Yvonne’s computer. She skimmed the document, searching for key words. As she read, the room fell away from her, and her blood turned to ice in her veins.
“Casey?” Eric looked at her across his drawer.
She blinked, slowly turning to him. “It was a child.”
“A child? How old?”
“Two.”
Eric stared at her blankly. “A two-year-old was doing laundry?”
“No.” Casey shook her head once. Twice. “He wasn’t doing laundry.” She licked her lips, opposite the swelling.
“Casey, what is it?”
She tried to talk. Cleared her throat. Began again. “He was playing hide-and-seek. He climbed into the dryer. His mother thought she had forgotten to start it, and turned it on. By the time she realized she couldn’t find him, it was too late.”
Eric’s eyes widened as the horror of the story sank in. “Why didn’t he just kick the door open?”
Casey swallowed. “The door latch…was defective. It stuck. Even if he had been strong enough to get the door open, if he could’ve found it while he … he wouldn’t have been able to do it.”
Eric sat hard on the desk chair. “How can a door latch be defective?”
Casey looked back at the folder. Found a place in the document and underlined it with her finger. “The boy banged against the door, and with pressure from behind, the metal piece on the catch pushed up against the strike, and did exactly what its name says.”
“It caught it?”
“So hard it wouldn’t let it go. Even when the mother realized what had happened, and was trying to get the door open.”
Casey put her elbows on the drawer and dropped her head into her hands. “Loretta said Ellen wasn’t happy about the reason people might be able to keep their jobs.”
“I knew that, too. But I don’t get it. How could this help HomeMaker get people back to work?”
Casey shook her head. “I’m not sure. Unless….”
“What?”
Images swam before Casey’s eyes. Board rooms. Teams of lawyers. Dottie Spears shooting daggers at her across the table with her eyes. A contract. Not a lawsuit. “A lawsuit wouldn’t bankrupt a place like this.”
Eric considered that. “Probably not. The amount of money this place goes through in a year…it’s more than a lawsuit—even a huge one like this would make—could destroy. And of course there’s insurance for this kind of thing. But the publicity. That would be bad.”
“I haven’t heard any publicity,” Casey said. “Have you?”
“No. Not a word. I haven’t even heard any within the company.”
“That’s why it’s a contract. Not an official case. An official case, the reporters would’ve been swarming the place the next morning. This is the only way to keep it under wraps. ”
Eric shook his head. “But why would the family do that? If a company’s machine killed my son, I’d want the world to know.”
“No,” Casey said. “No, you wouldn’t.”
“I’m sorry. I don’t…”
“The mother…she started the dryer. She let her two-year-old die in a dryer.”
“It wasn’t her fault.”
“Of course it wasn’t. But what is the world going to see if they take this case to trial? They’re going to see a negligent mother who didn’t know where her toddler was. No matter what the verdict is against HomeMaker, there will be some people who will always see it as the mother, killing her son.” Casey let out a shaky breath. “She’ll always see it that way.”
Eric looked at his hands, then back at her. “Do you—”
“No, Eric. No. We are not going there.”
“Okay. Okay. Sorry.”
He glanced at the clock. “We’ve been here too long. We need to get out.”
“Yes, I know, but…” Casey skimmed the subject lines of other folders in the drawer. Nothing else with the name Marlowe. She looked down at the folder and shuffled through the papers. Behind the contract were numerous memos, letters, statements from doctors… And another contract. This one without HomeMaker’s logo. This one said simply, Karl Willems. Karl Willems, making his own deal with the Marlowes.
Something behind them rustled, and Casey jumped to her feet.
Willems stared at them from his broken doorway, two security guards in front of him.
“Eric?” He glanced at his son, and then at Casey, his expression hardening. “What the hell are you doing?”
Eric swallowed audibly. Casey moved to get between him and Karl, but he held out a hand, keeping her back. “You weren’t exactly truthful with us the other day, Karl.”
Karl’s lips twitched, and he dragged his eyes toward Eric. “I don’t know what—”
“I’m not stupid, Dad.”
Eric’s hand curled into a fist, hard against his hip, but Casey had no urge to comfort him this time.
“We found it,” Eric said. “Him. The boy who died.”
Karl nodded, his eyes not leaving Eric’s face. “Gentlemen, you may go.”
The security guards hesitated, but Karl pushed between them and jerked his head back, an unmistakable gesture of dismissal. “Out. Back to your posts.” They left. Karl stepped into the room. “It’s not what it looks like, son.”
Eric snorted. “And what exactly do you think it looks like? I think it looks like you were covering up the death of a child. A death caused by a HomeMaker product.”
“Oh, is that what you think?”
“It’s more than that,” Casey said.
Karl turned to her. “And what do you know?”
“I know how these things work. Businesses and deaths and law suits and confidential contracts.”
“I see.” He stepped further into the room.
Casey got past Eric this time, and stood between the two men. “Why don’t you stay right there?”
Willems regarded her thoughtfully, then nodded. He stepped over to one of the chairs in front of his desk and sat in it, crossing one leg over the other. “You can’t have found much. Security called me only ten minutes ago to say you were here.”
“Ten minutes for security to get here?” Eric said. “They were slow.”
Willems shrugged. “Soon it won’t matter anymore.”
“Right,” Casey said. “When the company moves to Mexico.”
Willems shook his head. “It’s a shame, but there was nothing else to be done. No matter what some people thought.”
No matter what Ellen thought, he meant.
Eric sank down onto Karl’s desk, his shoulders slumping.
Casey stayed standing. “You’re sticking to the story that the company needs to move because of the union’s demands?”
“It’s not a story.”
“Maybe not.” She held up the folder. “But this isn’t a story, either. At least, it’s not a fabricated one.”
He hesitated. “That has nothing to do with—”
“A little over a year ago,” Casey said. “One of HomeMaker’s dryers killed someone. A child. Why wasn’t there a lawsuit?”
Karl shrugged again. “HomeMaker wasn’t at fault.”
“Wasn’t it?”
“Well, ultimately it could be seen to be. But it’s not like HomeMaker purposefully put out a dangerous product. The mother was just as responsible.”
Casey’s breath caught in her chest, and she forced herself not to smack him. “Was this the first time you
