Текст книги "Spring Fever"

Автор книги: Mary Kay Andrews

сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 17 (всего у книги 29 страниц)

28

Pokey picked up a plastic tub of winter clothing and balanced it on her hip. Annajane swiftly snatched it away from her.

“No lifting! Folding, packing yes, lifting no. How many times do I have to repeat myself?”

Pokey stuck out her tongue and took the tub back. “Don’t you think that little chunk o’ love Clayton weighs waaay more than these clothes? I tote him around all day long, just like I toted Petey when I was pregnant with Clayton. Relax, will you? I’m pregnant, not crippled.”

Annajane looked around the loft at the barely controlled chaos. It was Wednesday morning. She was dressed in the only clothes she hadn’t packed: a bleached-out Durham Bulls T-shirt and a pair of ratty cutoff jeans. Pokey wore an oversized blue and white oxford cloth dress shirt she’d borrowed from her husband and a pair of stretchy yoga pants. They’d been packing all night.

“I’ve got to be at the lawyer’s office in three hours,” she reminded her friend. “And the movers I hired still aren’t back from the storage place to pick up the second load yet. I honestly don’t know if I’ll be out of here by noon.”

“You will,” Pokey assured her. She held up her cell phone. “I just texted an SOS to Pete. He’s sending over a truck and a couple of the guys from the furniture store to give us a hand. This is the last of your clothes to go into storage. So if you’ll just get your rear in gear and pack up the clothes and toiletries you need for the next month or so, I think we’ve got it licked.”

“You really think so?” Annajane pushed a strand of hair behind her ear. “I’m so overwhelmed I guess I can’t see the forest for the trees.”

They heard a horn honking out on the street, and Pokey ran to the plate-glass picture window and looked out. “See here? Pete’s guys just pulled up, and your movers are right behind them. Why don’t you grab some clothes and head over to our house? The boys won’t be back from Pete’s mom’s house until two. You can get a shower and change into some halfway decent clothes and still have plenty of time to get to the closing. I’ll stay here and supervise. You know how I love to boss around men with trucks.”

“That would be great,” Annajane said. “Are you sure Pete’s okay with me staying with you guys for a couple of days? Just until I find a place of my own? I mean, I really could go to the Pinecone Motor Lodge…”

“Pete probably won’t even notice you’re there,” Pokey said. “With everything going on at the new furniture store, he barely notices I’m there half the time. You, on the other hand, will probably get tired of the wild bunch way before we get tired of you. The boys are superexcited you’re coming. Denning even offered to let you sleep in his tree fort, which is saying a lot. You know he’s pretty antigirl these days.”

“That’s the second best offer of a crash pad I’ve had from a member of your family in the past couple days,” Annajane said drily.

“Fascinating! Who made the first and best offer?” Pokey asked.

“Sophie did. I stopped by to check in on her after she got home from the hospital Monday. She heard me telling Mason my tale of woe about having to move out of the loft early, and she just piped up and invited me to sleep in her daddy’s room.”

“She didn’t!”

“Oh yes, she did.”

“Out of the mouths of babes,” Pokey snickered.

They heard footsteps in the stairwell, so Pokey opened the door with a grand sweep, and the room began to fill with men and furniture dollies.

“Okay, then, I’m outta here,” Annajane told Pokey. “Just as soon as I find the carton with all my clean underwear.”

*   *   *

At eight that night, Annajane wearily dragged her suitcase onto the front porch of Pete and Pokey Riggs’s cheerful pale blue Dutch colonial revival home. She opened the heavily carved mahogany front door with her hip and walked in unannounced, letting the door bang behind her.

The sound of a television echoed in the high-ceilinged hallway. She stepped out of her shoes and left them on the worn rug at the foot of the stairs.

“Is that you?” Pokey called from the direction of the back of the house. “If it is, come on back. We’re in the den, and it’s cocktail time.”

Annajane made her way toward the den, stepping over a spilled box of Legos, a green rubber dinosaur, and an enormous cardboard box of Pampers. She found her best friend sprawled out on her back on an overstuffed bottle-green damask sofa, with her bare feet resting in her husband’s lap.

Pete Riggs stood up and gestured toward a silver cocktail shaker resting on a tufted leather ottoman in front of the sofa. “Care for a martini?”

“I would kill for a martini,” Annajane said gratefully. She slumped down into a wing chair and looked around the room suspiciously. “It’s awfully quiet around here. Where are the heathens?”

“It’s grown-up time,” Pete said, handing her a pint Mason jar. “Hang on a sec,” he added, plunking an olive into her drink. “Now you’re ready.”

“The rule around here is, everybody under the age of eight has to be in bed by eight,” Pokey said. She was noisily slurping on a large chocolate Blizzard. “It’s the only way we keep our sanity.”

Pete rejoined his wife on the sofa. “So—did your closing go all right? We were starting to get a little worried when we didn’t hear from you earlier in the day, but Pokey didn’t want to jinx things by calling you.”

“We closed,” Annajane said. “There was some minor panic when one of the loan documents still hadn’t arrived at noon, but by the time we finished signing all the other paperwork, the courier had arrived with it. I’m no longer a homeowner.”

“You’ll find something else just as nice,” Pokey said. “Here in Passcoe—right?”

Annajane sipped her martini appreciatively. “I guess. Susan Peters showed me three more listings this afternoon. That’s where I’ve been all this time.”

“And?” Pete asked. His red hair shone dully in the light from a pair of antique brass sconces on the wall behind the sofa, and, close up like this, Annajane noticed with a start that he was beginning to get just the slightest hint of silver around his temples and paunch around his midriff. He wore a pink button-down oxford cloth shirt, rumpled khaki slacks, and oxblood penny loafers with no socks.

She was struck by how much he’d changed since the first time Pokey brought him home to meet her family. Pete Riggs was a twenty-four-year-old stud, a rich, cocky kid from Charleston, who’d started on the varsity golf team all four years at Wake Forest, and he was enrolled in grad school when he’d met Pokey and gotten her pregnant right before the end of her senior year at Chapel Hill.

The Baylesses had been devastated, but Sallie had assured Pokey the family would take care of her and the baby, no matter what. Nobody could have predicted that Pete Riggs would do what he did—drop out of grad school, marry Pokey, and get a job working in his family’s furniture business. And the biggest surprise, to everybody, including Pokey and Pete, was that the two of them would make a success of all of it—including marriage, parenthood, and, eventually, running and expanding Riggs Home Fashions.

“It’s hopeless,” Annajane said of her house hunt. “The cottage on Mimosa—the one she thought I’d be so crazy over? It’s Old Lady Harrison’s house. If I’d known that, I wouldn’t have bothered to take a look.”

“Eeewww,” Pokey said, wrinkling her nose. “Mama used to make me sell her Girl Scout cookies every year when we were kids. She used to pay for the cookies with nickels and dimes that looked like they’d been scraped up out of a sewer or something. That house was nasty way back then, and she’s been dead and gone at least ten years. I don’t think anybody’s lived in that house since she died.”

“Correction,” Annajane said. “There’s a family of raccoons living there now. Or maybe squirrels. I didn’t get past the living room, where they’d been nesting in an old sofa, so I couldn’t say for sure.”

“What else did you look at?” Pete asked, absentmindedly stroking Pokey’s hair. “How about Clay Snider’s house? I hear he and Whitney have split up.”

“Yeah,” Pokey said excitedly. “The Snider’s house is fabulous. We went to a Christmas party there a couple years ago. You would love what they’ve done with the kitchen. They blew out the whole back of the house, and there’s a patio and a pool house…”

“Susan sent me the link to their Web site. I’d love that house even without the patio and pool house. But alas, I do not have the eight hundred and fifty thousand dollars they’re asking,” Annajane said. She reached over to the tray on the ottoman and helped herself to a handful of roasted peanuts.

“I looked at a totally mediocre brick ranch over on Rosewood. It’s a two-bedroom, two-bath, with a crazy floor plan. You actually have to walk through the master bedroom to get to the living room. But it was only eighty-nine thousand. And then I saw a butt-ugly contemporary house out past the country club. Gray cinder-block walls, smoked plate-glass windows—which were all across the whole front of the house. You’d feel like you were on display for anybody who drove past.”

She sighed and took another sip of her martini, smacking her lips dramatically. “If Pete would promise to make me a martini like this every night, I might just threaten to move in here with you guys.”

Pete raised his own Mason jar in a mock salute. “I live to serve.”

“You know you can stay here as long as you like,” Pokey said. “What have you decided about going back to work?”

“You’re going back to work at Quixie?” Pete said.

“Maybe,” Annajane allowed.

“You are,” Pokey said. “You must. For my sake and the sake of my unborn child. Not to mention the rest of my whole nutty family.”

“It’s gonna depend on Davis,” Annajane said. “If he won’t listen to any of my ideas for a new marketing plan, it’s a waste of my time to go back to work. And I really, really do not want to be around Celia. Especially now.”

“Whooo,” Pete chuckled. “I hear old Celia is pretty fired up about you, Annajane darlin’.”

“What did you hear?” Pokey demanded, tugging at Pete’s arm. “Tell!”

“Aw, no,” Pete demurred. “I didn’t really hear anything. Just a little trash talk in the men’s grill at the club today.”

“Peterson James Riggs, you better spit out what you heard at the club right this minute,” Pokey exclaimed. “It’s no fair teasin’ us.”

“Yeah, Pete,” Annajane urged. “Tell. Come on, sticks and stones may break my bones and all that.”

“You know I don’t usually listen to that mess,” Pete groused. “I was walking past Matt Kelsey at lunch, and I just heard him tell Ben Gardner that Celia was accusing you of being a home wrecker.”

“You know Bonnie Kelsey is the one spreading that talk,” Pokey said. “Her and Celia, that little bitch!” She pounded Pete’s knees for emphasis. “Who does she think she is, coming into town and trying to take over Quixie and my brother?”

“Hey!” Pete protested. “Don’t kill the messenger. I’m not agreein’ with her. I’m just reporting. Anyway, who cares what those two girly men Matt Kelsey and Ben Gardner gossip about over lunch?”

Annajane plucked the olive from her half-empty drink and sucked on it. “It’s a small town,” she said finally. “And Mason is running the biggest business in it. People are always gonna talk about him, and the Baylesses. Face it. It comes with the territory.”

“I might have to face it, but I don’t have to like it,” Pokey said. “Every place I go in town, somebody comes up and asks me if the boys are gonna sell Quixie. I’m getting really sick of telling people it’s just a rumor.”

“Jax Snax is no rumor, baby,” Pete muttered. “They want Quixie, and they want it bad. The question is whether Mason or Davis is going to prevail. And how your mama’s gonna vote.”

“What about me?” Pokey demanded. “Don’t you think Daddy left me any say in what happens to Quixie?”

“I sure hope he did,” Pete said. “But let’s face it, honey—you’ve not worked for the company since you were a teenager, and you never worked in management. Knowing your daddy like I do, I’ve got a feeling that when he divvied up the pie, he saved the biggest, juiciest pieces for your brothers. And your mama.”

“I guess we’ll find out who gets what next week,” Pokey said. “But I called Davis today, and I told him flat out, if he lets Quixie close down, or move from Passcoe, I will never forgive him.”

“What did he say to that?” Annajane asked.

“Oh, he just tried to bullshit me,” Pokey replied. “Said nobody’s discussin’ closing it down or moving it. He says Jax Snax will only make the company better.”

“And him richer,” Pete quipped.

Pokey picked up the remote control from the tray on the ottoman. “All right y’all, enough talking about business. I am ready for some mindless television for an hour or so before I call it a night. Which is it—HGTV or Food TV?”

“You mean food porn or decorator porn?” Pete grabbed a pillow and wedged it under his wife’s head. He stood up and dropped a kiss on Pokey’s forehead. “I think I’ll go watch baseball upstairs.”

Annajane experienced a familiar pang of jealousy at Pete’s tenderness toward Pokey. Her friend had so much—a home and a husband who adored her—and three rowdy but healthy children, with a fourth on the way. Did Pokey appreciate just how blessed she was? Or how hollow and envious Annajane sometimes felt in her company?

“Check on the boys, will you?” Pokey called absentmindedly while she flipped channels. “Make sure Denning isn’t up there messin’ with one of those doggone video games.”

An hour later, after they’d both grown bored with Real Housewives and Bridezilla shows, Pokey handed off the remote to Annajane.

“It’s all yours,” she said, yawning.

“Nope,” Annajane said. “I’m going to bed, too. I’ve got to save my energy for going back to Quixie in the morning.”

“Good for you,” Pokey said, nodding her approval. “And what about Mason? What’s going to happen with you two?”

“Leave it be, Pokey,” Annajane warned. “Everything is happening too fast. We’re friends, okay? Can we just leave it at that for now?”

“Friends with benefits?” Pokey chirped. “Look, I just don’t want you to let Celia Wakefield screw things up by guilt-tripping you,” Pokey said. “You and Mason didn’t do anything wrong. Not deliberately anyway. You acted honorably, so just hold your head high and ignore Celia.”

“Celia, ugh,” Annajane said. “I am not looking forward to running into her tomorrow.”

“Oh my God,” Pokey said suddenly. “I forgot. I finally did call Angela—my sorority sister, the one who’s a buyer for Belk?”

“Does she know Celia?” Annajane asked.

“She’d heard of her, but she didn’t really have any dirt on her. However, she did give me the name and phone number of a friend of hers who might know more about the details of Celia’s clothing business,” Pokey said. She reached in her pocket and handed over what looked like the page from a Bob the Builder coloring book that had been written on in red crayon.

“Her name is Katie Derscheid,” Pokey said, yawning widely again. “I wasn’t sure how to spell it. Just call her and mention Angela Hooker’s name.”

*   *   *

At some point in the evening, Annajane dimly recognized the sound of rain on the roof and the brush of tree limbs against the windowpanes. She opened one eye and saw a jagged flash of lightning streaking across the deep blue sky outside. She snuggled deeper into the down comforter and pulled a spare pillow over her head to drown out the noise, glad not to be out in the storm.

She drifted off to sleep again, but maybe an hour later was aware of a shaft of light streaming in through the doorway. She lifted her head off the pillow and spied a small, forlorn little body standing in the doorway.

It was Petey, clad in his cotton Thomas the Tank Engine pajamas, sucking his thumb and trailing a bedraggled but much-loved blue silk bordered blanket.

“Hey, buddy,” she said groggily. “What’s up?”

“I’m scared,” he said, moving his thumb aside only long enough to speak.

“Want me to walk you back to your bed?”

He shook his head side to side, vigororously.

“Want to go sleep with your mommy and daddy?”

“The baby is with Mommy and Daddy.”

She sighed and scooted over on the queen-sized bed. “Come on, then.”

Petey favored her with a tremulous smile before crawling up into the bed beside her. Annajane rubbed his back the way she’d seen Pokey do so many times, and a few minutes later, she heard his breathing become soft and rhythmic. Smiling to herself, she turned on her side and fell back asleep herself, only dimly aware of the warm little body spooned up against her back.

Maybe an hour later, she heard the bedroom door creak open. Looking up, she saw Pokey silhouetted in the doorway.

“Hey,” Pokey whispered. “Pete’s in there snoring so loud I can’t sleep. Okay if I bunk in with you?”

Annajane lifted the edge of the comforter to reveal the sleeping form of Petey.

Pokey laughed softly, and walked around to the other side of the bed, yawning widely as she shifted her young son into the middle of the bed. Moments later, mother and son were breathing in tandem.

Once again, Annajane managed to fall back asleep. The rain began to beat at the windows, heavier now, and the howl of the wind became ominous. She shifted in the bed and now felt a warm, damp spot where she’d been sleeping moments earlier. She sniffed the sheet, sniffed Petey.

“Crap,” she muttered softly. Wrapping herself in the quilt from the foot of the bed, she tiptoed out of the room, headed for the sofa in the den. Tomorrow, she promised herself, she would either find a house to buy or check into a room at the Pinecone Motor Lodge.

29

Annajane felt small hands lightly patting her face. Opening one eye, she spied Petey, staring at her intently. “Curious George,” he said.

Sleep deprived, she turned over so that she was facing the back of the sofa. He shook her shoulder. “Curious George,” he repeated. She felt her head being struck with something, and reached back and caught his hand, which was holding the remote control.

“Petey! Leave Annajane alone.”

Annajane rolled onto her back. Now Pokey stood over her, holding an outstretched mug of coffee.

The room was still in half darkness. “What time is it?” Annajane mumbled.

“A smidge after seven,” Pokey said. She sat on the edge of the ottoman, and Annajane, with effort, managed to pull herself upright.

“Curious George,” Petey said loudly. “I want Curious George.” He slung his damp, pee-scented blanket across her knees and climbed into her lap.

“Sorry,” Pokey said, deftly scooping the child off Annajane and onto the ottoman. “Petey is our early bird. I’ve tried everything to get him to sleep late and let us alone in the morning, but it’s no use. Little guys don’t know numbers, and they have no concept of time. So now I’ve trained him to wait until the streetlights go off outside. Then and only then, he can come downstairs to the den and turn on PBS. He loves Curious George and Dinosaur Train.”

“Those are television shows?” Annajane took the mug and inhaled the hot coffee fumes.

“His favorites,” Pokey said, clicking on the television. “How come you wound up sleeping down here?”

Annajane handed her the damp blanket. “Your son sprung a leak last night.”

“Sorry about that,” Pokey said with a laugh. “Welcome to my world.”

“Yeah, about that,” Annajane said. “It won’t hurt your feelings if I find myself someplace else to stay?”

“Not in the least,” Pokey said. “I’d stay someplace else if I were you. Hell, I’d stay someplace else if I were me, but I think my husband might object.”

Annajane reached out and tousled Petey’s strawberry-blond hair. “Don’t kid yourself, sweetie. You’ve got the world on a string. A beautiful home, loving husband, great kids. I’d trade places with you in a New York minute.”

“I know you would,” Pokey said softly. “But you’ll have all that pretty soon, too, Annajane. I know you will, if you just hang in there and make up your mind that he’s worth fighting for.”

*   *   *

Later that morning, Annajane swung her car into the parking lot at the Quixie plant and groaned when she saw the familiar silver Saab parked in its customary slot.

You can do this, she told herself. Celia is not the boogeyman. And you are not a quitter.

Heads turned to stare at her as she walked through the reception area and into the back office. Obviously, everybody had heard the rumors about her and Mason.

She smiled and ignored the stares and whispers. She found Voncile at her desk, stationed right outside Mason’s office. Voncile was on the phone, but when she looked up and saw Annajane, she waved her into Mason’s office.

He’d just slammed down the phone and was staring intently at the computer monitor on his desktop, frowning, when she walked in.

“Hey,” she said, feeling unaccountably shy. Hadn’t she come just a flashlight beam away from hot messy car sex with this man just a few days ago?

“Morning,” Mason said.

“Something wrong?”

Mason rubbed his chin and looked away. “Not good news. I’ve asked Davis to stop in for a chat, and I’ll fill you in when he gets here.”

He held up a can of Quixie. “Want one?”

She shuddered. “It’s a little early for me to start on the red stuff. What gives?”

He took a long chug of the soda. “Just getting myself back to the brand, like we talked about yesterday. I hadn’t realized how long it had been since I’d actually really stopped and tasted our product.”

“Did you come to any conclusions?”

“As a matter of fact, I did,” he said, leaning back in his chair. “For one thing, I think it’s a pretty darned good waker-upper.”

“Better than coffee?”

He shrugged. “I don’t think we can claim that, based on the amount of caffeine in Quixie, but it’s just as good as some of these high-priced energy drinks that are killing us at convenience stores.”

“Hold that thought,” Annajane said, grabbing a pen and a yellow legal pad from his desktop. “What else?”

“You were right about the taste of celebration. I’m thinking Quixie reminds people of good times, happy occasions, boat rides on the lake, summers at the beach, campouts under the stars. Fun, wholesome stuff. That’s what we started out selling, that’s what we need to get back to.”

“Riiiight,” Annajane said. “We’re on the same page so far.”

They heard a tap on the door, and the sound of a throat clearing.

Davis leaned into the office, glancing from his brother to Annajane. “You wanted to see me?”

Mason stood up and walked around his desk, clasping his brother’s hand. “Come on in.”

“I’ll talk to you later,” Annajane said, making for the door.

“No, stay,” Mason said. “But close the door behind you, please.”

*   *   *

Davis, Annajane thought, was clearly uncomfortable being in a room with her. He tugged at the too-tight starched collar of his pale blue button-down shirt and made a point of taking a chair as far from hers as possible.

His face was jowly and sunburned, and his dark hair, already starting to recede, still bore damp comb marks. Unlike Mason, who usually wore khaki slacks and a Quixie logo shirt to work, Davis was, as always, impeccably turned out in an expensively tailored dark suit, a red silk tie with repp stripes, and black wingtip shoes polished to a low luster. A pair of flashy gold cuff links twinkled from the French cuffs of his shirt. He looked like a refugee from Madison Avenue.

When the three of them were seated, Mason solemnly handed cold cans of Quixie to his guests.

“Is this a stunt?” Davis asked, putting the can, untouched, on the edge of the desktop.

“Not at all,” Mason said, edging the can back toward his brother. “Come on, Davis, at least take a sip. It won’t kill you. You’ve been drinking it your whole life, for Chrissakes.”

Davis rolled his eyes, sipped, and put the can back on the desk. “Happy now? Actually, I never liked the stuff. I’ll take a Sprite or ginger ale any day.”

Mason leaned back in his chair. “Well, that’s one of the roots of our problem, right there.”

“I resent that,” Davis snapped.

“It’s not meant as a personal criticism. I just don’t see how you can sell what you don’t like and don’t believe in,” Mason said, his voice mild.

“I believe in the company,” Davis said. “I believe in profits. And I don’t need a marketing lesson from you, thanks just the same.”

Mason leaned across the desk, raising his hands, palm out, in a gesture of surrender. “Can we just have a friendly, nonconfrontational business discussion here?”

“You’re the boss,” Davis said. “What’s on your mind?”

“Our marketing plan,” Mason said. “Or the lack of.”

Davis’s face reddened. “Look, if you want to second-guess me and rehire Farnham-Capheart, I guess you can do that, since you’re the CEO. But I don’t see the point in doing an end run…”

“I’m not second-guessing you,” Mason said crisply. “And I have no intention of making an end run around you, which is why I asked you to meet with Annajane and me this morning. But I would like to point out that it would have been good if you, as a courtesy, had informed me that you intended to fire the ad agency we’ve been working with for more than thirty years.”

“As vice president of marketing, that was entirely my decision to make,” Davis said, glancing nervously over at Annajane. “If this Jax Snax deal happens, we’ll be working with their agency, which happens to be the largest in the country, and anyway, Annajane, you said yourself you didn’t like the tone of the new campaign…”

It was Annajane’s turn to clear her throat. Her stomach roiled with nervousness, but something else was boiling up inside her. Anger.

“You deliberately sabotaged me,” Annajane said quietly. “You and Celia suggested to Joe Farnham that he should hire me, because you were sure I would be ‘uncomfortable’ working with Celia after she and Mason got engaged. And then, as soon as I’d quit my job here, and days before I was to start there, you made sure I wouldn’t have a job in Atlanta. That was petty, Davis. It was mean and it was low-down, and I really can’t believe I’ve ever done anything to you to deserve that kind of treatment.”

“Hey!” Davis said sharply. “This was nothing personal. It was business.”

Mason looked stunned. “Is this true?” he asked Davis. “You angled Joe to give her a job—to get rid of her, because Celia didn’t want her around?”

“I assumed you wouldn’t want your ex-wife around,” Davis said easily. “Because your fiancée sure as hell didn’t. I just did what I thought you would have done—if you had any balls, which you apparently don’t.”

Mason’s face darkened. “Annajane and I had managed to get along quite nicely for the past five years, without any help from you. She’s been an important part of our team…”

“Oh please!” Davis broke in. “She came to work here because Dad thought she was a cute kid and she was married to you, and she stayed on after the divorce because you somehow felt guilty about the breakup. Well, that’s on you, brother.” He gave Annajane a pitying glance. “She hasn’t had an original idea in years. Once Celia came on board, it was clear—to everybody but you—that we needed a new direction. I did what needed to be done. And I’d do it again.”

Annajane felt her hands clench and unclench with barely suppressed rage. Tears sprang to her eyes, and she blinked them back helplessly.

“That’s enough,” Mason roared. He pointed at his computer screen. “If you’re such a marketing genius, explain to me why our sales have been sliding every quarter for the past two years. Also, explain why we’re paying a six-figure promotional fee to a scumbucket Nascar driver like Donnell Boggs, who not only hasn’t placed in a race since we hired him, he’s had two DUI arrests in the past six weeks.” Mason flung a stack of autographed glossy photos of Boggs, wearing a cap emblazoned with the Quixie logo, across the desk at his brother.

The photos fluttered to the floor. “That’s the face you hired to be the face of Quixie?” Mason thundered. “Check the front page of today’s Charlotte Observer. Or you can find the story online. It’s on all the wire services. The Mecklenburg County Police arrested Boggs at a motel in Concord last night, where he’d checked in with a sixteen-year-old high school dropout, a quart of Tecate, and eleven hundred dollars’ worth of Ecstasy.”

Davis’s ruddy face paled. “What? No. That’s not possible. I talked to Donnell last night. He was heading to Spartanburg for the opening of a new Piggly Wiggly; then he was throwing out the first pitch at a minor league game in Greenville. It was Quixie night.”

“He never made it to Spartanburg, or Greenville, thank God,” Mason said. “He was too busy hooking up with a teenager he met online. I want him fired. Today.”

“I can’t fire him. He’s got a contract,” Davis said. “We’ve got all the summer promotional materials set. Cardboard cutouts of Donnell for all the displays, models of the number eight Quixie car. Supermarket openings, theme park promos. His picture is gonna be on the twelve-pack cartons. They go to the printers tomorrow. It’s all set.”

“Unset it,” Mason said bluntly. “Do whatever it takes. Call our attorney and have him start the paperwork. I want that contract canceled based on the morals clause. I want the sponsorship deal ended, and I want our name painted over on his cars, even if you have to do it yourself. I don’t want that degenerate turd’s name mentioned in the same breath as Quixie.”

“God,” Davis said, burying his head in his hands. “We’ve spent thousands on this campaign. Hundreds of thousands. We’ll have to do new ad buys, shoot new commercials … There’s no time to create a new campaign from scratch.”

“I can help with that,” Annajane said.

Davis gave her a sour look.

“It’s what Mason was just talking about. Returning to our roots. Retro. I’ve got all the old mechanicals and illustrations for the Quixie ads from the forties through the sixties,” she said. “And I bet if I call Farnham-Capheart they’ve still got footage of the old commercials. We just clean up the graphics for the print ads, maybe reshoot some of the commercials, cut out the footage of Donnell and the Quixie car, maybe substitute with novelty bits from the old commercials. Make the new ones look like those old Dr Pepper ads everybody used to love. We can do Facebook pages, the works. If we get started right away, we should be able to pull it off.”