Save Me - Lisa Scottoline [111]
“Golf, golf, golf! That man lived for golf!”
“Don’t they all? Me, I live for shoes.”
“Ha!” The woman extended a hand over the counter. “I’m Julie Port. How can I help you?”
“I’m a writer for Hunt Country Life, a magazine in southern Pennsylvania, where Mojo lives.” Rose brandished her steno pad. “We’re doing a short profile on him, and I wonder if I can ask you a question or two. He said you might not mind, and the good press would help him out.”
“Sure enough.” Julie checked the waiting room, which was empty. “We’re not busy today, and I can take a couple minutes. If it helps Mojo, I’m in.” She moved to the side, opened a swinging door in the counter, and gestured. “Come with me. We’ll go in the break room.”
“Thanks.” Rose followed her past a few workers talking on the phone and typing on computer keyboards, then they went down a hall to a lunchroom with round Formica tables, hard plastic chairs, and a bank of vending machines.
“Please, make yourself comfortable.” Julie waved her into a chair, sitting down.
“Thanks.” Rose took a seat, put her steno pad on the table, flipped it open to the first page, and slid a pen from her purse. “Now, he began working here about five years ago. He was at Homestead before that, wasn’t he? In Reesburgh?”
“Yes, he was. He was their Director of Safety.” Julie’s face fell into lines, her jowls draping her lipsticked mouth. “He took it very hard.”
“What did he take hard?” Rose didn’t know what she meant.
“He blamed himself, but it wasn’t his fault, any of it.” Julie clucked. “Forklift accidents are among the most common, and it wasn’t his fault that that man died.”
Whoa. Rose realized she meant Bill Gigot. “Mojo has such a big heart.”
“He surely does, and he was an excellent safety manager, I’m positive of that. He’s very diligent.”
“That sounds like him.”
“Yes, and from what he told me, the lighting was insufficient in the loading area where the man worked, and he wasn’t real experienced with the forklift. In fact, Mojo got him a job in the peanut building.”
Rose made rapid notes, for real. “Peanut building?”
“Where they made the peanut butter crackers. They had to use dedicated equipment and such, to protect people with peanut allergies. It’s FDA and state regs.”
“So you were saying.”
“Anyway, to get back to the story, the man didn’t have enough experience operating a forklift. Also, they require forklift travel lanes and the like. You can’t play fast and loose with a forklift.”
“Of course not.” Rose kept making notes.
“Mojo didn’t like to talk about what happened, but I could tell how sad he was, inside. The man went over the side of the loading dock, killed when his head hit the floor. Mojo found him, on his rounds.” Julie clucked. “He made sure the man’s widow got herself a nice check without even having to file or sue.”
“So that’s the kind of man he is, huh?” Rose made another note, and Julie shook her head.
“No good deed goes unpunished, though. Before you know it, Mojo’s tossed out.”
“Oh no.” Rose lowered her voice. “They fired him?”
“I think they asked for his resignation, you know how they do. But he was too proud to let on, with me.” Julie frowned. “Don’t put that in your story, okay?”
“None of this will be in, I promise.” Rose suppressed a guilty pang.
“Thanks.” Julie nodded. “Tell you somethin’ else about him. He came in as a director after his training, but he never lorded it over anybody.”
“What did he do here?”
“Oh, right. You might not know, because the compliance offices in Pennsylvania are run by the feds.” Julie cleared her throat. “Well, OSHA, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, administers workforce safety out of D.C. But some states, like Maryland, have their own compliance agencies, too.”
“I see.” Rose took notes, and Julie warmed to her topic.
“We cooperate with the feds, and we work hard to ensure that every man and woman in the state has safe and healthful working conditions.”
“So Mojo came here after his training. Where did he train?”
“Baltimore, with everybody else.”
“Why did he need training, if he’d been a safety