Death in Advertising

by Laura Bradford

  I played dumb. “Overactive imagination?”

  “Wait. My bad. What’s that word when someone takes on the quality of someone else?” His eyes narrowed as he looked up at the sky, his question so soft that I wasn’t sure if he was even asking me.

  “Transference?”

  He snapped his fingers and pointed at me. “Yeah. Transference. Gosh you’re good with that stuff. I bet you were real smart in school, huh?”

  I shrugged an answer while my mind worked feverishly to catch up with what he was saying.

  “Let’s just say that my getting sidelined from closet-building duty had a lot more to do with that transference stuff than an overactive imagination.”

  Okay, so now I was really confused. Understandable when you considered the amount of sleep I’d gotten the night before.

  He motioned me toward the house. “Why don’t we go inside and sit down. You can meet Peggy. She’s the best.”

  The wife . . .

  The poor, unsuspecting wife . . .

  I had a sudden urge to scratch Blake’s eyes out but I resisted. For the moment. Instead, I followed him across the top edge of the driveway and up the three steps to the front porch.

  “Peg? We’ve got some company, sweetheart.” He held his hands up, binocular style, to the outer door and peered inside. “It’s Tobi Tobias. The slogan gal.”

  The slogan gal. I liked that. Had a nice ring.

  A petite strawberry-blonde came to the door, a dishtowel in hand. She was tiny, maybe five-foot-one and had a slender build. She opened the door and kissed Blake on the mouth. A sweet, tender kiss that made me look away. I wanted that so badly. But not with a guy like Nick. Or a guy like Blake, for that matter.

  Peggy stepped back, her ocean-blue eyes lingering on her husband for a brief moment before turning to me. “Hi, Tobi. It’s nice to meet you. We’re sure impressed by what you’ve done for Zander so far.”

  I liked her instantly. There was a sweet, nurturing goodness about this woman that was as tangible as the flowered shirt she wore. It made my pity for her so much deeper.

  “Thanks. They’ve been good to me too.” I walked through the open doorway and stood in the small living room, the aura created on the outside of the home duplicated tenfold on the inside. Photographs filled nearly every square inch of wall space. “Do you mind if I look? I love pictures.”

  Peggy grinned. “Of course not. It’s why I put them up. I love them too.”

  I crossed the room and looked at the first of three collage frames. This one held pictures of a little boy with a face-splitting smile in every shot. I recognized the shape of the face, the set of the eyes. It was Blake.

  “See that one right there?” Blake pointed to a photograph in a rectangular-shaped hole. “That’s me and Andy. I was probably five. He was nine. He came and stayed with my mom and me for a few days. They only lived about ten miles up the road, but having him under the roof was special. We caught an awful lot of frogs in the creek that week.”

  “Are you two still close?” I asked.

  “As close as brothers. Actually, even closer. He comes out here on Saturdays sometimes. When it’s Gary’s turn to man the office. He’s not real good with his hands like I am, but he wants to learn so he keeps trying. Remember the lopsided dollhouse? That was Andy’s attempt at building one. He put himself on painting duty after that one.”

  My heart fluttered, and I forced my gaze onto another picture. Somehow it felt like I was violating Andy’s privacy by seeing pictures of his childhood without him knowing.

  The second frame held pictures of a young girl. Peggy, I assumed. The strawberry-blond hair grew in sometime after her birth, replacing the original dark shade. By the time she was four, the light color cascaded down her back in ringlets. I looked from one picture to the next, each shot depicting a happy and self-assured young girl.

  And then I saw it.

  An oval slot near the top of the collage contained your typical frou-frou backdrop native to all prom pictures. Peggy wore a satiny blue dress with capped sleeves and a cinch waist. Her hair was styled in a bun with strawberry tendrils making a choreographed escape from the left side. But it wasn’t Peggy that made my skin clammy. It was her date. The tousled-hair brunette with the killer smile.

  “Is that Gary?” I heard myself ask.

  Peggy moved in beside me and nodded. “Uh-huh. We dated in high school. That’s the picture from our junior prom.”

  “The last prom she ever went to with my cousin.” Blake’s voice boomed across the room from the spot he had taken up on the couch.

  “Oh?” I asked, curiosity coursing through my body at such a rate I thought I would explode if someone didn’t explain. Soon.

  “That’s right. It was that very night—at a party in this house—that Peggy and I met. And we’ve been inseparable ever since.”

  Talk about being bowled over. I felt as if I’d been hit by a two-ton ball. But any speechlessness was quickly replaced by questions. Lots of them. “How’d he take that?”

  Peggy shook her head and cast her eyes down toward the ground. “Hard. And I felt just awful. I never wanted to hurt him. But I truly believe that Blake was—is—my one and only. I tried to break it to Gary gently. Tried to explain that it wasn’t him. But he never forgave me for that.”

  Blake strode over to where Peggy stood, and wrapped his arms around her. “It’s not you he can’t forgive. You know that. It’s me.”

  I tried to process what was being said, the possible implications that were running through my head. But when I tried to speak, nothing came out.

  “Gary hasn’t spoken to me since that night. Drove my mamma nuts. But no matter how many times I tried to explain, or how many times my mamma or his mamma would try to help him understand, it didn’t matter. He saw my relationship with Peggy as a betrayal. And he’s been out for revenge ever since.”

  Revenge. It was a word I understood all too well. I’d dreamt of ways to exact revenge on Nick for breaking my heart. Relieving him of his manhood was my personal favorite. But I also knew I’d never follow through on any of the plans I concocted. It just wasn’t in me. Besides, if he was destined to be a cheat, it was better to know it sooner rather than later. At least that’s what I kept trying to tell myself.

  So I understood Gary. A little.

  “What kind of revenge?” I closed my eyes and willed myself to absorb the present conversation instead of traveling down a littered road of painful memories.

  “You name it, he’s tried it. He let the air out of my tires every night for the next month. My mamma sat on the porch one night and saw him doing it. But he denied it anyway. Then, he tried to convince me Peggy would find someone else when she went away to college, but I didn’t take the bait. I knew my Peggy.” He lingered, his lips on his wife’s forehead for a brief moment, before he continued. “He tried to keep me out of the company. Even succeeded in the beginning by finding and hiring a carpenter before Andy knew what was going on. Gave the guy an iron-clad contract that didn’t benefit the company. Fortunately, the guy’s wife got a new job in Florida, and he had to quit.”

  Peggy picked up the story. “Andy called Blake right away. Wanted him in the company, installing the systems like he’d intended him to do from the start. Gary went nuts. Only his mother stepped in and demanded Gary stop acting so childish. So that’s when Blake started.”

  “Gary was fit to be tied. I’d see him at the office, for meetings, and he’d act like I wasn’t even there. Which, to be honest, is fine by me. I think it’s sad, sure. But it’s been eleven years. Eleven years! Isn’t it time he got himself a life?”

  God, how I hoped I wasn’t still bitter and alone eleven years from now. I balled my hands into fists and nodded. I needed to remember this conversation, needed to avoid repeating the same mistakes in my own life. Nick wasn’t worth that.

  “He’s been hell-bent on smearing me. In front of family. In front of my best friend. In front of my wife. And he finally fo
und a way to do it.”

  Peggy reached up, cupped Blake’s chin in her hand, and lowered his face until their eyes met. “No. He didn’t.”

  I was confused. Did Peggy know about Mitzi? How could she be so willing to forgive him?

  Blake stared at his wife for several long moments, moments that blanketed the room in a peaceful silence. Odd when we were dancing around an ugly little fact like infidelity.

  “That’s right. He didn’t.” Blake’s voice was quiet yet sure when he finally spoke, his words filled with a passion I couldn’t ignore. “Lord knows he tried. But Peggy knows I only have eyes for one woman and it’s her. Even if by some cruel twist of fate Peggy wasn’t in my life, Mrs. Hohlbrook would be the last woman I’d ever look at. Too showy. Too fake. I like real. Genuine. Like my Peggy.”

  I didn’t know what to say. Didn’t know what to think. So I stood there, doing nothing. When I finally found my brains, I asked a question that was screaming inside my head. “Did you tell Andy about this?”

  Blake shook his head. “No. Can’t do that. They’re brothers. I can’t mess with that relationship. It’d be the final straw between those two, and it would break my aunt’s heart.”

  As I stood there looking at Blake, I knew I had a lot to figure out. Like Preston Hohlbrook’s irate phone call and Deserey’s unbridled hatred for the Zander employee. But whatever the truth was, I was confident it didn’t point in this direction.

  Maybe I was being naïve. But I didn’t think so. I actually felt as if I was seeing clearly for the first time in days.

  What had started out as a simple visit for confirmation purposes (and, yeah, a little snooping too), had turned into an eye-opening experience in more ways than one. I thanked Blake and Peggy and headed out to the car, my mind replaying the visit in slow motion, pointing out every single instance where I’d let a stereotype or gossip blind me to true goodness.

  As I backed down the driveway, I took one final look at 95 Duggan Road. I wanted what Blake and Peggy had. I wanted that unwavering trust. I wanted that unshakeable love that blanketed a home in sweet memories and bright tomorrows. But it was clear I had a lot to learn before that day came.

  14

  They say that an apple doesn’t fall far from its tree. And, in most cases, it’s probably a fairly accurate statement.

  Take my sister for example. Although she’s taken her hippie-ness to extremes (in addition to the odd choice in footwear I already mentioned, she’s taken up residence in an actual hippie commune) Danielle has acquired most of her bohemian garb from an old trunk in our family’s attic. My mother’s trunk.

  My brother, Caleb, is a professional surfer. He’s been fascinated with ocean waves since he got smacked in the face with one at the tender age of two. My mom, however, blames his career choice on her brother Frank who, she claims, was born with a skateboard under one arm and a pair of roller skates under the other.

  Now, let’s imagine what would happen to that tree and its apples if a group of first-grade boys paid a visit during apple picking season. They’d pick some. They’d bite some. And, yeah, they’d kick some into the next grove—usually the ones that didn’t taste quite right.

  That’s what happened to me.

  The closest commonality I can find between my love for advertising and anyone in my family is Uncle Frank’s obsession with Super Bowl commercials and my dad’s never-ending vocabulary. And while the once-a-year ads were amusing, I was more fascinated with my father’s love for words. In fact, I kept a journal that I used solely for recording whatever unusual gems he’d utter on a given day. My favorite? Discombobulated. Don’t ask me why, but that word always made me giggle. I could never say it right, and I couldn’t have imagined using it to describe myself. Oh, how I miss the naïveté of youth.

  I paused at the end of Duggan Road and tried to focus on the things I still needed to do. Like check on Baboo, touch base with JoAnna, and pay a visit to Charlotte West at Hohlbrook Motors. But no matter how hard I tried to wrap my mind around any one of those tasks, my thoughts were completely . . . discombobulated.

  I eyed the dashboard clock. Eleven-thirty. No wonder my stomach was flipping and flopping.

  The fact that it was almost lunchtime put an immediate hold on all three of my plans. I couldn’t call Mary Fran now because she was hustling around the pet shop feeding the animals and placating Rudder while she cut his kiwi. I couldn’t call JoAnna because she went out to lunch on Tuesdays with her best friend. And I couldn’t walk in on the late Preston Hohlbrook’s secretary when she was nibbling bites of a salad over her keyboard.

  A check in my rear view mirror showed no one behind me, so I sat at the stop sign a few moments and looked around. This part of St. Charles was still fairly quiet. Sure, the homes were going in fast and furiously, but Weldon Spring officials were playing hardball with many of the builders—insisting on things like trees and green space (a novelty in other areas of the county). I flipped open the glove box and pulled out a box of granola bars that Carter kept there for emergencies. And if I was hungry and desperate enough to eat a granola bar, you knew it was an emergency.

  A Green Day tune came on and I began humming as I looked at a series of billboards that ran along the west side of Highway 94 South. The one for New Town caught my eye.

  The picture showed one of the development’s beach cottages in one corner, a beautiful brick row house in another. In the middle were the words A Home Not Like Any Other.

  Really? That’s all John and Mike could come up with? I could do so much better than that. I’d read everything I could get my hands on about New Town, and giving them one simple slogan was highway robbery in my book. An innovative community needed an innovative slogan—a series of innovative slogans. Each one building on the one before it, all coming together to create a sense of heaven on earth.

  But New Town wasn’t my client. It was Beckler and Stanley’s. For now, anyway . . .

  My mind made up, I flipped my right blinker and pulled onto the northbound lane of 94. Curiosity had gotten the best of me and my competitive nature. I mean, just because my slogan for Zander had kind of come true didn’t mean I’d never hear from Craig Miticker, right?

  As I continued north, my mind started doing what it always did when I got in that strange little world I referred to as Slogan Land. The few people I’d told about Slogan Land over the years looked at me like I was nuts. But I didn’t care. It was my happy place, and we all need one of those.

  When I finally reached my destination, I slowed to a crawl as I tried to absorb the shift in my surroundings. With just a simple left turn, it was as if the St. Charles I’d been driving through for the past fifteen minutes had simply disappeared off the face of the earth, replaced by a world—a retreat—of its own. In the first section, gorgeous brownstones lined a street-bordered canal. In the next section, beach cottages along a sandy-beached lake made me feel as if I’d somehow landed in the middle of Cape Cod. On and on it went, with each new area of the community making me feel as if I was in a different part of the country or the world.

  I wiped the corners of my mouth with the granola wrapper and pulled into a parking spot that bordered a large grassy area with a stage-like platform. Grabbing my backpack, I stepped out of the car and stopped, my mouth dropping open once again. A few yards from where I stood was a brand-new mom-and-pop market, a town hall–looking building, a hot-dog stand, coffee shop, book store, and a lake that invited an ocean-like breeze in the middle of Missouri.

  The buildings were cool, the set-up creative as all get out. But what stuck in my mind most were the people walking around. Sure, I saw people walking to and from work down in the Central West End every day. I saw people carrying their heavy baskets home from the Laundromat at night, and I saw them walking their dogs down to Fletcher’s Newsstand in the mornings. It was that connected-neighborhood feel that kept me living close to the city even though my money would go further out in the suburbs.

  I’d seen enough burb-l
iving during visits to my parents’ home about twenty miles west of here. The houses were big, the yards tiny. My dad joked that their next-door neighbor should be paying him for yard maintenance since every time he cut the grass he invariably got some of the neighbor’s too. But despite how close the houses were, my parents could go months without seeing another living soul in their cul-de-sac. Sad, but true.

  New Town was different. People were out and about, walking, biking, running, meandering. They didn’t seem to be going anywhere in particular. And they actually stopped and chatted with one another.

  As I stood there and continued to gawk, one coherent thought kept running through my mind: I can do a much better job than Beckler and Stanley. At least the Beckler half, anyway. It still drove me nuts thinking Mike’s paycheck would be affected by any move I made to win over New Town, but Andy was right. This was business.

  I reached into my backpack and fished out the little blue notebook I carried with me at all times. I felt around for a pen, then started jotting down impressions—some sentences, some single words. Everything and anything that came to mind while standing there, absorbing life in this master community.

  I knew I still had to figure out who killed Preston Hohlbrook—and I would. The list of suspects and motives was growing on an almost hour-by-hour basis, with each addition proving more bizarre than the one before it.

  Yeah, the primary reason for catching the killer had shifted from saving my company to finding justice for a man who couldn’t find it for himself. But I’d be lying if I didn’t also acknowledge the fact that fingering the bad guy would (hopefully) erase away any perceived foreshadowing in my Zander slogan and renew any interest Craig Miticker had expressed in working with Tobias Ad Agency.

  Besides, I owed John Beckler a gift, didn’t I?

  15

  Guilt, of course, won out over business savvy. Which meant I called Mike when I was leaving New Town and asked if we could meet for a quick lunch at McDonalds. (The stale granola bar had failed miserably in its assigned task of placating my stomach.) I pulled into the parking spot next to Mike’s shiny, silver sports coupe and peered into the front seat. Empty.