Death in Advertising

by Laura Bradford

  While Sam concentrated on the hat and purse platforms, I stepped through an arched doorway into a section of the closet that held even more built-ins and secret hiding places.

  “Pretty neat, huh?”

  I smiled up at Andy and nodded. Neat didn’t even come close to describing what Zander Closet Company had created here. Unbelievable was a much better description. And it was that description that I needed to portray in the print brochure.

  I pointed at a relatively narrow floor-to-ceiling cabinet. “What’s that for?”

  “An ironing board.” Andrew Zander walked toward the cabinet, stopped, and placed the lavender bag on the floor by his feet. His emerald green eyes sparkled as he lowered his voice to a near whisper. “Though I doubt Mitzi Hohlbrook has ever touched an iron in her entire life.”

  I bit back the urge to voice my gut instinct aloud. After all, whether Mitzi had fallen into money or not, really didn’t matter. She had it now. Besides, Andy was probably right. The ironing board would have been better suited to the housekeeper’s closet than Mitzi’s . . .

  “So? What will it be? Would you like a vowel or a consonant?” Andy asked.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Vowel or consonant.” Andy gestured toward the cabinet door in a perfect imitation of Vanna White on Wheel of Fortune.

  I laughed. “Um, well, okay, how much are the vowels?”

  Andy smoothed his imaginary dress and fluttered his eyelashes. “For you? Free.”

  “Then I’ll take an A, please, Vanna.”

  I couldn’t help but giggle at Andy’s dramatic nod as he wrapped his hand around the narrow handle and slowly pulled, a rapturous ta-da escaping his lips.

  It was probably silly of me, but I actually expected to see the interior of the closet light up and a black letter A appear. Or, at the very least, an ironing board . . .

  Instead, I got a rush of air in my face as Preston Hohlbrook’s body hit the floor.

  5

  My friends were all assembled in my tiny living room like pigeons around a park bench, impatiently waiting for the next tasty morsel to drop. Any initial concern for my well-being had disappeared, replaced by the overwhelming desire to get as much dirt as possible—the grittier the better.

  Fortunately, Sam’s animated retelling of the police department’s request for his photographs was keeping our resident ambulance chasers happy. For the time being.

  With them occupied, I reached for the glass of water Mary Fran had set on the coffee table when I first sat down and took a few big gulps.

  From the moment Preston Hohlbrook’s body had tumbled from the cabinet, my day had gone to hell in a handbasket. I never knew I had it in me to scream as loud as I had, or that someone could possibly top my shriek the way that Mitzi had.

  The moments after we found the body were still jumbled in my mind, a blur of screams, questions, accusations, and disbelief.

  “For someone who’s been through the wringer like you have, Sunshine, you look as radiant as the brightest, most twinkly star shimmering in the darkest night sky.”

  Leave it to my upstairs neighbor, Carter, to make me smile no matter what. Forget the fact that his hair color changed with each new stage show he worked on. (I was almost sad to see Othello close—the raven-black hue he’d created in Laurence Olivier’s image suited him much better than last month’s Cinderella-blond.) What I found most endearing about him was his attitude. Carter McDade was a true optimist in every sense of the word and delighted in viewing the world as a breeding ground for similes.

  “Radiant? You think Tobi looks radiant? I think she looks awful. Look at those circles under her eyes. She doesn’t look like any shimmering star I’ve ever seen.”

  And leave it to Ms. Rapple to speak her mind. What little was left of it anyway. But if I’d learned anything over the past few years, it was that Ms. Rapple didn’t mean any harm by her callous words. She simply told it like it was. Through her bifocal-laden eyes anyway.

  Mary Fran, on the other hand, had yet to learn that engaging the old biddy in a war of words was an exercise in futility. “Excuse me for saying this, Ms. Rapple, but how do you expect Tobi to look? Having a body fall at your feet isn’t normal, you know.” Mary Fran pulled her legs upward, rested her chin on her knees. “Carter was just trying to be nice.”

  “There’s nice and there’s stupid. And telling Tobi that she looks radiant when she looks anything but is stupid.” Ms. Rapple’s voice raised an octave with each word she spoke, her left eyebrow meeting each rise in volume with a lift of its own.

  “Is that so?” Mary Fran’s chin jutted outward as she dropped her legs back to the carpet and straightened her back in preparation for battle. A battle I didn’t need or want today.

  “Whoa, everyone. Enough. Please. I’m sure I look like crap. Finding a dead body wasn’t on my list of to-dos today. And no matter how hard I try to block that vision from my mind, I still keep seeing Preston Hohlbrook at my feet. It’s awful.” The words poured from my mouth at Mitzi-speed, but I couldn’t stop. Every thought that had teased my subconscious over the past few hours was suddenly playing in real time through my mind. And there wasn’t an off-switch to be found anywhere. “Less than twenty-four hours ago I was on an all-time high. My slogan, my company, were being talked about on the news. Then this morning, during what should have been a routine photo shoot, a man’s body falls from my client’s closet. I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to close my eyes and not see him staring up at me.”

  As my torrent of words came to a stop, I felt Mary Fran’s gentle squeeze on my knee, Carter’s feather light kiss on my temple, Sam’s head on my shoulder. This was what I needed. To be surrounded by people who loved and supported me.

  “And your slogan was the catalyst for all of it, dear.”

  I turned my misty gaze on Ms. Rapple, wiped the corner of my nose with my plum-colored sleeve, and waited for her to offer an explanation for her odd statement.

  But she said nothing. She simply snapped her fingers at Gertrude and stood. “It’s time for Gerty’s afternoon nap. She needs her beauty sleep. Something you might want to think about, Tobi.”

  That lesson I’d learned? You know, the one about not engaging my elderly neighbor in battle? Duress has a way of clouding judgment.

  “What are you talking about, Ms. Rapple?”

  “Oh good Lord, Tobi, don’t tell me it hasn’t dawned on you? Zander’s closet system can find a place for everything. Even a skeleton, remember? Or, in this instance, Preston Hohlbrook’s dead body.”

  I opened my mouth to speak, but no words came out. All I could do was sit there and stare at my neighbor as she worked her flappy skin into the sleeves of her Gerty-matching lavender knit sweater.

  The silence that met her departure was deafening.

  I looked at Mary Fran on the floor in front of me and then turned and met Carter’s look of horror behind me as Sam simultaneously lowered his head back onto my shoulder. “Do you think she’s right? Are people going to see my slogan as some sort of weird foreshadowing?”

  Three voices converged at once, all trying to put my mind at ease.

  “Ignore her, Tobi. It’s just Ms. Rapple,” Sam said, his voice a whisper in my ear.

  “Tobi, that woman is sick, you know that.” Mary Fran continued softly, fiddling with a loose thread on the front of my sofa. “She doesn’t know what she’s saying half the time.”

  “Putting stock in anything she says is like, like, well—” Carter nibbled on his lower lip for a moment and then looked at the floor. “It’s just, crazy, that’s all.”

  And that’s when I knew Ms. Rapple was right. In the two years I had lived here, I had never known Carter to be at a loss for a colorful simile. Until today.

  Why it hadn’t hit me until that moment was beyond me. My slogan, coupled with Mr. Hohlbrook’s body, was exactly what my advertising professor, Dr. Markum, had called a campaign nightmare. The kind of truth in advertising that could crush a company. />
  Dr. Markum had found the subject so important that he’d devoted five classes to slogan snafus. When he was done with his instruction, he’d split us up into project teams to create a disaster campaign for a well-known company. My group had found the project silly at first, seeing as how we were focusing on something we were supposed to avoid. But we’d given it our best shot and had laughed more on that project than any other we’d done that entire semester.

  “Do you think that saying about looking back on things later and laughing can work in reverse?” I heard my voice, felt the words as they left my tongue, but was still taken by surprise that I’d uttered the question aloud.

  “What do you mean?” Carter asked.

  “Have you ever looked back on something that you found funny at the time only to be horrified later?”

  He must have sensed the rhetorical nature of my question because he simply squeezed my shoulder.

  I, of course, kept talking. And talking. “I’m going to be a living, breathing example of a campaign nightmare in Dr. Markum’s future classes. I’ll be dubbed the former student who failed—who didn’t heed his advice. I’m going to be mocked by advertising students for years to come.”

  “No, you won’t,” Mary Fran offered on the heels of an audible gulp.

  My babbling turned to out and out rambling. “It’s like a lightbulb company saying they’ll light up your world, and then someone electrocutes themselves twisting it into the socket. Or a burger company claiming their hamburger is so good you’ll never eat another, and then the customer drops dead of a heart attack.”

  I was ruined. Plain and simple.

  “Pretzel?” Mary Fran lifted the bowl off the coffee table and shoved it in my face. I shook my head, pulled back the sleeve on my left arm and noted the time on my watch: 4:58. I picked the remote off the armrest of the couch and aimed it in the general direction of the small television cart I’d assembled on one of a string of dateless weekends.

  Dirk Winter’s voice filled the room. “The metro St. Louis community is reeling this evening over the death of one of its most prominent citizens. Preston Hohlbrook—of Hohlbrook Motors—was found dead in his Chesterfield home this morning. The same home he had graciously offered to the small business community for its annual Home Showcase Weekend. Among the many contractors who had been brought in to update various aspects of his home was Zander Closet Company—a company we highlighted on our newscast last night for its extremely creative slogan. A slogan that is now being hailed as an eerie premonition for the murder of Hohlbrook Motor’s owner and C.E.O.”

  I had to be imagining this right? Surely yesterday’s slogan of the year hadn’t become today’s recipe for murder.

  “Let’s go to Gwen Roberts at the scene for a live report. Gwen?”

  The perky redhead with a reputation for getting to the heart of a story, appeared on my screen, her eyes filled with an anticipation one might find on a child’s face at Christmas. Only her anticipation had nothing to do with wrapped packages under a tree and everything to do with digging around in other people’s misery.

  “Good evening, Dirk. It started out as support. Support for new business owners hoping to gain exposure for their companies. In fact, it was a cause near and dear to Preston Hohlbrook’s heart. A cause that ultimately resulted in his untimely demise.”

  Mitzi Hohlbrook appeared on my television, her eyes puffy and swollen, her spoiler heaving with each labored breath from beneath a sheer black V-neck sheath. I felt Sam sigh next to me.

  “I don’t know what I’m going to do without Preston. He was the love of my life. He understood me like no one else.” Mitzi hiccupped as fat, black crocodile tears ran down her cheeks. She dabbed at her eyes with a silk handkerchief and spoke into the camera in a raspy, choked-up voice. “All I’ve got left of him now is this big, empty house, a fleet of car dealerships, and our sweet little Baboo.”

  Sweet?

  Sam shifted on the couch next to me. “Did she just call Baboo sweet?”

  “She sure did,” I said, the surprise in my own voice a near perfect match to that of Sam’s.

  “Who’s Baboo?” Mary Fran asked.

  “Mr. Hohlbrook’s African grey parrot.” Sam stood and walked over to his bag, unzipped the top compartment, and retrieved his camera. Turning it over, he opened a small door on the side and inserted a flat square cartridge that he’d pulled from his pocket. After pressing a few buttons, he handed the camera to his mom. “See?”

  “I thought the cops took your photos, Sam,” Carter said from his spot behind the sofa.

  “They did. Sorta. I shot this picture before I realized my memory card was too full for the photo shoot. The new card I dropped in is the one the cops took.”

  Mary Fran looked into the back of the camera and studied the shot of Baboo in his cage. “This bird isn’t well. Do you see the feather he’s pulled off?”

  “I know. That’s what I told Tobi.” Sam sat back down on the cushion beside me. “Remember, Tobi?”

  “Yeah, I remember. You said it was a sign of stress.”

  Mary Fran spoke, her voice firm and steady. “This was Mr. Hohlbrook’s bird?”

  We nodded.

  “Yup.” Sam pointed to Mitzi on the television screen. “And she hates him. She screamed every time he spoke this morning. I wanted to take him home with us the second I saw him. But I figured he’d be okay when Mr. Hohlbrook came home.”

  “Only he already was home.” I heard the disbelief in my voice as I forced my attention back to the screen once again.

  Gwen Roberts was still speaking, her hands gripping the microphone much like I held a piece of chocolate. “This shocking death has reverberated through this quiet, posh neighborhood in Chesterfield, leaving residents fearing for their safety.”

  The reporter turned to a man and woman in their mid-to-late forties. I recognized them as the couple who had been pointing at Mitzi Hohlbrook and me just that morning.

  “How are you coping with this tragedy?” Gwen Roberts asked.

  The woman, a petite blonde, spoke first. Her name, Linda Johnson, and her affiliation as a Hohlbrook neighbor, appeared on the bottom right corner of the screen.

  “It’s just awful. But, as you know, our home is featured in the Showcase this weekend as well. And while my husband and I struggled with the decision to continue our participation in light of this tragedy, we’ve come to the conclusion that Preston would have wanted this.”

  “You lying little—”

  The off-camera ranting was cut short as Gwen Roberts stepped in front of the camera. “Back to you in the studio, Dirk.”

  I sat and stared at the television, not really seeing or hearing anything as the news anchor repeated his comment about my slogan serving as a premonition for Preston Hohlbrook’s murder before moving on to the next story.

  “Was that Mitzi’s voice in the background?” Sam finally asked.

  “It sure was.” I pushed the red button on the remote and watched the screen go dark.

  “So, let me get this straight.” Carter walked around the sofa and started pacing in front of the coffee table, his left hand holding his right elbow as he used his index finger to tally some sort of score. “Mitzi Hohlbrook hates her husband’s bird. And she hates her neighbor?”

  “Yep,” Sam said.

  “I tell you, these rich people—they portray this glam world of fancy houses and glittery dresses as some sort of holy grail. But they aren’t happy. In fact, I’d venture to say they’re no happier than a vegetarian at a steakhouse.” Carter grabbed his denim jacket off the coatrack in the corner and blew me a kiss. “Cheer up, Sunshine, it’ll all work out.”

  I raised my hand in a wave as he headed out the door, but my thoughts were focused elsewhere. As blurry as everything seemed at that moment, one thing was crystal clear: The popularity of my slogan and its perceived foreshadowing of Preston Hohlbrook’s murder was a dream-come-true for the local media. It was an angle they would mercilessly ha
mmer until everyone in the metropolitan St. Louis area was convinced my agency was taboo.

  It was up to me to provide a new angle for them to chew on. Like the truth.... If I didn’t, Tobias Ad Agency would be as dead as the Car King himself.

  6

  That morning I’d dressed carefully in a burgundy-colored pantsuit, white camisole top, and black sling-back heels. It was one of my all-time favorite ensembles. The jacket’s fitted waist and sleek lines did an awesome job of: a) finding my figure (shocking, I know); and b) enhancing what it found (wonders never cease).

  I had chosen the effect as much for myself as the potential clients JoAnna had lined up for me to woo. The most recent issue of You magazine had promised that if I looked put-together on the outside, it would impact my inner confidence.

  I hoped—no, needed—You magazine to be right.

  JoAnna had been out of town all weekend, visiting her newest grandchild in southern Illinois. But as of her final voice mail on Friday, I had two meetings set for this morning: A-1 Garage Door Company at nine, and Murphy’s Bar & Grill at eleven. Two accounts I was determined to land.

  I crossed the corner at Maryland and Euclid and walked three blocks south to the brick storefront that housed Tobias Ad Agency. My agency.

  It’s funny, but after six months it still didn’t seem fathomable that I owned my own business. Probably because I’d done very little “business” prior to Zander Closet Company.

  I waved at Mr. Houghtin and Sandy on the other side of the street, but didn’t stop. I wasn’t in the mood.

  I’d always enjoyed my walk to and from work. I loved basking in the sun’s rays on the beautiful days, dodging rain drops on the not-so-beautiful days, and talking to neighbors along the way, regardless of the weather. But not today. It was hard to engage in idle chitchat when my mind kept replaying the events of Saturday morning. In particular, the discovery of Preston Hohlbrook’s body.

  My determination to uncover the truth was as strong as it was after the Saturday evening newscast, but now it was sharing mental space with another emotion: regret.