Chapter 6

Satisfied that Sherry’s proposal was well under way, I headed back to Old Blue. My thoughts turned to Brad and Jen. I had no idea how I was supposed to surprise Jennifer when she was the one who wanted to set up the engagement. She would know something was up the minute I showed up. She might even stalk me just to catch me setting stuff up. I bit my lip. The key to a true surprise was to not be planning her engagement. What I needed was an accomplice. Maybe Toby could help. He’d enjoyed helping me put together the last two proposals. Maybe he would help me out with this one, too.

Toby was a genius, independently wealthy, and a bit of a geeky romantic. He could do whatever he wanted, and he often did. The problem was that Toby had decided it was time he got married. He thought he could go about marriage the same way he went about a business merger. He’d do some background research, match financials, and ask the woman to marry him. What he didn’t get was that women wanted to be courted and, more importantly, loved for themselves, not for their fertility or financial status. The expression of that love and respect is what went into my proposals. Each was not necessarily glitzy, but rather very personal and well thought out. When I met Toby he had wanted me to set up a proposal to a woman he’d researched and decided was the girl for him, even though they had never dated. While I didn’t accept Toby’s money—and he’d offered me quite a bit—I instead asked him to accompany me on two of my proposals so he could understand what it meant to be in love and ask a woman to marry him.

For my Perfect Proposals business I wanted to cater to people who were in love and who had already begun to build a life together. That’s why my first inclination was always to ask if a couple had talked about marriage and if they were both ready.

I could tell that Brad and Jennifer were in love. The hard part was that Jennifer wanted to be surprised. I had a feeling it was a game for her. That meant she’d be watching me like a hawk. I got to thinking that a way around that might be to get Toby to carry out some of the details. I might even have to set up a false trail of clues for Jennifer. If she wasn’t surprised, then they wouldn’t pay me. I didn’t think that was quite fair. I’d talked it over with Gage. He agreed that I needed to insist on a retainer and that all vendor costs be paid whether she was surprised or not. That was what I needed to talk to Brad about. I had hoped to talk to him alone, but it wasn’t looking like that was going to be possible. In fact, I thought of leading Brad down the false path as well. That way he couldn’t give anything away when it was actually happening. Hmmm, I’d think about that.

My cell phone rang as I got into Old Blue. I put on my Bluetooth earpiece and answered. “Perfect Proposals, this is Pepper speaking, how can I help you?”

“Pepper, this is Sugar Fulcrum, Clark’s mom. We met at your sister’s wedding. How are you?”

“I’m well. What can I do for you, Mrs. Fulcrum?”

“Please, call me Sugar,” she said. “Clark and Samantha Lyn are such a cute couple, don’t you think?”

“Perhaps,” I hedged. “But they are very young.”

“Not so young,” Sugar said. “I got married at eighteen and Samantha Lyn is twenty. Anyway, Clark says she’s the one for him. Our families are really close and Samantha Lyn’s mother, Josie, and I were talking. We want to hire you to plan a really cute and glitzy proposal for Clark to ask Samantha Lyn to marry him. We want it to be so incredible it makes more than the society papers. We want it to make the morning shows. You know, like one of those viral video things. I’m sure you have an idea what I mean.”

“I think so,” I said.

“Yes, well, money is no object. I don’t mean to be vulgar, but I know you are a businesswoman and you need to know that there really won’t be a budget. Clark has a huge trust fund and his father is on the Forbes list. So, as you can see, we have to make this huge. Think reality-show huge. I want a press release to go out and I want reporters invited. I want diamonds and gold and sparkles. I want romantic settings and only the top-shelf chef to cater. I’m certain you have resources that can make this happen.”

“Okay, well, we will have to set up an initial meeting where I flesh out ideas for the proposal. When would you like to meet? I’d like Clark there as well. I want to find out what he and Samantha Lyn like to do, some of the dates they went on, how they met, et cetera. It really helps to plan a very personal event. Then I’ll also need at least a semblance of a budget. I charge a nonrefundable retainer of 50 percent of that budget the day we sign the contract.” I chewed on my bottom lip thinking that nonrefundable and 50 percent of an unlimited budget would make her stop and think about this crazy idea.

“Perfect,” Sugar said, completely unfazed by my outrageous proposal. “I can meet tomorrow. Does that work for you?”

“That works,” I said, and scribbled it into my date book. “Where would you like to meet?”

“Oh, how about the Pavilion tearoom on Wabash. We can have tea and discuss all the details.”

“Okay, great. I’ll make reservations for you and Clark.”

“Add Josie as well,” Sugar Fulcrum said. “She’ll want to be a part of the planning, and no one knows Samantha Lyn like her mother.”

“Great, I’ll get a table for four tomorrow at noon at the Pavilion on Wabash.”

“Perfect,” Sugar trilled. “This is so exciting. See you then.”

I hung up the phone and frowned. Samantha Lyn seemed like such a nice girl, but so very young. I was worried for her. It seemed as if her parents were more excited about matching her with the sullen Clark than Samantha Lyn was. I frowned. If I were a good businessperson, I’d suck it up and plan the proposal. This was clearly going to be a big-ticket event.

I started Old Blue and drove her out of the parking structure. I frowned as I inched my way out onto the road. A fat bank account was nice, but I wanted my reputation as a proposal planner to be impeccable. Which meant that I wanted all of my proposals to generate a true yes. And for the marriage to last as long as possible . . . I suppose that was asking a lot in today’s day and age of massive weddings and quickie divorces.

I honked at a taxi that tried to cut me off and ignored the insulting gesture that followed as I took the exit back onto the Kennedy Expressway. If money wasn’t a stumbling block to this proposal, maybe talking would be. I chewed on my bottom lip and picked up my phone. While crawling along in bumper-to-bumper traffic, I Googled the Pavilion. When the number came up I hit the link to dial it and sent the call to my earpiece.

“The Pavilion tearoom.”

“Yes, I’d like to make a reservation for four tomorrow at noon.”

There was a pause. “I’m sorry but we have no openings at that time.”

Huh. “Okay, well, I’m making the reservation for Mrs. Sugar Fulcrum and Mrs. Josie Thomson. Should I have Mrs. Fulcrum’s secretary call you?”

“Mrs. Sugar Fulcrum? No, no, we always have a table for Mrs. Fulcrum. You want a table for four?”

That’s what I thought. “Yes, please,” I said. “You can put the reservation under Pepper Pomeroy for Mrs. Sugar Fulcrum.”

“Perfect, we will see you then.”

I hung up and shook my head. I wished I didn’t have to resort to name dropping, but if Sugar Fulcrum wanted to meet at the Pavilion, then I needed to use her name to make that happen.

The traffic started to clear up the closer we got to the O’Hare Airport interchange. The sky was a brilliant blue with a weak light due to the time of year. The cold made the sky haze free and really gorgeous. But there wasn’t a lot of light in a Chicago winter. It had snowed last night and we had three inches on the ground. The plows had come through early and hit the side roads, leaving a foot of mounded snow near the sidewalk, but the rest was soft, perfect snow that frosted the neighborhood in a blanket of fresh white.

I got off the highway and made my way home, thinking about the Pavilion tearoom. It was downtown and not one of the places I usually met people to discuss business. But then I had a feeling this particular account was going to be far different than any of my proposals so far. I mean, a press release? Really? Maybe I should look into a film crew following Clark and Samantha Lyn around. Ridiculous, right? Or maybe it was smart. Think of the publicity if this turned out to be the engagement of the century. Samantha Lyn deserved it . . . but not with Clark. Maybe that was an opinion that Ashley had given me. I really didn’t know Clark or his parents. Maybe there was more to the boy than I got from my first impression.

Or maybe he was the prankster and lazy troublemaker that Ashley had hinted at that night.

I decided that the thing to do was to call Samantha before this got too far. I pulled into my driveway and used my smartphone to do some sleuthing. Gathering up my things, I got out of the car, waved at Mrs. Crivitz, who peered out her dining room window, and unlocked my back porch door. The curtains fell shut as I entered the house and closed the door behind me. I dropped my things on the small dinette table near the back door, took off my coat and hung it up. I unwrapped my scarf from around my neck and tossed it up on a hook on the wall.

I left my boots by the door and contacted Whitney for Samantha’s cell phone number. Once I had her number, I typed a brief text message into my phone. “Hi, Samantha Lyn, this is Pepper Pomeroy from the wedding Saturday night. Can we talk?”

“Okay,” came a texted reply.

I made myself coffee, dialed the number, and Samantha picked up. “Hi.” Her voice sounded wobbly.

“Hi, Samantha.”

“Hi, Pepper.” She sounded as if she were crying.

“Are you okay?” I asked.

“No,” she said, her voice watery. “I just . . . I can’t believe Ashley died.”

“Oh, honey, I’m sorry. I saw you talking to Ashley that night. Did you know her well?”

Samantha sniffed. “Yeah, we met at a different wedding. She was nice. She took a lot of Clark’s crap without being mean about it. You know?”

“Yes, I know.”

“It’s just so weird. I’ve never known anyone who died. I mean, one minute she was there and the next she was dead.”

“You’ve never known anyone who died? Not even, like, your grandparents?”

“Yes.” Samantha hiccupped a quiet sad sob. “But they died when I was little. My parents never let me go to the funeral or anything. Pepper, I don’t know what to do. I mean, is there a funeral for Ashley? Should I go? What do you wear? What about like a visitation and stuff? I Googled funerals and it all seems so weird. There’s a protocol, right? Why don’t they teach you about these things at school?”

“Oh, honey, it’s okay. I’ve been to a few funerals,” I said. “I have family in the area and my parents have older friends and such. People die. It’s not hard to go to a funeral.”

“Can you help me? I . . . I just want to do the right thing for Ashley, you know?”

“Sure, honey,” I said. “I can help.”

“Can you meet me tomorrow afternoon?” she asked. “I’d like to see you in person.”

“Sure,” I said. I bit my bottom lip. I wanted to ask her more about her conversation with Ashley but she was so broken up, now was simply not the time. I set up a time to meet her at a local coffee shop.

“Wait, why did you call me?” she asked.

“Can we talk about it when we meet?”

“Sure,” she said. “See you soon, okay?”

“Okay.”

It was too bad I didn’t find out a bit more. It would have been nice to be able to tell Detective Murphy about Samantha Lyn’s connection with Ashley. But right now there was nothing to go on but the fact that they had talked and that Samantha Lyn was pretty broken up over it.