Read Online Lucky Stars by Jane Heller - Free Book Online Page B

to me that the quality control here really is up to snuff, I intend to take my case to the Better Business Bureau, not to mention Dateline .”
    The receptionist turned pale—green, to be really accurate—and picked up the phone and dialed. She had discovered what I had known since I was a child: my mother wasn’t to be messed with.
    “There’s a woman here to see Mr. Beasley,” she said to the person who picked up the phone. An underling, no doubt. “She claims she found a bone in one of our products and nearly died from it.”
    “Not ‘claims,’ ” said my mother, leaning across the receptionist’s desk so she could make her point clear. “ ‘Did.’ I did find a bone in my tuna fish and Mr. Beasley did tell me it was an aberration; that the quality control at Fin’s is top-notch. I’m here to see if he was being truthful and if not, I’ll have to inform the public.”
    We waited a few seconds, during which I considered slipping off to their ladies’ room and disappearing down the sink. Eventually, the receptionist said, “Mr. Beasley will be right with you.”
    My mother beamed as she nudged me with her elbow. “You see that, Stacey?” she whispered as we sat in the nearby visitors’ chairs. “You speak up, you get somewhere.”
    She was about to get somewhere, all right. Just not where she expected.

 
     
     
     
    e ight
     
     
    A fter a ten-minute wait, during which my mother and I sat in the small lobby leafing through uninvolving trade journals having to do with the canned goods industry, Corbin Beasley, public relations director of Fin’s, emerged.
    “Welcome, Mrs. Reiser,” he said, extending his hand toward my mother’s. The extension, by the way, was no small matter, as Corbin, a thirtysomething with a geeky grin, was easily six foot six to my mother’s five foot two. “Great to meet you. It’s always a delight to re late to our customers on a face- to-face, one-to-one basis.”
    “Thank you,” she said briskly, indicating she had come for the inspection, not for the pleasantries. “This is my daughter, Stacey. It was her can of Fin’s that contained the bone, as a matter of fact. If I hadn’t been at her apartment that day, she could have been the one to choke and die.”
    Corbin smiled inappropriately, exposing jack-o-lante rn teeth. “I’m terribly sorry you were alarmed,” he said to both of us. “But I’m here to assure you that, while bones do find their way inside the cans on occasion, your experience is not the usual course of events here at Fin’s. Not by any means.”
    “Then what is?” said my mother.
    “What’s what?” said Corbin.
    “The usual course of events here at Fin’s. That’s what I came here to investigate. I’m not one for frivolity so why don’t we get started?”
    “With?”
    “The tour. The inspection. The step-by-step look-see. In your letter you invited me to pay you a visit and check out your quality control. Since you’re such a busy man, let’s get on with it already.”
    Clearly, Corbin had been under the illusion that he could pop out of his meeting with the advertising people, shake my mother’s hand, do a little bowing and scraping, and send her on her merry way. Wrong.
    “I expect the grand tour—start to finish, ste rn to ste rn , A to Z,” she said, running out of clichés , mercifully. “I want to observe the entire process.”
    Corbin checked his watch. “I do have to get back to my meeting,” he said, “but I’d be privileged to give you a quick tour of the facilities. Follow me.”
    We followed Corbin through the lobby door, down a carpeted hall, and into his cushy office where he handed us two construction worker-type hard hats and asked us to put them on. “Everybody touring the cannery has to wear one,” he said. “It’s a safety regulation.”
    “I approve wholeheartedly,” said my mother, donning her hard hat. “Safety first.”
    I was less enthusiastic. I was anticipating a bad case of helmet