Shadow Notes by Laurel Peterson (cool books to read txt) 📗

“I think training me seems more appropriate to a campaign aide than a lawyer.”

“And you would be right.”

I held my hands up in surrender.

“Great. Let’s get started.” She showed me the donor files, suggesting I familiarize myself with my audience, as if I didn’t know this town. Big money donors, she reminded me, earned the right to big name entertainment and luxurious venues. The common man mingled with the candidate over hot dogs at the beach. “You can find their income and contribution levels in the database,” she said.

She showed me the files of caterers, musicians, event locations, florists, rental companies and gift shops. She named the dates already set aside for fundraisers. I tried not to hyperventilate or to wonder how I would find time to talk to mother’s friends about her past if I did this much actual work, never mind that it would help the wrong candidate. Somehow, I had conceived of this as a lark—chatting on the phone, maybe, or talking up donors at a party while slipping in my own questions, but Bailey set me up at a desk with a phone, then stalked off to court, promising me that we would have it out later. I hoped that meant over drinks.

I still wasn’t sure if she was friend or foe.

I sighed and started calling venues while reviewing the files for the appropriate people to invite to each event. Each contained the name, address, phone number, email address, and rough net worth of the donor. I wondered which of Andrew’s friends had provided that information or if it was a guesstimate based on a lifetime of acquaintance. In addition, files listed the number, frequency, and amount of donations to the campaign, as well as favored foods, wines, and restaurants; schools they and their children had attended; club memberships; employers (and if they did matching donations); number of cars and makes; spouse’s and children’s names and occupations, if any, with notations to check separate files if they, too, had become donors; and any specialized interests, like golf or rock collecting. The notations varied in handwriting and pen color. A real long-term approach to winning friends and influencing people.

About halfway through the stack, I stumbled across Winken’s file. She and her husband had contributed the maximum amounts to both the campaign and several PACs for at least ten years. They owned a modest home in a less expensive neighborhood and they both drove Hondas; his was seven years old; hers, six. Strangely, her two children had attended public schools and the University of Connecticut. I expected expensive private schools. If money was tight, why the huge donations? Maybe they were so passionate about politics that they sacrificed?

I slogged through several more calls to venues and caterers for quotes, and surveyed about ten more donor files before I hit lunch hour. By this time, the room had cleared. The twenty-two-year-old hadn’t stopped hovering over Andrew all morning. He’d probably taken her for lunch, to give her some insight into the workings of Great Political Minds. I wished her luck and freedom from straying hands.

Through all the phoning, my mind kept straying back to the files. I trawled through several others but didn’t find the same discrepancies, as in Winken’s. However, some files had a notation in tiny letters on the lower right of the last page. Winken’s read BSA. Boy Scouts of America? Her husband’s read BRE. Bare? Bore? Broke? None of my guesses made any sense.

And none of it was useful for me, or Mother.

I ordered a crab salad sandwich at the deli across the street and grabbed a seat to eat and think. I’d come home because my dreams said Mother was in trouble. How did Hugh’s murder, Mother’s performance at Hugh’s funeral, and the dolls on my pillow fit together? Was my meddling making things better or worse? Was I the one actually putting Mother into danger? Why the hell was I working for Andrew Winters? How would I face Mother when she found out?

Funny about that anger: She never locked me in my room or cut off ­privileges. She didn’t isolate me from my friends, or tell me I couldn’t talk to them. But if I did the wrong thing, forget it.

Mother dreamed like I did; I knew it, even if she wouldn’t admit it. That meant she understood something about me, something primal and scary and outside normal human interaction. If I lost my connection to her, I would be alone in the world, especially given the rate at which I seemed to be alienating my old friends.

I felt myself tear up. Great. Crying in the local deli. As I dug a tissue from my purse, I mused that Winken, who was close to my mother’s age, might know a lot about her past. If I could get Winken talking, at the very least, she might know why my mother and Mary Ellen hated each other, giving me some leverage with Mary Ellen.

I dumped the remainder of my sandwich, and trudged back to the campaign to make more phone calls and surreptitious notes. At five o’clock, when Bailey rang to say she could meet for drinks after all, I nearly danced a jig. Could I ask her what the notations in Mother’s books meant? Would she have heard gossip—would she know what had traumatized Mother?

I stuffed a rubber-banded packet of discarded envelopes with notes on them into a pocket in my purse. Bailey came upstairs to fetch me, and I followed her silver-blue Porsche through the glimmery early evening cold. Down by the water, where rows of pretty little shops offered useless imported goods to people with excess cash and space to display them, we snagged parking spots and went into a bistro with a bar strung across its right wall. Terra-cotta colored walls, low lights, and cream and brass fixtures signaled the high prices. Bailey ordered us martinis and slid onto a bar stool, shrugging off her cashmere