Kentucky Murders: A Small Town Murder Mystery (6 page)

“You’ve got a deal,” he said, standing and walking toward the door. He stopped, looked back, and waved. She was still watching him.

“Good luck,” she called.

A few minutes later, as he drove out of town, he realized he hadn’t left a tip. “Damn,” he said. “That’s not how you impress a waitress.”

Chapter 11

Kate watched as Zack walked past the diner windows and disappeared from view down the sidewalk.
What was his last name? Taylor? That was it. He was cute, but he seemed a little nervous.
She had a feeling she would be seeing more of him. She smiled at the thought and returned to serving her customers.

A half hour later, Kate went on break. As usual, she went to the alley out behind the building for a smoke. Outside the back door of the diner on a bench, Kate sat down and took out her cigarettes. Luckily, the wind was blowing in the right direction, so the stench from the dumpster blew away from her location. On some days, when the wind was wrong, she couldn’t stand being out there. But on days like this one, she liked the seclusion provided by her little, private, outdoor break room. She listened to the birds and looked up at the blue sky.

As she took her first puff, she thought about this new guy in town. Zack? Who are you, Zack Taylor? Then she saw the two of them holding hands and walking in the park. She imagined them making out in a car up at the point by the lake. She imagined them talking under the moonlight. Then she laughed to herself. What was she doing? Imagining romance with a complete stranger? What, was she crazy?

But she knew why she had these thoughts. Now that she and Tommy were no longer together, she felt strange. For the first time in years, she felt like her life had possibilities.

She remembered their junior year when Tommy had “discovered” her. Before Tommy, she had been nobody. She was shy and plainly dressed, and she wore little if any makeup and hung with the unpopular crowd.

One day, in the first few weeks of that school year, Tommy had looked at her as they passed in the hallway and had said hi to her. She couldn’t believe it. Tommy Ray had said hi to her? Her friends couldn’t believe it, either.

From that day forward, Kate’s life had changed. Tommy, the football hero, and Kate, the former wallflower, began dating. Kate changed her image. She learned how to apply makeup and how to dress more hip and sexy. She changed her group of friends and started hanging out with the “in” crowd. She became a cheerleader and was even voted as homecoming queen their senior year. And, of course, Tommy was her king.

Tommy wasn’t perfect even back then. He had sometimes showed his temper. Occasionally, he had made sick jokes in front of her and his friends. Kate had thought that maybe embarrassing her gave him a kick. But she owed him. He had taken her from nothing to something. After all he’d done for her, she could put up with a little public ass-grabbing and an occasional humiliating joke.

After high school, when the college football scholarship fell through, Tommy had changed for the worse. He seemed to get short-tempered more often. They had almost completely stopped seeing each other for nearly a year at one point. Kate had decided to put off college for a while, too. She had promised herself that she’d take classes the next fall at the community college, a promise she had not kept. She went from part-time to full-time at the diner. Many of her girlfriends had left town and went off to college; others had gotten married shortly after high school. But she still had a couple of single girlfriends left in town. She began hanging out with Kathy, another waitress at the diner. They went to local bars on weekends and talked on the phone every few days. Since they normally worked different shifts, they didn’t often see each other at work.

Then, last year, Tommy started coming around again to see her. They had started dating again. In the last six months, it had gotten pretty steady. But, this time, things had been different. Tommy wasn’t the football hero, and she wasn’t the cheerleader anymore. Tommy had seemed a little bored and somewhat depressed. In high school, he was full of hope for the future, but his recent failures seemed to deflate that vigor he once had. They began arguing more often. Sometimes he’d throw things when he was mad. Once, he punched a hole in a wall. But he’d never hit her. Not until the other night.

That was it. There was no way she would let him abuse her physically. She now realized he’d been emotionally abusive all along. It was over.

Maybe that’s why she was imagining romance with a stranger. She was hungry for a caring, gentle man. Zack was cute and seemed nice. Nice was nice for a change. She smiled. “Romance? I wonder what that would feel like?” she said to a squirrel that was perched on the branch of a tree, its beady, little eyes staring down at her. Snuffing out her cigarette in a nearby sand-filled can, she stood up and went back to work.

Chapter 12

Zack pulled into the parking lot that stretched across the front and around the left side of the A&M Box Factory. He estimated there were about thirty other cars in the lot. He found a space up front marked “Visitor” and parked.

Branching out from the side of the two-level factory was a one-story section, which Zack figured was probably the company offices. He went through the double, tinted glass doors, which led into a reception area. Off to the side behind a counter, sat a pleasant-faced middle-aged woman, her hands flying across the keys of an old-fashioned typewriter on a small desk, her dark hair formed mostly into a ball on top of her head. She stopped typing when she noticed Zack.

“May I help you?” she asked, adding a smile.

“I hope so,” he said, walking up to her. “I saw your ad in the town paper for the forklift driver. If it’s still available, I’d like to apply.”

“It sure is, sweetie,” she said, opening her desk drawer, removing a multi-page form and handing it to Zack. “Fill out this application, and I’ll tell the foreman you’re here.”

Zack took the application and gave her a confused look. “Where?”

She pointed. “You’ll find a pen over there at the table.”

Ten minutes later, he walked back up to her desk and handed her the application. “Here you go. I’m done.”

“That was quick.” She looked through the form. “And you’re one of the few who got it right the first time. Except we need an address and phone number.”

“Well, I’m new in town, and I need the job before I find a place to stay.”

She looked at him slightly puzzled. “Okay. If you’re hired, you can give me that information later. Take a seat, and Frank will be with you in a little while.”

Zack patiently waited almost a half hour without really minding. He sat back, relaxed, enjoyed the air-conditioning, and browsed through several magazines without seeing the words or pictures. Instead, his thoughts drifted back to Kate.

Finally, a husky man in his mid-fifties with the top of his bald head rimmed with gray hair, took Zack to a second-floor office with a window that looked out over the factory. “Take a seat,” he said. “I’m Frank, the foreman. You know, you’re really lucky. We don’t usually get too many job openings around here. There isn’t much turnover, since everyone is local. I had three boys quit last week and join the Marines. I did a tour in the Marine Corps in Korea. It was cold as hell.”

Zack sat near the window, and Frank settled himself in a worn leather chair behind his scarred, metal desk. He looked over Zack’s application for a minute before speaking. “You worked there four and a half years, huh? Cars just aren’t sellin’ like they used to.”

“Those were the exact words they used when they laid me off.”

“Well,” he looked back at the application, “have you ever driven a forklift?” He planted his elbows on the arms of his chair and folded his hands together in front of his belly.

“I sure have. Many times. I could demonstrate if you’d like.”

“That won’t be necessary. We have a standard test for new forklift drivers. You shouldn’t have a problem with it. If you get this job, you’ll be living here in town, I suppose,” he said as a statement, but waited for Zack’s acknowledgment.

“Yes, I would. But if I can’t find a job here, I’ll have to move on and keep looking.”

“You know, I admire you,” said Frank. “You read all about these unemployed autoworkers who sit on their butts collecting unemployment. Then there are guys like you who take off, leaving everything behind, and go after a job. That’s good. I like that. You look right for the job to me. When can you start?” He stood and stretched out his hand.

“I can start any time. I just need to find a place to stay.”

“Welcome aboard,” Frank offered his hand and smiled.

“Glad to be here,” Zack said, as they shook hands.

“This afternoon you’ll get a tour of the factory, fill out some additional paperwork, and take the forklift test. Then, if you’re ready, you can start in the morning. If you need a little more time give me a call, but we need you ASAP.”

They walked downstairs to the back of the factory, where he showed Zack the loading docks and warehouse areas. He explained that it was another driver’s job to unload the trucks and stack the corrugated cardboard in the warehouse. Zack’s job would be to deliver sheets that had been cut and scored to the machines in other departments of the factory.

“This will be your main delivery,” explained Frank, as they entered a noisy room. “This,” he pointed proudly to one of the long machines, “is a printer/slotter. It cuts the final slots that will form the box and also prints whatever the customer has ordered on the board.”

Several different sounds came from the machine. A man fed cardboard onto a rubber tongue, and metal kickers pushed it into the machine. A whizzing sound came from inside, then a cha-chunk as the board was printed, and, finally, a noisy chopping sound came as the final piece shot out from the other end. It was the loudest machine they had come across so far. “After it’s complete, they load the board onto handcarts and take it into there.” He pointed to an archway leading to another department. “That’s where the boxes are taped, glued, or stitched, folded, and stacked on pallets ready to ship.”

Zack also discovered that his job included taking large scraps form the various machines up the elevator to the second floor, where they would be used for making partitions to be placed inside certain kinds of boxes.

On their way past one of the printer/slotters, they saw a forty-something, heavyset man dressed in a blue uniform, stooping over and sweeping up dust at the end of a machine. “That’s Max. He’s the janitor around here.” He leaned over to Zack as if Max could hear him over the noisy machinery. He said through a cupped hand into Zack’s ear, “He’s mentally handicapped, but is one hell of a hard worker; he’s just a little slow to understand.”

Zack nodded just as Max looked up at him. Zack called out loudly, “Hello, there.”

Max didn’t return his smile, but his mouth moved in what Zack took to be hi. Max immediately went back to his work.

Frank slapped Zack on the back, saying, “That’s enough for today. Zack, unless you call to let me know you can’t, I need you to try to be here at seven sharp to punch in. You can learn the rest as you go along.”

After shaking his hand again, Zack left for the front office to complete the other paperwork and take the written forklift test, a basic test that could probably be passed without any forklift experience at all. It contained mostly safety questions, which probably meant they would keep it in his file to cover the factory in case he had an accident. He’d found out that the job paid about half of what he had made back in Detroit, but the cost of living seemed to be much lower in Michaeltown. He remembered the quarter parking meter and the prices at the diner.

He drove toward town in search of the hotel Frank had recommended. According to Frank, the owner kept one room upstairs that had been converted into a bachelor-type studio apartment for the occasional long-term tenant. The bedroom/ living room with kitchenette and private bath arrangement would suit Zack fine until he found something more permanent.

Frank seemed nice enough. That comment he’d made about the laid-off autoworkers seemed a little narrow-minded, but he didn’t know any better. Sure Zack had taken to the road in search of a job, and, sure, some men took advantage of the system, but there were thousands of others with hungry kids to feed. They would have a hard time picking up and moving, even though some of them had done just that. Most of them couldn’t afford to take some lower-paying job while they waited to be recalled. He’d seen friends lose cars, houses, furniture, and everything else they owned because they just couldn’t make the payments. No, Frank’s neat little theory wasn’t quite right, but Zack wasn’t about to sit him down and explain his error. No, he’d made a good impression and had gotten the job. That’s all that mattered.

As he reentered town, he remembered Kate’s words “if you get the job, we’ll have time to get to know each other better.” He smiled and turned in at the hotel.

Chapter 13

On the following Wednesday, Zack tried again to interest Kate in dinner. “How about going out with me this weekend?”

Kate looked up from behind the counter at Zack, who was sitting in the same place as on the day they met, almost a week before. “You’ve eaten here, what, four times? If you add up all the short conversations we’ve had, that’s maybe a couple hours, and now you think I know you well enough to go out with you?” she said doubtfully, while taking a thoughtful puff on her cigarette. “For all I know, you’re a serial killer.” She smiled.