thermos on the table.

“Why’s that?”

“Well, technically, I’m guilty. I mean, I was there. And anybody who’s involved in a felony that results in a death can be convicted of murder. Somebody was shot. And died.”

Her deep brown eyes were sympathetic. “But you weren’t the killer.”

“Hell, no. I wasn’t even in the apartment when he was shot. Didn’t matter much, though. I’m still the one who went down for it.”

Kelly took two oranges out of her lunchbox. She started to peel one. “Surprised they put that in adult court, though, if you weren’t the triggerman or whatever.”

“Yeah. Well, I was with my brothers.” I’d kind of forgotten about oranges. I hadn’t had one in years. I remembered the sweet, juicy taste. My mouth watered. “The cops came. Must have been a setup. My brothers ran out the back and shoved two bags at me as they ran by. A hundred some-odd packets of heroin and a knife and the gun. Of course, I was standing there like an idiot with my mouth open and got picked up right away.”

“I’d have thought they would have tested your hand to see if you’d fired a gun recently,” Kelly said, sucking the juice out of a segment of orange.

“Why bother? We’d agreed that if something went wrong, I’d ‘fess up, since I was a juvenile. So before I found out about the shooting, I as good as confessed. And I had the gun and the drugs in my possession. They didn’t need anything more.”

“What happened to your brothers?”

I shrugged. “No idea. Never heard from them again. At that point, why bring them into it? Wasn’t going to help me. I copped to an Alford plea and picked up forty-five years. Public defender said that was the best he could do. Better than he’d expected.”

“And you just got parole.”

“Yeah. I’m lucky it’s getting overcrowded in the prisons and nobody wants to spend more tax money to build more. The parole board was looking for people to let out. I was young when I was locked up, and I have a good institutional adjustment record. Nothing I did. Just good timing.”

Kelly shoved the other orange toward me. “Eat that,” she commanded. “My eyes are bigger than my stomach.”

Over the heavy odor of oil and diesel exhaust, I could smell the orange. Kelly pushed it farther across the table, closer to me.

“No thanks,” I said, trying not to stare at it. It was tantalizing.

“More than I can eat,” she said. “I don’t want to have to cart it home. So take it.”

“Okay. Thanks,” I said. I picked it up and peeled it. It tasted every bit as good as I remembered.

“When you were locked up, did you know my dad?” she asked. “He’s a clerk for the records room. Goes by Old Buckles.”

I smiled. “Sure. Everybody knows Old Buckles. I mean, maybe not to talk to, but everybody knows him. He’s been there forever.”

Kelly sighed and shook her head. “Not really. He’s actually been paroled more than a few times. But he’s an outlaw biker at heart. Can’t keep away from the club. Next thing you know, he’s drinking and drugging and then figures they’re gonna pick him up and violate his parole anyhow, so he might as well do something spectacular. And he usually does.”

“Like what?”

“Like the last time. Led half the state police force on a high-speed chase. Helicopter and all. Knew he couldn’t get away, so he rode his Harley through a store window. Then he gets violated and locked up again, not to mention the new charges. So I put his bike back in my garage and go back to visiting him twice a month.”

I remembered all the years with no visitors. “He’s lucky he has you.”

Kelly glanced at her watch. “I got to get back. Truck’s due any minute. I got to unload it.” She pushed the bag of chips toward me. “Finish these,” she said, tossing her trash in the wastebasket and shutting her lunchbox. “Nice talking to you.”

I sat and watched her leave, flipping the ponytail over her shoulder so it trailed down her back and swayed as she walked. It was all I could do not to run after her to touch her hair. Stupid. Was that how real sex offenders felt? Only, they followed through on their impulses and got mad when the other person didn’t like it.

I stuffed the rest of the chips into my lunch box, tossed my trash after hers, and went back to work.

I resolved not to think about how exhausted I was until the shift was over. I was so wound up, I didn’t know whether I would be able to sleep when I got home. I wondered if it had anything to do with my nerves being pulled up so tight, my head felt like it would burst. My shoulders ached from two nights of the unaccustomed overhead motions. I wanted nothing more than to retreat to my basement apartment, take a hot shower, climb into the lumpy bed, and at least try to sleep.

The forklift rattled by, the disgruntled driver swinging so close to the loaded pallets that he winged one on the end by plater four.

“Hey,” Hank shouted, moving to shove it back into place and pick up the shelves that had fallen from it. “Watch where you’re going with that thing.”

But the lift was long gone.

Two men wearing suits but also with the obligatory hard hats came down from the offices. Hank went over to talk to them. I recognized Sterling Radman. They huddled in a group. Although they were raising their voices so they could hear one another over the sounds of the machinery, I could not make out anything they said. Hank consulted his clipboard, flipping back through the papers it held. He shook his bullish head, mildly at first and then with increasing animation as they apparently argued. Finally, Hank handed the clipboard over to Mr. Radman and turned away. He looked annoyed.

I renewed my efforts to keep all the plater hooks filled. It was getting easier. I didn’t want to give Mr. Radman, or anyone, additional reasons to consider letting me go.

When I permitted myself a minute to glance over at the men, they were looking at me. Hank was shaking his head again, frowning. I turned away, concentrating on my work.

The next time I hazarded a glance, they were gone. I tried to relax a bit, but I couldn’t help but think this wasn’t good.

Chapter 5

Mr. Radman came hurrying up again, this time with two more men in suits. No hard hats. They stopped in the passageway. I caught a glint of the harsh overhead light reflecting off a bald head. A very dark bald head.

Montgomery. The other hatless man was Belkins. My stomach knotted. I missed getting a cabinet on the next set of hooks and let them go empty.