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Quality Operations Patricia Abbott |
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My first meeting with Jack Diehl out at Weston Labs was predictable—just like a thousand other face-to-faces between two professionals. Sack Emerson had called me into his office that morning and asked me to meet with an independent chemist he’d hired to substantiate claims that would soon be made in print ads for our new line of LDL-lowering food. This project had been six years in development and the company’s future was tied to its success as tightly as the American car market’s was to SUVs. Cholesterol-lowering margarine and soy proteins were just the beginning. FutureFoods had come up with the magic bullet for a longer life. Or so we were assured by our team of chemists. I’ve worked at FutureFoods for about six years, most recently as Vice-President for Quality Operations. The salary doesn’t quite match the title but twenty years ago I would have been Administrative Assistant to the Vice- President with an entry-level salary and identical tasks. Most days, I went home satisfied; the anger only welling up at board meetings when coffee-making or note-taking was called for. I liked my job, my corner office overlooking the Art Institute, and various amenities not easily come by with most of the newer firms. *** “I’m not talking about a full-blown screening,” Sack had said, self-consciously that morning fingering a sheaf of documents labeled from our in-house lab. “It’s not a drug after all and government oversight has gotten pretty lax.” He paused, carefully avoiding my eyes. “Probably shouldn’t be spending good money on it, but getting the validation of a scientist with no ties to the company might make sense. One last chance to…to… catch any situations. You know.” He looked me in the eye finally, smiling. “I’m feeling very confident, Gracie.” Sure, you are, I thought, climbing into the company Lexus ten minutes later and heading for the address on the slate-colored business card he’d handed me. FutureFoods had certainly had its misfortunes of late. Only last month, we had an emergency meeting at 7:00 a.m. where Sack announced a third law suit had been filed over a possible causational link between one of our products and esophageal cancer. “Don’t we employ a team of attorneys to head off this sort of suit?” one of the senior vice presidents asked, stroking his hundred dollar tie. Sack cleared his throat. “I’m not really that worried with the gang we have in Washington and Lansing right now. They want us to beat these lawsuits.” “Tort reform will soon put an end to this constant harassment,” we all agreed. A series tax irregularities that made the local rag, a sexual discrimination charge that blew up in our face—all of these issues had made us scurry around, trying to sniff out incipient holes before they turned up. Perhaps I had indeed held onto my job long past the point of good sense. But I had my own obligations waiting at home and the several months it would take to come up with a comparable position were the several months I didn’t have. I wasn’t the typical PR person this assignment suggested. The day I was hired, Sack’s predecessor, a truly elderly man who looked at me like I was a hooker from Eight Mile Road, had made a point of asking me why I had chosen to apply to FutureFoods. “It’s a perfect fit,” I told him. “You won’t know how you got along without me in a few weeks.” He looked skeptical but also interested. Confidence lures old, white men more handily than expensive scents.
And it was a perfect fit. With my masters degree in Nutritional
Sciences and a second in Communication, I actually understood some
of the data inside the folder, could potentially take part in a
conversation of several minute’s duration with the guys in lab coats
on subjects such as the efficacy of the injection of plant sterol
esters or walnuts into foodstuff to lower LDL levels. I could, in
fact, talk with some authority to both the lab coats in the back and
the suits up front. That’s why I was being sent to—wherever it
was—Bloomfield Hills: for my business/scientific acumen. But my expertise wasn’t why I was headed for the burbs and we both knew it. I was the kind of girl asked to appear as a witness in traffic court—but more to distract the judge than impress him. The kind of girl—okay, woman at 34—who got promoted before her laptop was obsolete or the battery recalled. And I worked hard to keep it that way, eating like the current cover girl on glossy magazines, jogging five miles a day, spending three hours a week at an expensive hair and nail salon, and handing over more than a sixth of my salary to Nordstroms for clothing I hated. I knew how it was, how it worked, how it hung, and had lost any scruples about using whatever I had going for me long ago. Jack Diehl was a senior chemist at an independent lab that wasn’t connected to either FutureFoods or the government. Weston Labs had a reputation for being discreet as well as honest. If test results were disappointing, Weston Labs wouldn’t feel compelled to go to the authorities unless they detected a potential for loss of life or serious illness. On the other hand, if the media or government came calling, they wouldn’t lie about their findings. The pellets of sweat running down Sack’s neck had told me the real story. Something was worrying him. And what worried him, worried me. I pulled into the parking lot at Weston Labs trying to decide what it might be. Unlike the security-conscious FutureFoods offices downtown, I walked right into Weston Labs. A receptionist, looking like she didn’t have a worry greater than what to order from the Avon catalog on her lap, rang for Jack Diehl. She didn’t even ask for my name let alone an I.D. Apparently Mr. Diehl’s visitors required neither identification nor announcements. Diehl was a tall, thin man of about forty-five who looked quite a bit better than the wan, effeminate scientists we employed at FutureFoods. I felt those tremors—that trill in the groin—that women knew well, though Jack looked as married as any man I’d ever met. The wedding ring on his finger was double the width of the usual band, ending just short of his first knuckle. The ring was like a vise, forcing his finger into a sort of “Fuck You” gesture, which was completely at odds with the rest of his demeanor. It said a lot more than the obligatory, “I’m taken.” Despite this, I knew I’d bed him before the week’s end. He knew it too and looked at the thin white line that circled my finger and smiled. “Divorced?” his eyes seem to ask. “Perhaps,” mine answered. We discussed the project at length in a classy room set aside for conferences, agreeing to a timetable, a fair if steep fee, and some basic ground rules. We also agreed on a celebratory drink, and following that, made a date for lunch the next day, me citing the need to wrap up loose ends, Jack quickly agreeing. The lunch meeting took place in an eighth-floor guestroom at the Marriott, but there was no food involved. I wasn’t taking one for the company; this one was strictly for me. Or so I persuaded myself in the mirror later that night with the sound of a Red Wings game drifting in from the living room. I could only tolerate so much company rah-rah-rah. Was holding onto this job at any cost the best instinct I had? Or the worst? Were the skeletons that the company and I had buried together sharing a crypt in hell? I also couldn’t intuit if our affair was unusual for Jack. He was too guarded to give many hints. What was clear was that he was very good in the sack, willing to expend all kinds of energy and imagination on the task at hand. I nearly swooned. Even girls like me did that on occasion. It might take an hour or four to get there, but Jack had the time and so did I. Our affair continued throughout that autumn. Jack could only get away in the afternoons, but that suited me with my nocturnal obligations. I even mentioned one or two of our meetings without specifying the location or raison d'être to Sack to cover my ass should we be spotted. “You don’t want to get too buddy-buddy, Gracie,” he advised me in a fatherly way. “We don’t want to compromise his findings—provided, of course, that they coincide with our boys’ work. You do think they will, right?” Those pellets were starting up again and he swiped his neck with a handkerchief. “Has he said anything… significant?” “Only the occasional hint,” I lied, pushing the button for the elevator. “I know how to work him, don’t worry.” “Hey, what do you talk about anyway?” he asked suddenly, sounding genuinely interested as the elevator door glided open. “You and Diehl? I could hardly get a word out of him on the phone.” “Oh, you know,” I said, choosing my words carefully as the doors slid closed, “Sciencey things.” Sack nodded, satisfied and already bored. The merging of the two disparate worlds of science and business at FutureFoods was an uneasy fit. Sometimes I felt like I was carrying the whole firm on my back, plugging holes no one else even thought about. And it really pissed me off that Sack hadn’t taken me into his confidence. It would certainly be easier to handle Jack if I knew what the situation was. The Marriott began to seem like our little love nest. Familiar and cozy. The two of us, along with other midday regulars, were a little band of hotel hounds, loping down the halls to our favorite guestroom, snatching a preferred stool at the bar, grabbing the best table in the lounge. The hotel staff never once acknowledged they had served us a drink or made our bed only yesterday. Apparently, those were the rules. I’m sure every hotel has its regulars, but the routine guest doesn’t even notice it. Even the best hotel has a lot of beds to fill and turning a few over more than once a day can’t hurt their bottom line. That fall was a wet one and settling in at a secluded table behind the roaring gas fire in the lounge, sharing sandwiches of shrimp salad on herb bread, going drink-by- drink through the martini menu, watching Ellen Degeneres from the king-sized bed, took on a comfortable patina. There had certainly been men I shared less with. And we had his report to prepare, of course. Nice that satisfying my libido and the company’s went hand in hand. Except patinas can look like worm-eaten finish after a while. By Christmas, I had grown tired of Jack Diehl. Little stuff began to irritate me. He was a neat freak, for one thing. On an afternoon in early December, I watched him lint-brush a dark blue suit until its threads began to pill. I grew sick of listening to him brush his teeth for the ten minutes he insisted on, of watching him order the same drink in the bar—mentioning the lime he wanted anchored on the rim not inserted—long past the time the waiters needed reminding. He was creative in bed and certainly bright, but it wasn’t enough. The thrill wouldn’t return. It never had in the past. It was over. I decided to cut my losses and run. It had been weeks since Jack mentioned his project for FutureFoods. I was disgusted with the company’s reticence to clue me in on their concerns, and I also began to believe that Sack did indeed know I was sleeping with Jack and was using me to keep him in line. Unfortunately, I did have a reckless streak that had undone me before. Maybe I had too much confidence in my ability to control how things played out. Perhaps the desire to test it was my biggest flaw. We sat at our favorite table in the restaurant the night I told Jack. I hadn’t wanted to be alone with him in our usual room, not sure of how he’d react. “I thought we were just getting started,” he finally said. He signaled for a drink, wiping his upper lip on the back of his hand. “You have a wife,” I reminded him. He flushed. “I never hid…things…from you. I thought you’d accepted the circumstances. I can’t leave Maggie.” He had never said her name aloud before and he said it now with a little catch in his voice. He dismissed the idea of the divorce I had never suggested with a wave of his hand. “She just couldn’t take it.” He looked down at his ring and twisted it hard. “I did accept it.” I picked up my newly delivered drink and took a long sip. “But it’s over, Jack.” “Well, it’s not over,” he said, after a longish pause. “I’m not nearly ready for it to be over.” I was a bit surprised but tried not to show it. Could sex with Maggie be bad enough to hold me hostage? “I think that’s something we both need to agree on.” An even longer pause. Then, “You’d better reconsider, Grace. That is, if you want a positive report on that swill you’re planning to sell to the American public.” He sounded pompous almost—like we were bartering over something nobler than the price of sex. “What if I were to tell Maggie about us?” I countered. “What if I told her about….” I mentioned one of his little peccadillos, something I knew Maggie had never heard about much less done. “And what if I told FutureFood about their favorite PR girl? What if I told them….” He mentioned one my little indulgences. Damn him! I wasn’t any too keen on having Sack Emerson hear about that. I had given myself over to the pleasures of the bed too fully. But Jack had finally managed to say something of interest I realized a minute later. “You have the data then?” I asked, surprised. “I thought you were weeks away from a full report.” “I just finished it. Or the report FutureFoods would like to take to its stockholders. The one you bought for them.” “Meaning?” “Did that Emerson fellow actually suggest you sleep with me?” he asked, changing the subject fast enough to give me whiplash. “What’s his name? Zack? “Sack. No, of course not. That was my idea—a spur–of-the-minute decision that had nothing to do with the report, incidentally. You underestimate your attractiveness.” I paused, letting him absorb my semi-truthful compliment. “And what did you mean—the report we’d like to have?” “Meaning the actual results were less than sterling, Grace. The stuff probably won’t kill you unless you look at the accretion of chemicals in the body over time.” He blinked twice. “In the seventies, that was the worry—what the chemicals did. Now, of course, we dump chemicals in everything and go nuts about fat. Or you do anyway—you guys at Future Foods. I could hardly find a single plant-grown or natural ingredient in any item of food you plan to sell. It’s like a toxic highball you’re asking us to drink.” He shook his head. “Might as well go lick the chemlawn off the grass.” This was the most I had ever heard him say and I hadn’t liked a word of it. Things had been better when he didn’t speak at all. I stood up, grimacing. “Where are you going?” he asked, standing up too. He was threatening to ruin me and my company, but he still stood up when I did. It was an involuntary reaction and I nearly smiled. “Up to the room. Where else?” I reached for my purse and Jack, slapping a twenty on the table, followed. The sex was better than you’d think, but we didn’t say one word to each other. It was over, I told myself on the drive home. We could have sex for the next ten years and it would still be over. Primarily I’d had sex with him these past months because I wanted to. I wonder if he thought I consulted with Sack on my choice of sleeping partners. I wondered if I believed it too. Over the next two weeks, I arrived at the Marriott looking slovenly, an hour late, half-drunk after a holiday party, and irritable at all times. I stopped shaving my legs and wore no makeup. My new look was actually hell to pull off after years of practice at perfect grooming. I left my cell on, taking calls in the middle of sex, in the middle of a conversation. None of this deterred Jack. He actually seemed to prefer a certain petulance and disinterest. It spurred him on, which, in turn, had its affect on me. The situation was totally out of control. What I needed was a killer. Luckily, I was married to one. *** When I got home one night later that week, my husband, Harry sat in front of the television in the den watching the Pistons play the Bulls, a tumbler of scotch at his side. It was time to roll in the Trojan Horse disguised as an Achilles Heel, and that was Harry. Harry was big all right—one of those blonde guys who captain football teams in high school and the sofa fifteen years later. He worked out enough to keep the fat at bay, but had the red-faced look of the big drinker he was. I threw my coat on the chair in the foyer and stepped into the room. “Okay, it’s time to earn your keep,” I told him. “I’ve repeatedly pointed out that you couldn’t expect me to support you forever with no recompense.” It was always better to start out firm with Harry. He understood resolve from his years on sports’ teams. “What are you—the Godfather?” he said, barely looking up. He pushed mute on the remote but kept his hooded hazel eyes fixed on the game. “Need me to show up for a company dinner or are you horny at long last?” He smiled joylessly. “I am prepared to service you despite everything.” “Nobody in the office cares if you come to our events after your antics at the Fourth of July picnic last year, and believe me when I say I no longer get horny—for you, at least.” I stepped in front of the screen. “I need you to kill someone.” Actually this idea was not as off-the-cuff as it sounded. I had examined any number of alternative scenarios, including having Harry merely threaten Jack, but all of them ended in disaster… for me and FutureFoods. I’d hoped my blunt statement would shake him up, and it did. Harry’s nearly non-existent eyebrows rose. “Do you have a particular person in mind or is it more like an initiation rite for a fraternity? Or, better yet, a gang ritual?” He smiled. “Shall I go out into the street and strangle the third guy I run into?” “You never were funny, Harry. No delivery, no timing.” I picked up his drink and finished it. Making a face, I set it down. “Actually, it’s a very specific person. Think you’ve got the rocks for it?” “What would the outcome of my refusal be?” “The end of your allowance, your car, and complete banishment from the kingdom of Grace.” I waved my arm around. “Can you live without it?” “What if I refuse to leave Gracie Mansion? Do you have someone to get rid of me? A third or fourth guy waiting in the wings?” I was so damned tired of smart-mouthed men who wouldn’t behave. “I guess you’ll have to take my word that I can have you out of here in an hour if I choose.” That wasn’t strictly true, but I had developed a persuasive tone that stood me well. “For some reason, I believe you.” He grimaced as the game ended with the Pistons down by four and switched it off. “Do you have a method in mind?” I did actually. “Poisoned darts? Are you insane?” He looked around the room for an audience to share the absurdity of my idea with but found none. “You play darts every day so you’re good at it.” I told him. “You could go to his lab some night and do it there. Make it look like someone at Weston Labs used a tranquilizer gun on him. There must be some competition over grants—back-biting. That kind of thing” Jack had mentioned that there were animals in many of the labs. Surely, they’d have a tranquilizer gun around. He nodded. “Okay, assuming you’re actually serious, what sort of poison did you have in mind?” “If you hit him in the right spot, say his heart or neck, couldn’t you kill him without using poison? Those guns shoot the darts at a fairly high velocity, I imagine.” Had I really said that? Where did I even come upon this information? Or perhaps I was merely crazy—as Harry had suggested. Harry shook his head. “I don’t think so. The darts would kill the animals if that were true. And I may be better at throwing darts than earning a living, but I’m not that good.” He paused. “I’ll kill him some other way.” I nodded. “Mind if I ask what this guy did to you? I assume it’s a guy.” “He’s blackmailing me over a report’s contents. It could mean my job. It could mean the end of FutureFoods and all this.” I motioned to the plasma TV that occupied his days, the liquor cabinet that filled his nights. Harry whistled. “Wouldn’t it be better to do him in some hotel room? Getting inside his lab might not be as easy as you seem to think.” “I don’t want to associate his death with a sexual relationship. That would only lead to me.” We both blinked and then I continued. “He has a wife ten miles away and he wouldn’t be in a hotel room except to have sex with somebody else. And believe me, getting into this lab is a piece of cake.” I licked my lips, which felt unnaturally dry. “So how do you think you’ll do it?” “Probably a knife. I’m good with knives. I also make a mean fire if you want the place torched.” He smiled a little. “You really bought yourself a skilled killer after all. The last two years of support has finally paid off.” “Are you sure a gun wouldn’t be the easiest way?” “I don’t own one, have never fired one, and don’t think I could lay my hands on one quickly.” He paused suddenly. “Works in a lab, right?” I nodded. “How about a scalpel instead of a knife? Can’t be very different to use.” “It’s not like it’s a hospital lab,” I said after a minute. “They do some animal testing, but I don’t know about surgery.” “Still they’d have scalpels around. It’ll look like an inside job if I use a scalpel. I can get one at a medical supply store. If worse come to worse, I can strangle him too.” Harry waved his king-sized paws in my face. I only wished I could do it myself. Kill Jack, that was. But I’d have to count on Harry. I hadn’t relied on him for much of anything since he quit his job and took up residence on the sofa. Harry kept the place clean, cooked the scant dinner I ate, left me alone. He didn’t even pay the bills, not that I’d trust him with the checkbook. He was an expensive houseboy I hadn’t had the time or inclination to deal with. Call me sentimental for holding on to him. Or, call me a shrink. And there was also the fact that Harry had killed once before. Back when we were teenagers and dating for the first time, we had come in from a movie and found my stepfather chasing my mother around the room with a ball peen hammer. I had stood there frozen, watching open-mouthed as blood streamed down her face, hearing her cries as if through water. But Harry, Harry acted quickly, reaching out with one of his huge paws and coming up with Donny like he was some damned chew toy. Donny then made the mistake of swinging that hammer at Harry with his free hand. Harry went damned nuts at that point and ended up using that hammer on Donny. That was when Harry’s football skills, speed, and weight made him formidable. At a time when he would have done anything for me. He was probably the only person who’d put himself on the line for me in my entire life. Years of disappointments had changed things though. Damn, I had loved that boy. What happened to us?
I set things up for Harry’s visit, telling Jack I wanted to meet him at his lab—so we wouldn’t get distracted by sex. “Look Sack Emerson has some papers for you to sign,” I told him. “It’s a business thing. Are you going to be in your lab tonight?” “Why not just message them over in the daytime?” he asked, not surprisingly. Jack wasn’t a dope after all. “You know Sack,” I lied, because he didn’t know Sack at all. He still called him Zack whenever his name came up. “He likes the personal touch.” “All right, well, I’ll be here. Maggie doesn’t mind me working late as long as I leave my cell on. She’s a bit of a—” Ever since he had aired her name aloud for the first time a few weeks earlier, I’d heard lots about Maggie’s thoughts and actions—every one of them trivial, dull, and neurotic. I interrupted. “Can I get in there after eight or do they lock the place down?” “Just ring the front bell and I’ll let you in.” Now that was a problem. The front façade of the foyer was all glass. If Jack saw Harry at the doors instead of me, he wouldn’t let him in. I’d have to call Jack a few minutes beforehand and say I was having the papers delivered by a messenger after all—when it was too late to change plans. It might work. “Oh, and have that report ready for me to take along,” I said, struggling for an offhand tone. “I told Sack it was complete. Just stick it in the FutureFoods folder I left with you on our first meeting. Sack would just as soon not have anyone see Weston’s name.” Lie, lie, lie. I was getting good at it. I needed the folder to be easily identifiable to Harry though. He couldn’t leave Weston Labs without it after all this trouble. “Handing it over to you doesn’t really settle things,” Jack told me unnecessarily. “I can rescind my report at any time. Tell them some new data came in and I have to reverse my findings.” “I know,” I said flatly. And that’s why you gotta die. It may seem heartless, cruel and calculating, but how could I trust a man who could destroy me at any moment? Any one of the smallest disappointments, as far as Jack was concerned, might spell the end of FutureFoods and, more importantly, me. *** I have never been as anxious as I was the night Harry went to murder Jack. I dallied a bit, wondering if I should call Harry back, replaying various scenarios, but finally made the call to Jack in plenty of time. I drove to the only public phone I knew of—at the city library—to do it. Jack answered with a swell in his voice that made me break into instant goose bumps. “Is it you?” he asked. “Grace?” He sounded a lot farther away than Bloomfield. “I was just calling to say….” “Your husband showed up here.” His normal monotone broke into a thousand shards. “Didn’t even know you had a husband till I saw the driver’s license. How is it you never mentioned that? Geez, I think I killed him.” He paused. “He must have known you were coming and thought he’d catch us in the act.” I couldn’t get a word out of my mouth. “Grace, are you there? Look, I’d better call the cops. He could still be alive. I don’t think so but….” He paused. “Grace? Look, he came at me with a scalpel.” He giggled nervously. “A scalpel! For Christ’s sake. Why not just use a gun?” “He hates guns,” I finally stammered. “Look, make sure he’s not still breathing, Jack.” I realized at that point there was no way this could end well. “Check him out,” I almost screamed. “Good thing I don’t hate guns,” Jack said, his voice strangely cool. “Working nights in a lab alone, you know. I’ve always had one.” His voice was muffled for a minute. “No, he’s not breathing. Christ, why didn’t you mention him? Separated?” “More or less,” I said dully. It had seemed like such a safe place. Weston Labs. No security issues at all. “You’d better call the cops.” Jack called the cops. They showed up, listened to his far-fetched but sadly true assertion that he hadn’t even known I was married. They listened to his claim that he had certainly never lured Harry to his lab. None of his tale went over well with either the cops or the prosecutor. The next day or the one after, they came for me too. They stood in my foyer not even pretending they had much of anything to say to me. They read me my rights and looked around curiously while I went and got my coat. We both went to jail, the newspapers comparing us to the characters in a thousand forties film. It was never precisely clear why we would murder Harry. He wasn’t a rich millionaire or a Greek restaurant owner. But he was dead now and we had been having an affair. There were phone records, emails and the people at the Marriott turned out to be very chatty when confronted with the law. And it also turned out Harry had kept a lot of incriminating documents on his closet shelf. If I hadn’t gone to jail for one thing, I would have gone for another. It was enough for the jury. FutureFoods’s sterling report lay on Jack’s desk in the proper folder so the company ended up on their feet. Sack Emerson visited me twice; no one else came at all. *** I got letters in jail from Jack nearly every week for some months. Some I read; some I threw away. In most of those letters, he went over grounds for an appeal, told me what Maggie had to say about things and complained that I never answered him. Letters as dull as he was although considerably more verbose than what I was used to. I never really cared much for Jack. Oh, the affair has its satisfying physical side and it may have made him more amenable to producing a good report, but it turned out it was Harry I really loved. It didn’t take me long to realize it. Those years or treating each other shabbily had been a façade because when his attorney finally brought his papers to me, it seemed like he still loved me too. Harry had kept every little note I ever left on the fridge for him, every card, every letter from our teen years and later. It was as comprehensive a collection as a teenage girl’s. Oh, sure some of the stuff was a bit incriminating if you wanted to look at it in the worst light, like how I had siphoned off money from various funds, slept with a few too many men in power. And the fridge notes were often a bit churlish. But I prefer to think Harry merely had some compunction about compiling a complete record. Only the nastiest people would suggest he was getting the goods on me.
The End
Copyright(c) 2007 by Patricia Abbott
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