Save Me - Lisa Scottoline [112]
“That’s what he said!” Julie laughed. “We train anyway, and he didn’t know the way we do things down here.”
Rose thought a minute. “I didn’t ask him, but was he a Maryland resident then?”
“No, he had to move here.”
Rose hesitated, and Julie leaned over.
“Next, you’re gonna ask me how he got the job, and that I don’t know. He moved to Harford County, just over the state line. I knew he wouldn’t stay forever. He wanted to go back to Pennsylvania, and they were building the house. You’ve seen that place of his?”
“Yes, that’s where I interviewed him.”
“His wife’s family, they got money. That, he told me.” Julie leaned over again. “How else you think he could afford to build custom, especially from that fancy company? He liked it so much, that’s who he went to work for.”
“Campanile.” Rose made a fake note, and suddenly a fluorescent light began to flicker overhead.
“Uh-oh!” Julie looked up, curled her lip in annoyance. “Here we go again. Building Maintenance’s gotta come change that bulb. I don’t know how to do fluorescents, you know, those long, skinny ones.”
“Me, neither.”
“Mojo wouldn’t have any of that, of course. If he was here, he’d get on a ladder, grab a screwdriver, take off that panel, and change that bulb himself, no waiting.” Julie nodded. “Mojo can fix anything.”
“Even lights?”
“Sure enough. That’s something else you probably don’t know about Mojo. You can put it in your article.”
“What?”
“He’s a master electrician.”
Chapter Sixty-three
Rose hit the road on fire, flying up I-95, heading north. Traffic had picked up, and she kept her foot on the gas, passing slowpokes, full of nervous energy. Mojo was looking more and more like a killer; he had access to the school at any time, so he could have planted the polyurethane in the teachers’ lounge, and he knew enough about electrical wiring to rig the microwave, loosen the wiring, and create a gas leak.
Rose sensed that Mojo had done it, but she didn’t know why. Campanile had just built the school, so why would he want to blow it up, especially when lawsuits were likely to follow, against his own employer? She raced down the highway, and the questions kept coming. Why would he want to murder children? Even if he had known that they’d be at recess, it would be an awful chance to take, and he’d killed three staff members.
She steered smoothly around a Honda, thinking back. In a matter of days, there had been two deaths that looked like accidents that weren’t, and after her trip to Baltimore, she felt even more paranoid. She hadn’t realized that Mojo had any connection with Bill Gigot; wherever Mojo went, death seemed to follow, and she was beginning to wonder if Bill Gigot’s death had been an accident, too.
Rose sped home, toward Reesburgh, but she wasn’t sure of her next move. She still didn’t have any evidence that Mojo had committed a murder, much less three of them, so she still couldn’t go to the police. She had called Annie and Leo to tell them what was going on, but neither had answered, and this time, she didn’t leave a message. She was on her own.
She took the exit ramp, and in time, the terrain grew familiar. White clapboard farms and tall blue silos. Sun-drenched stretches of corn and soybeans, their round, dark-green leaves shuddering in unseen winds. She whizzed past the scenery, thinking about Bill Gigot and Homestead. She had never been inside the plant; she and Melly had missed the school’s field trip there, in second grade. Homestead staged the town’s Halloween and Christmas parades, and sponsored a team in its softball and basketball leagues. Other than that, Rose knew very little about the company.
Maybe it was time to learn.
After all, she was a reporter.
Chapter Sixty-four
Rose got out of her car in the visitors’ lot, breathed in the tantalizing aroma of frying potatoes, and eyed the Homestead factory, which was on the other side of the access road. It wasn’t a single building, but a series of five buildings—immense corrugated metal boxes, painted a sparkling white, with a broad yellow stripe. Clouds