I pushed through the large glass door into the lobby and went to the desk. Everything was bright and colorful in the lobby. Orange couches, white tile floor, lamps that looked like six-foot ice cream cones. And an old-fashioned ice cream pushcart filled with ice cream cups that were free for the taking. The Mo Morris theme was written in large red letters across one of the walls. “Our Ice Cream Is Mo Better!”
There was a young man behind the desk. He was dressed in a white ice cream vendor uniform. I told him I was there to see Vicky, and moments later Vicky appeared. Vicky was also wearing the white ice cream vendor uniform. I followed her down a hall to the women’s locker room. She assigned a locker to me and gave me the key.
“I understand you have experience with the cup dropper and filler,” she said, “so I thought we’d start you there. That way you can look around without the pressure of learning a new job.”
I felt my eyes glaze over at the thought of the cup dropper and filler. I nodded and attempted a smile.
“Oh boy,” I said. “The cup dropper and filler.”
“Of course, everyone on the floor wears a sanitary uniform,” Vicky said. “You’ll find one in your locker. Once you’re suited up just go through the door labeled ‘Yummytown.’ It opens to the manufacturing area. I’ll be waiting on the other side.”
The Mo Morris uniform was almost identical to the Bogart uniform, but it was orange. The slogan printed in black over the door to Yummytown said “Orange you happy to be working in an ice cream factory!”
If I opened the door and saw Oompa-Loompas working the line I was going to run like hell and never come back.
I peeked out and saw that it looked a lot like the Bogart factory. One large warehouse-type room with a lot going on. No Oompa-Loompas in sight. Vicky led me to the cup dropper and filler machine and said she’d be back at ten so I could take a break.
After an hour of looking at the cups going by I found myself dozing off on my feet. I jumped around a little and I sang the Pharrell Williams “Happy” song. Vicky came over and asked if I was okay because she’d noticed I was clapping my hands and dancing. I told her I was being happy, and she went away.
Three cups came down crooked. I fixed them and realized that they were all coming down crooked. I couldn’t set them right fast enough, and down the line the ice cream was plopping onto the side of the cup and oozing over onto the conveyor belt and onto the floor. I looked for the red button that stopped the line and called the foreman, but there was no red button. There were a bunch of switches and a green button.
“Hey!” I yelled. “Yoo-hoo! Somebody?”
No one could hear me over the machinery. I held my breath and flipped the first switch. The line sped up. Cups were coming down one after another and moving along the belt at warp-speed. Ice cream was flying all over the place. The floor was inches deep in ice cream.
A large woman rushed over, threw a switch on the side of the conveyor belt, and everything came to a grinding halt.
“What on earth?” she asked.
“There’s no big red button,” I said.
A man hurried over. He was dressed in one of the white vendor uniforms, and he had a medal pinned to his jacket. He slipped on the ice cream and went down to one knee. He got up and I saw that the medal said “Big Shot.” I guess that meant he was a boss of some sort.
“No red button,” I said to him.
He looked confused.
“She keeps saying that,” the woman said. “She keeps saying there’s no red button.”
Vicky ran in. “She’s new,” Vicky said. “My bad. I assumed she knew how to run the machine.”
“There’s no big red button,” I said to Vicky.
“No problem,” Vicky said. “I was coming to get you anyway. There’s a man here to see you.”
Ranger was waiting for me in the break room.
“Babe,” he said, his attention focusing on the orange shower cap.
“If you so much as crack a smile I’m going to hit you.”
“I have good news and bad news. The good news is that you can lose the orange after today. You’re going back to Bogart.”
“Gee, I just got here.”
“Yeah, I know you’re broken up about leaving, but we have a situation across town. The bad news is that the loading dock foreman was found dead in the freezer this morning.”
I felt myself go into suspended animation for a beat. Disbelief that another Bogart employee was frozen. A sense of dread that it was true and that I knew the man.
“Gus?” I asked.
“Yes. You worked with him yesterday.”
There was still disbelief. “How did it happen?”
“The ME didn’t see any sign of trauma. It looks like Gus got locked in and froze to death.”
“That’s impossible. The freezer door always opens from the inside.”
“Someone tampered with the lock. There’s no cell reception in the freezer, but Gus left a message on his phone. He said he went in to do inventory and couldn’t get out. The time on the phone was five-ten.”
My heart was beating hard. It could have been me! “I was in and out of that freezer all morning. The door was working perfectly.”
“It was also working perfectly for most of the afternoon. A truck came in at one o’clock, and it took three hours to load it. No one had any problems with the door.”
“No one noticed that Gus was missing?”
“Butchy clocked out at four-thirty P.M. The Jolly clown clocked out at seven P.M. He said he tried to put his unsold ice cream back in the freezer but the number code wouldn’t work, so he used a small auxiliary freezer in the storeroom.”
“He didn’t think it was odd that he couldn’t get into the freezer?”
“He thought it was inconvenient but not odd. He said it wasn’t the first time he couldn’t get into the freezer. He said Gus was an idiot, and Bogart was a cheap bastard who never fixed anything. And he wondered who he should see to apply for the foreman job.”
“He’s been trying to get out of the clown suit for years.”
“Not going to happen. I asked Bogart about the denied requests to transfer. It’s company policy straight from Bogart not to move people around. No exceptions. He hires from the outside for new jobs or he promotes within departments. The clown is a department of one. He isn’t going anywhere.”
“What about Gus’s family?”
“He lived alone. Divorced. Two kids that live out of state.”
“I hate this,” I said. “It’s ugly and horrible and sad. And I’m in the middle of it. And I can’t even eat a Bogart Bar and feel happy.”
“Babe,” Ranger said.
I blew out a sigh. “Criminy.”
Ranger wrapped his arms around me and held me close. “It’s what we do. We wade in and try to make things a little more safe.”
“I know, but I’m having a shortage of happy.”
“I could fix that.”
“Your fix would create a whole other set of problems for me.” I stepped away. “So how do I fit in across town?”
“Bogart wants you back. He’s scared. This is the second employee death. And it looks like another murder.”
“I don’t see where I’m doing anything helpful. I’m not good at the spy thing. I hardly get to talk to anyone.”
“Keep your eyes open. You’re getting jobs that don’t require a lot of concentration. Look around. Look for things that don’t make sense. An employee with too much money. Someone who’s out of place. Someone who has all the right access to the trucks, the freezer, the storeroom.”
“That would be everyone. Bogart runs a very loosey-goosey operation. Everyone has access to everything.”
“I have the list of new hires,” Ranger said. “There are only three in the appropriate time period.”
I looked at the list. Gina Slater was hired and placed on the line six months ago. Maureen Gooley joined the housekeeping crew at about the same time. William (“Butchy”) Boone was placed on the loading dock a little over a year ago.
“I’d like to see more on Boone,” I said to Ranger.
“I’ll have a full report sent to you. Tomorrow Bogart’s plant production line is closed. CSI will be crawling all over it. The only one working will be the Jolly Bogart clown. You can ride along with him.”
I slid a glance at the door to the plant. “It’s sort of a mess in there. One of the machines malfunctioned.”
“That would explain the ice cream all over your orangeness.”
I looked down at myself. “There was no big red button.”