All during Rose Dorrado’s rambling remarks, Julia continued to watch the television as if her whole life depended on it, but the tension in her thin shoulders showed she was acutely aware of her mother’s words. I drank my coffee down to the last undissolved crystal: I couldn’t waste anything here.

“So what’s happening at the plant?” I tried to bring her back to her problem.

“Probably it’s nothing,” she said. “Maybe it’s nothing; Josie kept saying not to bother you with it.”

When I pressed her harder, though, she finally blurted out that last month, when she arrived at work—and she always got there early, always anxious that she be thought a good employee—if there were going to be more layoffs she couldn’t let anyone say she had a bad attitude—anyway, she arrived to find she couldn’t get her key in the lock. Someone had filled the keyholes with Krazy Glue, and they lost a whole day’s work while they waited for a locksmith to come and drill them out. Then another time she opened the factory and found it full of a really bad smell, which turned out to be dead rats in the heating ducts.

“Because I’m there early I got all the windows open, and we could still do some work, it wasn’t too bad, but you can imagine! We were lucky the weather was not so bad—in November, you know, it could be a blizzard, or rain or something.”

“What does Mr. Zamar say?”

She bent over the baby. “Nothing. He tells me accidents happen at plants all the time.”

“Where was he when the locks were glued shut?”

“What do you mean?” Rose asked.

“I mean, wasn’t it surprising that you discovered they were glued shut? Why wasn’t he there?”

“He don’t come in early because he stays late, until seven or eight at night, so he don’t come in usually till eight-thirty in the morning, sometimes even nine.”

“So he could have glued the doors shut himself when he left the night before,” I said bluntly.

She looked up startled. “Why would he do that?”

“To force the plant out of business in a way that let him collect the insurance.”

“He wouldn’t do that,” she cried, too quickly. “That would be wicked, and, really, he is a good man, he tries hard…”

“You think maybe one of the people he laid off could be doing it for revenge?”

“Anything is possible,” she said. “That’s why—I’m wondering—when Josie told me a lady cop is coaching now instead of Mrs. McFarlane—can’t you go in there and find out?”

“It would be much better if you’d call the police, the real police. They can ask—”

“No!” the word came out so loudly that the baby hic-cupped and began to cry.