Save Me - Lisa Scottoline [114]
“The theater is this way!” called out a ponytailed Homestead employee. “We’re gonna see a movie!”
Rose had no choice but to go with the flow, though the last thing she needed was to watch a corporate video with talking potato chips. Luckily, it lasted only twelve minutes, which was the average attention span of a six-year-old and a mom trying to solve a murder.
“Follow me, I’m Linda!” the ponytailed employee called out, and the group was herded down one hallway and another. The kids giggled, pointed, and pushed each other, and Rose decided there was a special place in heaven reserved for teachers and moms who chaperoned on field trips.
“First, the pretzel factory, then the potato chip factory!” Linda called out, taking them into a wide hallway that had floor-to-ceiling plastic windows, providing a complete view onto the factory floor, two stories below. The Holy Redeemer group merged with two other school groups already there, and Rose breathed easier, since all the moms would think she was with one of the other groups.
Linda started her spiel. “So, Homestead Snacks started with the Allen family and today it’s a multi-national food producer, which owns seventy-five hundred acres of land in Reesburgh, including the Reesburgh Motor Inn, Reesburgh Visitor Center, the Potato Museum, and other things.”
Seventy-five hundred acres? Rose looked over at Linda, amazed. That was practically the whole county.
“Homestead employs almost four thousand people in its Reesburgh headquarters, and many more in its thirty-five branches throughout the Mid-Atlantic states.” Linda gestured to the window. “Here you see the first step of our pretzel baking, which is when the dough goes into the kneader, gets mixed up, and is extruded, which means pushed through…”
Rose tuned her out, eyeing the factory floor, below. It was a large, well-lit space, filled with huge lines of stainless steel equipment. The walls were white cinderblock, and the floor a dull red industrial tile. Oddly, there were only six employees, performing various tasks in their yellow jumpsuits, earplugs, and hairnets.
Linda asked, “Any questions before we move on?”
Rose caught her eye. “You have so many employees, but there are only six for this whole pretzel operation. Is that typical?”
“Good question!” Linda answered, officially perky. “Most of our employees are route drivers, and we have a fleet of one thousand trucks and vans on the road. And the machinery does all the baking, so our employees don’t have to slave away in those hot temperatures. Also, you’re seeing only a third of our plant employees at any one time, because we work around the clock, on three shifts; 6–2, 2–10, and the night shift, 10-6.”
Rose wondered how many people would have seen what happened the night Bill Gigot was killed. “Do the same number of employees work on each shift?”
“No, many fewer work the night shift. Now, let’s go!” Linda shuttled them to another window that showed superwide belts of uncooked pretzels moving slowly into a large oven.
“What are those things?” asked a little boy with glasses, pointing to red hoses that came from the production machines.
“Those are wires. Now, before we see the potato chips, we have a few offices to pass and we’ll go by them quickly. Here’s the office of our Quality Assurance Manager.” Linda pointed through the window at an older woman in a hairnet and labcoat. “That lady eats potato chips five times a day. Who wants her job?” The kids hollered, and Linda hustled them ahead. “This is the office of our Director of Safety. As you see, all of our employees wear hairnets and earplugs, and there’s even hairnets for beards!”
The kids erupted into laughter, but Rose was thinking that it was Mojo’s former office, a small box of white cinderblock with a cluttered desk. No one was inside. She asked, “Does