And Death Goes To . . .. Laura Bradford
do my best, Stu.” Andy waited until my grandfather closed the door completely, and then made his way over to me. “I meant what I said, you know. I’m glad you didn’t win that award tonight.”
When he perched on the edge of the desk and reached for my hand, I gave it willingly. “I’m sorry I was such lousy company on the way here. I guess I was still in shock.”
He squeezed my hand ever so gently until I really looked at him. “If you remember, I didn’t say anything during the drive, either.”
I thought back, and he was right. “I keep hearing that sound, and seeing her face just before it all happened. And when I’m not seeing her, I’m seeing the faces of her husband and parents as—” I tugged my hand free of Andy’s grasp and used it to try and push away the image in my head. But all it did was advance forward to the moment Deidre’s husband backed away from the huddle of people around his wife to let loose the kind of tortured scream I wasn’t sure I’d ever be able to forget.
Andy raked his hand through his hair. “And I’m hearing and seeing all that same stuff and thanking God you didn’t win that damn award. Because if you had, that would have been…”
His words disappeared behind his fist as he turned and looked out my office window to the small side alley that separated my building from the drycleaner next door. But it didn’t matter. His anguish and the reason behind it were crystal clear.
But before I could gather my own emotions enough to string together a coherent response, his focus and his hands were back on me. “That woman is dead because of a wrong place/wrong time moment. And it could have been you, Tobi.”
I looked down at his hands on mine and worked to steady my breath. “So you saw it, too?”
He drew back but his gaze never left mine. “Her fall? Yeah. Her family’s anguish? Yeah. That look on her face as I imagine she felt the platform starting to give way? Yeah. I saw it all just like you did—like everyone in that entire ballroom did.”
“I’m talking about the look just before the platform gave way,” I whispered, though why I felt the need to whisper in a closed office was beyond me.
“I think she felt something we couldn’t see.”
Again, I took my hand back, and this time I used it to push off the chair. “I don’t think that’s what it was at all.”
“I’m not following, Tobi.”
I wandered over to the window and gazed out over the moonlit alley. “It’s like you said before…about the wrong time/wrong place...only it was more than that. Her being there was wrong and I think she knew that.”
Andy’s footsteps drew near until he was standing right behind me. “Meaning?”
I took a deep breath, let it out through my lips, and then turned so I was looking at Andy rather than a dumpster. “I think Cassie said the wrong name.”
“The wrong—”
A quick knock thwarted the rest of his sentence and sent our focus toward the door and JoAnna. “I’m sorry to interrupt, but Carter is all geared up to give a toast and he’s insisting that you come out and stand beside Sam. And Tobi? This toast fills up both sides of a standard piece of paper.”
Despite the seriousness of the conversation she’d interrupted, I still managed a smile. Carter was aces. Always. And the fact that he had a two-sided toast meant he’d spent a good deal of time preparing for this moment. To decline it would be cruel.
“Okay, I’ll be out in one minute.”
“We’ll give you three.” JoAnna studied me for a few seconds and then hooked her thumb over her shoulder. “I’m sorry if I shouldn’t have pushed to still have this. But I just felt so bad seeing Sam’s night end like that and—”
“It’s okay, JoAnna, really. Sam earned this. And I’ll be out in three, I promise.”
“I’ll let Carter know.” JoAnna gave me an encouraging smile and then quietly closed the door in her wake.
Hooking his finger beneath my chin, Andy guided my attention back to him. “You were saying?”
I took another, deeper breath. “I don’t think that award was meant for Deidre. I think it was Lexa’s.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because in the split second before Deidre fell…when she looked over her shoulder at the screen…she realized it wasn’t her ad they were showing.”
Andy stared at me, his confusion palpable.
“Deidre’s ad…the one she was nominated for…was the Books Can Take You Places campaign. You saw it, right? The one where people open a book inside the library and, suddenly, you see them reading that same book in a completely different place—like inside a castle or on a ship or deep in the woods…”
“Yeah, I saw it. It was clever, for sure. But not as good as your New Town ad, in my opinion.”
I waved off his sweet bias and reclaimed the conversation. “Okay, but you know the ad I’m talking about, yes?”
“Yes.”
“Well, that’s not the ad that was starting to run on the screen just as everything came crashing down on top of Deidre. It was actually Lexa’s ad for the Get Moving with MetroLink campaign.”
“Are you sure?”
“It was really fast, and I’m guessing everyone else was still looking at her more than the screen, but yeah… I saw the father and son in their Cardinals gear and that’s how Lexa’s ad starts…with the pair parking their car in a lot alongside a congested I-70 and then stepping onto the MetroLink for a stress-free and traffic-free ride downtown. Only it was literally the first two seconds of the ad—where you see the father’s ball cap and the little boy’s glove and then—wham!—the platform gave way, pulling the screen and the spotlight down, too.”
Andy’s eyes closed briefly at the memory just as mine had done many times since it happened. But this time, I kept mine open, so I could see his reaction when he fully grasped what I was saying.
It didn’t take long.
“And you think she knew it?” he asked.
“She was looking at the same screen I was. And I saw it register for her, but then she went down and all hell broke loose.”
He raked a hand through his hair, his accompanying exhalation moving a few of my curls away from my face. “Wow. I don’t even know what to say. I mean, maybe the tech guysjust played the wrong video. But if they didn’t, and she wasn’t even the one who was supposed to be on that platform, can you imagine how much harder this is all going to be for her family?”
It was the same question that had gone through my head a time or two since it happened. Although, in the grand scheme of things, it was probably silly. Because really, in the end, it didn’t matter who was standing on the platform when it malfunctioned. The end result would have been the same. And no matter how much any of us might have wanted that golden storyboard, no award was worth losing one’s life in such a horrific way.
I shivered against the chill that skittered down my spine and willed Andy’s answering embrace to make it all go away. But I knew it would take time. I hadn’t known Deidre all that well, but I’d always found her to be quiet and unassuming—rarities in a business that had a reputation (well earned, I might add) for being extremely cutthroat.
He held me for what was surely three minutes all on its own before he finally stepped back. “I’m pretty sure we’ve used our allotted time and then some. What’s say we rejoin the party and celebrate the good things that came from tonight?”
“Sam really knocked it out of the ballpark, didn’t he?” I asked as I fell into step beside Andy on the way to the door.
“He