Spring Fever (17 page)

Secretly, Annajane wondered if Pokey’s dislike of Celia wasn’t just a case of good old-fashioned jealousy. With three small children to ride herd over, Pokey was out of the loop on lots of things. And Annajane and Celia were seeing a lot of each other. But she kept that to herself.

Instead, she repeated what Celia told her about herself. “She’s only thirty-two. I think the payout is probably over a number of years, and some of it’s actually in stock she can’t touch for a few years. She’s too young to retire, and, anyway, she’s one of these people who always have to be doing something. She loves a challenge. And you’ve got to admit, with the way things are going, we’ve got a big challenge on our hands at Quixie.”

“She wants more than a job,” Pokey warned. “You wait and see.”

But before Annajane could come up with a good defense for Celia, the memos started.

Like Celia herself, they were charming and disarming initially, couched as questions at first, then as suggestions, and then, within a very short period of time, as directives and missives. Celia’s range was broad—she was interested in anything and everything that happened at Quixie, and no detail was too small for her laserlike focus.

But it wasn’t until she was on the receiving end of one of those memos—this one a coolly worded e-mail she received after filing an expense report following an out-of-town marketing association meeting—that Annajane realized just how lethal Celia’s influence could be.

AJ: Don’t you think it’s excessive to bill the company for airfare, meals and a night at an expensive New York hotel when we both know these conferences are really more about gossip and personal networking than they are about Quixie business?—CW

Stunned, Annajane had fired back with a memo of her own, detailing the subject matter of each meeting she’d attended and its value to the company, and adding the fact that she’d spent the other two nights of the conference in an old friend’s apartment, which cost the company nothing. And she’d ended her memo with one last observation.

CW: Obviously, I disagree with you about the value of these conferences. And by the way, didn’t you meet Davis and Sallie at a conference just like this one?—Annajane.

After that, there were no more lunches or shopping trips. She had, she admitted to Pokey, finally seen Celia’s true colors. And they weren’t pretty.

But to everybody else at Quixie, especially Mason, Celia Wakefield was regarded as the second coming. The one time Annajane had dared complain to Mason about one of Celia’s pointed memos to her, Mason worked himself into a righteous indignation.

She’d entered his office meekly and couched her objection as tactfully as possible, but he’d issued her a stinging and immediate rebuke. “Frankly, criticism of Celia, coming from you, seems kind of petty. She sees the big picture, Annajane, something we desperately need right now. She’s done a great job of analyzing these types of things, and I have no intention of reversing her.”

Annajane could see the matter was closed. She and Mason had managed to keep their relationship at the office on an even-keeled, professional level after their divorce, but during that brief meeting, she realized things had changed. Celia was making sure of that.

Not long after that, she noticed that Celia had been given her own parking space, with her name stenciled on the pavement, situated between Mason’s and Davis’s in the company lot. And not long after that, she’d seen Celia and Mason leaving for long lunches together. Soon, they were arriving at the office together on Monday mornings.

“He brought her to Sunday dinner at Mama’s,” Pokey reported. “You know how many women he’s dated since you two split up—and he’s never brought any of those women around the family. Hell, we never even met Sophie’s mother. I’ve got a bad, bad feeling about this chick.”

It wasn’t long before Annajane came to realize just how astute Pokey’s assessment of Celia was.

The day Celia and Davis presented her with plans for the upcoming summer promotion with the Donnell Boggs tie-in, a promotion she’d had no hand in at all, Annajane realized that Celia had quickly and stealthily cut her out of the decision-making loop in the marketing department. Before that day was out, Annajane had begun updating her résumé and quietly putting out feelers to find a new job. Her days at Quixie, she knew then, were numbered.

Still, the engagement announcement, just six weeks after her own engagement, had taken Annajane totally by surprise. And not, she would admit now, in a good way.

Celia Wakefield was not a woman to be trusted.

*   *   *

Annajane’s cell phone rang, startling her badly. She groped on her desk to find and answer it.

“Hello,” she whispered.

“Hey, Annajane,” it was Mason, sounding … awkward.

“Hi,” she said, already feeling guilty about eavesdropping on Celia.

“I’m over at the hospital, and Sophie’s awake, and asking for you,” Mason said. “I told her you’re pretty busy what with the move and all, but…”

“I was just wrapping up some work, and then I’ll be over,” Annajane said hurriedly. “How’s she feeling?”

“She’s kinda pitiful,” Mason admitted. “She’s trying to be brave, poor kid, but she can’t understand why it still hurts. I thought maybe you could take her mind off it.”

“I’ll stop on the way over and pick up a video we can watch together,” Annajane said. “I’ve got her copy of
Milo and Otis
at my place. She never gets tired of seeing that.”

“Great idea,” Mason said, sounding relieved. “Should have thought of that myself.”

Yes,
Annajane thought to herself.
You should have. Or your fiancée should have—if she weren’t so busy plotting something nefarious.

Annajane got up from her desk and looked around the room with a sigh. She really should make a start on clearing out some of this old junk before leaving for the hospital. That wooden bookshelf nearest the door, for example. The bottom shelf held a row of dusty cardboard filing boxes that had been sitting there since she’d moved into the office eight years ago. As far as she knew, the boxes hadn’t been touched for decades before that.

She grabbed the hand truck she’d borrowed from the plant and stacked three of the boxes on it. The cartons were unexpectedly heavy. A plume of dust arose as she lifted the lid of the carton on top, and she sneezed repeatedly. Inside the carton were stacks of age-browned file folders with fading but neatly typed labels. The top file was labeled
CORRESPONDENCE, 1972
. Clearly, the boxes contained nothing anybody had needed or wanted in the past forty or so years.

Annajane maneuvered the unwieldy load of file cartons through the plant and out to the loading dock, where a large Dumpster was located. She grunted as she hefted the first box into the empty Dumpster. But when she bent to unload the second box, which had been somewhat crushed from the weight of the top box, its sides collapsed, spilling the contents onto the concrete surface of the loading dock.

“Dammit,” she muttered, scooping up a load of papers.

Her mood changed when she saw the contents of the box. They were slick, full-color mechanicals of vintage Quixie advertisements.

The top ad had a vividly rendered illustration of Dixie, the Quixie Pixie, perched on the top of a Christmas tree, winking impishly and offering a bottle of Quixie to two pajama-clad children peeking around the corner of a living room that could have come straight out of a 1950s movie.

G
O
A
HEAD
, the ad’s headline urged.
S
ANTA
W
ON’T
M
IND
.

C
ELEBRATE
C
HRISTMAS WITH
Q
UIXIE
C
HERRY
C
OLA!

“Oh, wow,” she breathed, looking closer. A notation on the bottom of the mechanical indicated that the ad had run in the December 1957 issue of
Look
magazine. The illustration was signed, in the corner, with familiar block lettering. She blinked and looked again, but the signature was still there. Norman Rockwell.

She had no idea the company had once hired the country’s most famous illustrator for its ad campaigns.

Annajane looked at another mechanical. This one was for the June 1961 issue of
Saturday Evening Post
and showed Dixie again. The illustration had the mascot water-skiing behind a sleek speedboat driven by a pair of windswept but gorgeous bathing-suit-clad teenage girls. Both the girls held bottles of Quixie in their raised hands.

T
HE
W
ATER’S
F
INE
, the ad’s headline said.
B
UT
Q
UIXIE
I
S
E
VEN
B
ETTER
.

She fanned through the rest of the files. There were more mechanicals for Quixie ads over the ages, artists’ sketches, and even memos about upcoming promotions.

One of the promotional pieces was a recipe booklet titled
Entertaining Ideas with Delicious and Nutritious Quixie.

Delicious, yes, Annajane thought, but what demented marketer had dared to suggest that Quixie was actually healthy?

And yet, the booklet, which Annajane surmised was ’60s-era, offered more than a dozen recipes with accompanying color photographs for Quixie-inspired dishes, ranging from a Quixie-glazed Easter ham to an elaborate three-layer molded Quixie JELL-O “salad” to a Quixie-based fruit punch featuring a festive cherry and lime sherbet-accented frozen ice ring.

The recipe for Quixie baked beans was illustrated with a color photo of an immaculately coiffed housewife offering the gooey-looking brown concoction to a trio of eager children. The woman in the photo was definitely a dewy-eyed, probably not more than nineteen-year-old Sallie Bayless, although the children were young models, since Sallie’s own children weren’t even born yet.

“Mrs. Glendenning M. Bayless proudly serves her family healthful dishes from her personal recipe files,” the photo’s caption proclaimed.

That one gave Annajane a laugh. She’d eaten countless meals at her former mother-in-law’s house, and never once had Sallie served anything as pedestrian as baked beans. Sallie Bayless would have slit her own throat before following a recipe that called for combining canned baked beans, bacon, Vienna sausages, pineapple tidbits, and, yes, a twelve-ounce bottle of Quixie.

Still, the box was a miniature treasure trove of the company’s marketing history. She shuddered now to think how close she’d come to trashing all of it.

Annajane slid the ruined box off the hand truck and lifted the lid on the bottom box. So this was why her load had been so heavy! Inside she found a dozen old glass Quixie soda bottles, each of them different. Of course she’d glimpsed some of the same bottles in the glass display case in the company foyer, but they’d been there so long, she’d really never taken the time to examine them.

Most of the old bottles were either clear or the same pale green tint that was used in the current Quixie bottle. But the shape and silhouette and labels varied. One in particular drew her attention. She lifted it out and held it up to the sunlight.

The bottle was short and squat, an eight-ounce size, and its base bore concentric rings. On the label, the winking face of Dixie leaned out from the Q in the company name.

“Adorable,” Annajane breathed, turning the bottle this way and that. At the same time she was admiring it, she realized that she was thirsty, parched, dying, actually, for an icy-cold glass of delicious, even
nutritious
Quixie cherry cola. Talk about a subliminal message.

Suddenly, she heard the loading dock door open behind her and the familiar tap of heels and that overly loud voice.

“Well, hey,” she heard Celia say. “What on earth are you doing, Annajane?”

Reflexively, Annajane shoved the top on the file box.

“Just cleaning out my office,” she said, struggling to her feet.

“I’m so glad you’re doing that!” Celia exclaimed. “I promised Tracey we’d get the office spiffed up before she moves in, but the last time I peeked in there, I realized we’ll have a lot of work to do before the painters can come.” She favored Annajane with one of her twinkly smiles. “I realize you’ve still got another week to work, but that’s really just a technicality. I was hoping you’d get the place emptied out a little early. I know Davis wouldn’t mind if you quit a few days earlier.”

In other words,
Annajane thought,
“Here’s your hat, what’s your hurry?”

Annajane forced herself to return something like a smile, without Celia’s phony wattage. “That’s very sweet of you, but I wouldn’t dream of taking off work until I get every last loose end tied up. And I’ve still got lots I need to accomplish, especially with the summer sales promotion.”

In other words, back off, bitch. I’ll leave when I’m good and ready.

“Well,” Celia said reluctantly. “I guess you’ve got a better grasp of those kind of nitty-gritty details than me. Mason and Davis really want me focused more on the big-picture stuff.”

Like selling off the company?
Annajane wondered.

Annajane pointed at the cartons on the loading dock. “While I was emptying boxes I did find some interesting old files and old bottles I think Mason might want to keep.”

Celia looked as fresh as a daisy. She wore a pale gray-blue sleeveless sheath that showed off her tanned arms, a chunky silver chain necklace, matching earrings, and gray-blue kitten-heel mules that brought her up to just about chin level with Annajane.