Alex Harris 00 - Armed

“It’s very nice to meet you.”
    “Ron, I can take these out to the factory for you,” Mitch offered, taking a large envelope from Ron’s other hand.
    “Okay. Nice to meet you, too, Alex.” Ron turned and headed back to his office.
    Mitch opened the door to the factory. “Want to walk with me?”
    We entered the factory and I averted my eyes from the spot police tape now marked off. I hadn’t been out here since that night and the sight of the chalk markings on the floor startled me.
    I followed Mitch to a small copier I hadn’t noticed before. He made a copy of one of the papers in the envelope and then turned to me.
    “I’ll show you around.” He gestured to the cavernous space housing the manufacturing part of Poupée.
    “I talked with Joanne. So you two are dating. Why didn’t you say anything?”
    Mitch paused and looked at me. “I didn’t see where it had any connection with the investigation. It’s not a secret. Everyone here is aware of it as far as I know.”
    “Fair enough. Though a few things you said and a few she said don’t make a lot of sense.”
    “Such as?” Mitch asked, as we walked slowly along a pathway that had been set up away from all the machinery.
    “Well, I got the impression you liked your job and Mrs. Scott,” I said over the noise from the machines. “And you liked working here, but that’s not how Joanne presented it. She didn’t like Mrs. Scott one little bit. You failed to mention that yesterday.”
    Mitch bent close to my ear. “In general, yeah, I like it here. I didn’t think it would do me any good if it got around that I planned to leave and start something on my own. Especially since that probably won’t happen for some time. As for Joanne, I knew once you talked with her, you’d figure out for yourself about her feelings for Elvira.”
    I leaned close to Mitch. “You didn’t have any problem pointing the finger at Emmanuelle.”
    Mitch gave me a sheepish look but didn’t say anything.
    We kept walking around the perimeter of the factory and as we neared some glass-enclosed offices, I could see through the window that Jerry and Richard Sheridan were having a discussion—a heated one, by the looks of it. Unfortunately I couldn’t hear a thing.
    “This is the assembly area,” Mitch said. “We make the plastic pieces ourselves, but the metal joints for the arms and legs and the heads are made somewhere else. We do the assembly here. The eyes and hair are made elsewhere as well. Over there,” he pointed to the far right, “is where the painting is done. On the older models, the eyes are still hand painted. I don’t know how much longer we’ll be doing that model. The new sculptured look and the ones with the changeable eyes are the thing now. Over there along that wall are the offices for the foreman and the purchasing agent.” He gestured to the left. “There’s the break area. That about does it. The shipping area is in the very back.” Hold on a minute, I just have to drop these prints off.”
    Mitch walked to one of the small offices a few doors down from where the two men talked and put the envelope on a desk. A few minutes later we returned to the offices.
    Joanne poked her head out the doorway just as I turned into my office. “Mitch. Can I talk with you for a minute?”
    “Sure. Nice to see you again, Alex.” He smiled at me, walked into Joanne’s office, and closed the door.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

    I reached in my purse for the notebook anxious to write down that Jerry and Richard were having a fight, when the phone made me jump.
    “Alex, it’s Dad,” my father, Harry Harris, said. “I need you to run over to Mills Pond.”
    “What’s going on?” I asked as panic crept into my voice. My ninety-two-year old grandfather, my Dad’s father, had recently moved into a care home after living for several years with my uncle Jack and his wife.
    “Your mom is volunteering at the hospital today and I still have a bit of my cold. The home discourages people from coming if they have a cold. Guess they don’t want forty-five seniors running around with drippy noses.”
    “Dad, what happened to Grandpa?”
    “He took off into the woods behind the home and they need someone to coax him out. That’s all I know.”
    “It’s okay. I can run over.” I hung up the phone, threw the notebook back in my purse, and ran out the building.
    My grandfather, Lawrence Harris, had been an accountant for the phone company. For as long as I