Chapter 8
CHAPTER EIGHT
To Do:
- Research support for blind dogs
- Venues for gala
- Write statement!
“This is insane,” Luke said, cradling Winston in his lap. Winston yipped, the sound reverberating in the warehouse.
Claire gave Luke the stink eye. This was why she didn’t like to mix business and boyfriends. But alas, he was the best cameraman on the market. And Brad insisted on having the best.
“Sure, you thought about transportation for the couple,” Luke continued, setting Winston down. Winston sniffed his way across the concrete floor and curled up next to Rosie in her dog bed. “But how are you going to ensure you’ll be at the ranch in time? And the rest of the crew?” Luke leaned back in his chair and folded his arms behind his head. His eyebrows rose.
Claire and Mindy glanced at each other. Then they glanced at the whiteboard. Public transportation? It was one of the biggest cities in the country—there had to be systems in place to move those people around.
Luke tapped at his phone until a live traffic map of LA appeared on the flatscreen TV he had insisted on buying for reviewing his proposal videos. Red lines crawled across the screen like spider webs. “LA traffic is like nothing you’ve ever seen before. You’re going to have to split up and have one of you in the hills and one of you handling all the downtown stuff. And you’ll have to budget for at least one more cameraman. Frankly, this proposal is a huge risk. I’d give you an estimated success rate of twenty-five percent.”
Claire threw her hands up. “He’s your friend! This is what he wanted.”
Luke stabbed a finger at the TV. “Your job as the proposal planner is to tell him what’s possible. This is not possible. Did you at least get a private helicopter company for backup?”
She crossed her arms. “I’m still waiting to hear back from them.”
He sighed. “Give me their contact information. I’ll take care of it.”
Grumbling, she thrust one of the six proposal binders splayed out in front of her at him. On second thought, maybe she should have beaten him with it. “You know I brought you here to consult on the videography, not to shoot holes in the whole proposal.”
“Do you want the truth, or do you want warm fuzzies about the likelihood of finding eternal love in a second marriage?”
Claire’s mouth dropped open. Mindy threw a marker across the conference table and hit Luke square in the forehead. “Brad and Karen scored a ninety on the compatibility test, they’ve dated for eight years and lived together for six of those, and neither one of them is a serial killer.”
The toilet in the restroom flushed, and Nicole walked out looking green. Claire crossed to the small kitchenette and handed her a steaming mug of ginger tea and a packet of saltines.
“Did I miss anything?” Nicole collapsed into one of the swiveling conference chairs.
“Not really. We’re going to need another videographer—two more, after I murder Luke—and we’ll probably have to split up to make sure we cover all the bases in case of a transportation issue.”
Luke might have been a pompous douchebag, but he knew LA better than they did.
Nicole groaned. “I better be vomiting less by the time the proposal comes around. This kid is trying to kill me.” She splayed one hand over her still-flat belly.
Claire patted her back. “If you’re not up to the trip, we can find someone else.” It would compromise the artistic integrity of the entire proposal, but her nauseated friend didn’t need to know that. There were more important things than business.
Nicole fervently shook her head. “I can handle it.”
Luke glanced at his watch. “I have to go. I have a conference in half an hour.” He bent over and kissed Claire on the cheek. “I’ll take Winston and Rosie and let you know when the helicopter’s taken care of.”
“Thank you,” she mumbled like a disgruntled child. She didn’t need his help, but it wasn’t worth the fight. She would figure out transportation alternatives for the crew. Plus the universe owed her. Surely it wouldn’t smite the biggest proposal of her career.
“So he didn’t kill you for bringing home a blind pug?” Mindy said as soon as the warehouse door swung closed.
“Surprisingly, no. He was more annoyed about us not asking him for the money. I probably could have adopted every animal in the shelter and filled the house to the rafters with cross-eyed cats and three-legged dogs. He seems really distracted with the documentary. I put on a French maid costume and walked around feather dusting his office for twenty-five minutes last night before he even noticed.”
“What are you going to do about the shelter? Not that it’s your job to save it, because it isn’t. But I assume you have a plan?” Nicole munched on a cracker. Her color was returning to normal.
“I’m glad you asked. Who’s up for a little pro bono work?” Claire pulled yet another binder from the bookcase behind them. She hit the stopwatch she was using to keep track of billable hours for Brad’s proposal and added another hour to his total.
A flutter stirred her belly, and her heart rate inched up. There was so much to do, and now she was going to have to figure out alternative transportation for everyone. Was there enough time? Were they headed for failure, as Luke had suggested? She didn’t need his negativity in her creative space.
Nicole set down her crackers and pulled out a notebook. Mindy tapped on her tablet.
“What do you need from us?” Nicole’s pen was poised above the paper.
“Okay, so. The thing is…the gala is only nine days away.”
Mindy choked on a sip of water. Nicole hammered her on the back and raised her eyebrows. “Are you sure we have enough time?”
Claire shrugged. “I don’t know, but I’m going to try. I can’t just do nothing. Nicole, would you be willing to take some pictures of the shelter animals? Like this weekend? I’m thinking about making a calendar, but we have to put it together ASAP. Do people still buy wall calendars?”
“Sure they do,” she said, scribbling some notes. “All three of us have one. Will there be costumes?”
“I think there has to be if we want people to buy them. And maybe we could tie in some local businesses and some tourism features of West Haven to get the Visitors Bureau interested. And make them pay for ad space.”
“Genius.” Mindy sputtered and walked over to the whiteboard. “Places first, then we can make the costume fit the location. What do we got?”
“Mario’s Italian Restaurant,” Claire said. “They have five Great Danes at home so they’re definitely animal lovers.”
Mindy pointed at her with the marker. “I love it. We’ll dress up one of the dogs in a chef uniform in front of a bowl of spaghetti. Boom. Sawyer will definitely buy an ad too, so let’s add Sanctum.”
“Yee-Haw’s,” Nicole suggested. “Perfect for a Western-themed costume.”
“Love it. Obviously the Rusty Rails. They have at least one game a season where you can bring your dog.”
They kept going until they had twelve places that were likely to cooperate and four alternates.
Mindy capped the market and sat back down. “So in case this doesn’t turn out to be a moneymaker, what are your other ideas?”
“A black-tie gala. Get local businesses to donate food, auction items. Hundred bucks a plate, maybe more depending on what our expenses end up being.”
Nicole nodded but Mindy frowned. “Where do you want to host this?”
“We have to go where the rich people are.”
“The country club,” Mindy decided. “Hopefully they won’t have anything booked. I’ll contact them. My uncle works there. I’ll see if I can persuade him for a discounted rate or dig up some dark family secrets to threaten him with. Speaking of dark secrets, did you finish your thing for tomorrow, by the way?”
Claire flinched like she had been plunged into icy water. “No. I tried, but I have basically nothing.”
“Go.” Mindy jabbed a finger at the warehouse door. “You can’t keep avoiding it.”
“I’m not avoiding it.” She was very much avoiding it. “I just don’t know what to say.”
“If you write it tonight, I’ll take you to Sephora,” Nicole offered.
Claire sighed. “Fine. I need new mascara anyway. Is there anything we need to discuss about Brad’s proposal before I go? Luke’s following up with the helicopter, I’ll start working on the alternate transportation…” Was there something else she could bring up in order to delay?
“No. Go away. Love you,” Mindy said, waving at her.
“I’ll see you later,” Claire grumbled.
She stepped into the afternoon sunshine. It was warm enough to take her sweater off. The sun beat down on her woefully pale skin. Green buds were starting to pop through the thin layer of mulch she had carefully spread around the warehouse the week before.
She stopped at the liquor store and bought her favorite bottle of wine. If she was going to confront these feelings, she wasn’t doing it without a drink in her hand.
Forty minutes later, she sat in her office with the door closed. There had been no sign of Luke and the dogs. Knowing Luke, he was probably pricing lumber to build custom doggie bunkbeds.
The cursor blinked on her computer screen, mocking her. What was there to say? She took another sip of wine and wrote farts on the first line, just to make sure the keyboard worked. Maybe she should blast it with that canned air just in case. In fact, her whole desk could stand to be wiped down. How could she write with a dirty desk?
An hour later, her desk and office were sparkling clean, and she hadn’t written anything. She laid her head on her blotter and sighed. The wine was a quarter gone, and the blank screen was still staring at her.
How was she going to put this into words? What could she say about the man who stalked her, dressed her in her stolen wedding dress, and tried to kill her? She wasn’t even allowed to talk about ESA because it wasn’t relevant to the crime being charged.
Did she write about the little old lady she almost assaulted in the grocery store with a bag of frozen broccoli because her footsteps sounded just like Barney’s? Or how she almost had a panic attack the first time she went into her parking garage after the abduction? How sometimes she swore she could smell his cologne in the middle of the night?
The thought of pulling up to the courthouse churned her stomach. Press was sure to be everywhere. They had hounded her for months after Barney abducted her, culminating in her climbing down her apartment’s fire escape with Rosie just so she could pee. They were merciless in their pursuit of a story. Even with her friends and family accompanying her, climbing the steps to the courthouse was going to be almost as stressful as confronting Barney.
The cursor blinked. She pulled out her phone and called the first person she thought of.
“Everything okay?” Sawyer’s rumbly voice poured out of the phone. He had been the one to find her the night of the abduction. If anyone could help her put that trauma into words, it was Sawyer.
“Yeah, no one’s trying to murder me today. Not that I’m aware of, anyway. I’m trying to write my victim impact statement.”
“Ah,” he said. “How’s it going?”
“It’s not.”
“I see.” There was silence on the other end for a moment.
“You were there that night. And after, when things sucked. What do I say?”
Sawyer paused for a moment and seemed to consider his words carefully. “How about we make a list of questions, and then you can use that like a To Do list to write your answers?”
“Did your mom tell you to say that?” She should have known better than to call the son of her therapist for help.
“No, it’s just how I usually approach things. I’ve testified a couple of times for work stuff. So one of the things they usually want to know is your recommendation for sentencing,” he said.
“Oh, I have plenty of thoughts on that.” She took another sip of wine and refilled her glass. “I think he should be sentenced to an eternity of sitting in a damp cave in a loincloth while a bunch of crabs pinch his feet and nipples for twenty-three hours a day.”
“Damn. What happens the remaining hour of the day?”
“Mandatory calculus.”
“You are a dangerous woman.”
“You have no idea.”
They talked for another half hour until she had a list to work from. All she had to do now was write a painful, emotional statement and pour her soul out in front of the maniac who tried to murder her.
Oh, and pick up her mother from the airport. The same mother who had nearly been arrested for trying to assault Luke’s mom last time she had visited the West Haven courthouse.
And they would all be in the same car together.
Great.