Death Warmed Over by Kevin J. Anderson

Author:Kevin J. Anderson
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Kensington Publishing Corp.
Published: 2012-07-26T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 25

As we drove away from the museum, pleased at having averted a tragedy, Robin suggested we make a surprise visit to Jekyll Lifestyle Products and Necroceuticals. “We might unsettle him.” She gave me an eager smile. “And it’ll give us something to report to Miranda next time she pops in.”

“I like the way you think,” I said. Maybe I would pick up a clue about why Jekyll had been sneaking around with Brondon Morris. “Besides, we’re out together anyway. It’s good for you to get away from the office.”

“Visiting a chemical factory that makes perfumes, deodorants, and toiletries isn’t much of an outing.”

I had been inside the factory before—illicitly—while investigating the garlic-laced shampoo lawsuit. I’d posed as a worker on the chemical mixing lines and then, after hiding out at the tail end of a shift, I crept into the main admin offices after hours and got my hands on proof that the shampoo contamination was a matter of record and that JLPN was culpable. The company complained to the court about the evidence submission and appealed the ruling, but they never managed to pin burglary charges on me, although the judge found it unrealistically convenient that an “anonymous source” would produce the precise documents Robin needed to win the case and secure a large judgment.

When we pulled into the JLPN guest parking lot, Robin’s car was definitely the oldest one there. A limousine sprawled across two spots, both of which were designated “For Harvard Stanford Jekyll.”

Inside the fence, the mammoth industrial building was capped by a tall smokestack spurting purple and green fumes. The sign in front of the entrance said JEKYLL LIFESTYLE PRODUCTS & NECROCEUTICALS—WE BRING FRESH BACK TO A STALE WORLD. Then, in smaller letters, AN EQUAL OPPORTUNITY EMPLOYER. In front, a tan-brick administrative office building sat apart from the factory.

“It smells like a thousand mall candle shops crammed into a trash compactor and left out in the sun,” Robin said as she got out of the rusty Maverick.

I saw a loading dock and many trucks parked in a line, ready to be loaded with the new line of necroceuticals for distribution in the Quarter. A flurry of workers used hand trucks and forklifts to haul crates out of the chemical factory; each box was stenciled with Try Our New Line! The workers rushed around like turbo-charged termites. A few golems would have been great for heavy labor like this, but as far as I could see, all of the JLPN employees were human.

A delivery truck backed up to the big doors, and men hurried forward with pallets of new shampoos, deodorants, liquid soaps, perfumes. As soon as a fully loaded truck drove off, the next empty one backed up to the dock.

A lawyer on a mission, Robin walked briskly to the front door of the admin building, and I pulled it open for her, trying to formulate what I could accomplish by seeing Harvey Jekyll face-to-face. Robin didn’t seem to have a plan.

At the foyer

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