(31/40) Murder, She Wrote: Madison Avenue Shoot

by Donald Bain

  Chapter Twenty-two

  “How much time before your flight, Aunt Jess?” We were at La Guardia Airport again, this time for my flight to Boston, and then I’d have a short hop home to Cabot Cove in a small plane with my good friend and flying instructor Jed Richardson at the controls.

  I looked at the long line for security. “I have an hour and a half,” I said, “but I’d better start the process.”

  “That’s a long time to wait,” Grady said.

  “I don’t mind waiting as long as I have a book to read.” I opened my arms and Grady leaned in for a hug. “Can I get a good-bye hug from you, too?” I asked Frank.

  “Sure,” he said, stepping into my embrace. “When are you coming back, Aunt Jessica? Michele and me, we’re going to miss you.”

  “Me, too,” I said. “But I hope you boys will come up to Maine when school is out. I already spoke to your mothers. What do you think?”

  “You mean just us, Michele and me?”

  “Is it okay if your mother and father join us, too?” I said in a lowered voice. “I don’t want them to feel left out.”

  Frank gave his father a sly smile. “Maybe,” he said, drawing out his answer. “Okay. You can come, too.”

  “Nice of you to include us, sport.”

  “Oh, I almost forgot,” I said, opening my shoulder bag. “This came for you this morning. Your mom gave it to me.” I withdrew a package wrapped in brown paper.

  “For me?” Frank said. “Is it a present?”

  “I don’t think so,” I said. “Why don’t you unwrap it?”

  Frank tore at the paper. “It’s my red earphones,” he said, excited.

  “Let’s see what the note says.” Grady retrieved the card that was taped to the earphones before it got lost. “It’s from Detective Chesny,” he said.

  “Can I see?” Frank asked.

  “Sure. Why don’t you read it to us?” Grady handed Frank the card.

  “It says, ‘To Frank, who found the missing clue that solved the crime. Maybe you’ll become a detective in the future.’ I like that idea. I’d be a good detective, right, Dad?”

  “You’ll be good at whatever you do, as long as you work hard at it.”

  Frank looped the earphones around his neck, as he’d seen crew members do on the production. “Dad, do you think we could find another set of headphones for Michele?”

  Grady winked at me. “We’ll have to see,” he said, “but I have a feeling there may be another set at home.”

  Several months later, I prepared for a visit from the boys and Donna. Grady would join us on the weekend. The financial machinations of the payroll company he worked for had finally caught up to the firm and the company closed its doors overnight, locking out not only the production companies whose payrolls they were supposed to distribute, but also their own employees, to whom they owed several weeks’ salary. Before the closure, Grady and his boss, Carl, had confronted the management team with their findings, and had been assured that the company was turning things around. It wasn’t true. Grady and Carl had to scramble to help their clients find a new payroll service, and in the end had decided to start their own company.

  “We’re calling it ‘Zucker and Fletcher,’ ” Grady wrote me in an e-mail. “I held out for ‘Fletcher and Zucker,’ but we flipped a coin and Carl won.”

  I hoped Grady’s employment woes were finally over, now that he had a company of his own. But of course, for many entrepreneurs, that’s just the beginning of problems. Still, I had a good feeling about his new career move. Donna was thrilled that Grady would be working from home, at least until the company grew big enough to require office space. And they had purchased a second computer so she could help out.

  The fall catalog for my publishing house had arrived with a large ad for Anne Tripper’s new book, Inside Advertising: The Scamming of America. When we spoke shortly after I’d come back from New York, Matt had told me he was anticipating a rough few months after the book came out. He said, “I keep vacillating between being thrilled at its potential for bestseller status and cringing at how my Hamptons neighbors are going to respond.”

  I reminded him of the public relations theory that there’s no such thing as bad publicity. Attributed variously to Mae West, Oscar Wilde, Mark Twain, and even President Harry Truman, the oft-cited quote goes, “I don’t care what the newspapers say about me as long as they spell my name right.”

  “Sure, Jessica, I’ll tell that to my wife when no one shows up at our Fourth of July picnic,” he’d said.

  Ads for Permezzo were appearing on television and on the Internet. So far, my spot and the one for Anne Tripper had aired. I’d received quite a number of e-mails from old friends who’d seen it. Lance’s was going to break in the fall. He must have reached an agreement with Detective Chesny not to reveal his arrest record in Canada, because so far, at least, his sordid past has remained there—in the past. However, it wouldn’t surprise me if the truth leaked out at some point. Very few people in the public eye are successful in keeping their earlier indiscretions a secret—as our politicians can surely attest to—and a criminal record is a pretty big indiscretion to hide.

  Antonio had decided to shelve Cookie’s commercial until the gossip died down about her involvement with the cover-up of Betsy’s accidental death. Jimbo Barnes had been charged with involuntary manslaughter and his case was set to go to trial. Cookie’s lawyer had managed to plea down the charges against her of accessory after the fact. She was given two years of community service and had chosen to cook meals for a homeless shelter in Dallas. I’d signed the photo Jimbo had taken of the two of us and sent it to her. It’s now up on her Wall of Fame.