Chelsea Chelsea Bang Bang Read online

  By now the desk was vibrating, and I knew that Brad wouldn't be able to hold out much longer, so I ended the conversation with a final sniffle. "I'll call you later," I said, then hung up the phone.

  "Did you tell John that you were faking his dog's death?" Tom asked.

  "No, but he's familiar with the inner workings of this office, so he must have put two and two together."

  "Pretty impressive work on John's behalf. I didn't know he had it in him. I think your next move is to have Eva call John's assistant and have her send out an e-mail asking everyone at the party if they saw Dudley eat any of the hors d'oeuvres at the party. And make sure you e-mail Claire and Jake just in case Ted starts calling the whole town."

  "Exactly," I replied while looking over at Brad, whose face had turned two shades darker than a lobster.

  "After that little desk performance, you are definitely not going to the pier," Tom told him.

  "Pleeeeeease?"

  I walked over to Eva's desk to give her instructions on the next phase of Operation Dudley Is Dead.

  The next e-mail was sent by Eva a few minutes later:

  Hey guys. Did any of you see Dudley ingest or eat anything last night that maybe he shouldn't have? The animal doctor that is doing the autopsy asked John's assistant to find out. It's a little awkward so she asked me if I could help.

  Before I even finished reading the e-mail, my phone rang. "Did you get the e-mail?" Ted asked me.

  "Yes. They know it's me."

  "No, they do not!"

  "They're gonna find out when they do the autopsy. They're gonna find the crab right next to that black napkin in Dudley's belly."

  "Yes, but they aren't going to know who did it."

  "I have to come forward."

  "No, Chelsea! We don't even know if the dog is allergic to shellfish. It could have been something else."

  "Was allergic to shellfish. Dudley is dead, Ted."

  "We don't know that it was the shellfish. It could've been anything. Just wait until we get the autopsy results."

  I took a deep, loud, dramatic breath.

  "Chelsea," he said in the voice that a grief counselor would use with a patient attempting to do bodily harm to herself. "I have to go into a meeting now. Please don't talk to or call anyone who was at the party. Did you tell Tom?"

  "Yes."

  "Anyone else?"

  "Brad."

  "Why did you tell Brad?"

  "Because he saw me crying."

  "Oh, honey. You poor thing. Sweetie, you have to remember, this was an accident. The dog could have had another heart attack. We don't know it was the crab. It might just have been his time."

  "I'm fine. I have to go, Ted. This is all too much."

  A little later Eva walked into my office to tell me that Ted had called her and made it very clear to her that she saw nothing unusual at last night's party. "He also said that you were in a very fragile state and that I should keep an eye on you." Eva told me all this with a straight face and then turned on her heel and laughed all the way back to her desk. I was impressed with this side of her and her skill set in dealing with an unexpected dog homicide.

  Luckily for me it was Friday. The spreading of the ashes would be Saturday, so I would have to go through with this charade for only one night and a morning.

  Needless to say I had a terrific day planning the next day's events. I hadn't been this charged up since the presidential inauguration. On my way home from the show that evening, my attorney Jake called.

  "Chelsea. I was on the phone with Ted trying for forty minutes to figure out who fed the dog what. He was trying to protect you and convince me you had nothing to do with it. This is so fucking stupid. I kept having to put the phone on mute. Are you really going to take the CEO of a cable company to a dog funeral?"

  "Yes, it's at the pier. Would you like to come?"

  "Yes, but I have my kid's soccer game tomorrow. Can't we do it Sunday? How can he believe this?"

  "Johnny is filming it, and he has a christening on Sunday. Your loss."

  "Shit. I really want to see this."

  "Well, unless Ted hits me, I'll probably show it on Leno Tuesday night."

  "You should tell Ted that John's hiring a pet detective to put on the case."

  "I don't have time for shenanigans," I told Jake, and hung up.

  When I got home, I jumped on the treadmill. As soon as Ted walked in, I texted Eva to send the follow-up e-mail we had coordinated earlier:

  Hi guys. John's assistant just told me confidentially that the autopsy revealed that Dudley was allergic to shellfish and that seems to be the culprit. Chelsea, if I recall correctly that is not what you gave him. I'm pretty sure it was one of those raviolis. Poor guy!

  I liked Eva. I liked her a lot.

  Our treadmill is on our balcony, and Ted was standing in front of it talking to me when he read the e-mail.

  "Oh, dear Lord. I knew it."

  He went to grab my BlackBerry off the treadmill in an attempt to shield me from the horrible discovery.

  "What?" I asked, as I took it back from him.

  "It was the shellfish," he said, with his arms open for me to run into.

  "Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!!"

  This is the picture I shot with my BlackBerry of him consoling me right there and then on the balcony:

  It took several minutes for me to calm down long enough to forward the picture to my team. The hysterical crying was interrupted by hysterical laughing, which I had to cover up with more fake crying, so it became a vicious circle. Luckily, it was a windy day, and Ted is ridiculous.

  The rest of the night was more of the same as I was e-mailing with Tom, Jake, and Brad. Brad had to pull over several times on his way to dinner just to gain composure, and Jake kept calling me from his house in the Palisades howling. "This is the stupidest fucking joke in the world. Ted is going to dump you in the Santa Monica Bay, and I'm going to be laughing so hard I won't be able to do anything about it!"

  "I thought you had a soccer game."

  "I do, but I'll be laughing at the soccer game."

  I told him to stop calling me, because I couldn't keep running out of the room. You could hear him screaming through the phone, and I'd have to jump up and scram every time it rang. "Fuck off," I repeated over and over again.

  Ted ran in after the third time Jake called and found me kneeling next to my bed. "Who are you telling to fuck off?"

  "My father."

  "Oh."

  I finally had to take a Lunesta to get to sleep so that I wouldn't have to face him anymore. I woke up the next morning and lay in bed thinking about the difference a day can make. So much had happened in twenty-four hours. So many lives had been touched.

  The funeral wasn't until five, so I had to maintain my composure but keep it somewhat real by pretending I was dreading it as well. Ted had been e-mailing everyone at the party to see who was coming to the funeral and he was concerned about who he'd be standing next to during the spreading of the ashes. "I'm worried I'm going to laugh," he kept saying. "Please make sure I'm not anywhere near Tom."

  "Don't worry," I wanted to say. "No one else is coming, moron."

  But I didn't.

  At around four-thirty we headed to the pier. On our way down the ramp, I took a photo of the back of Ted's head and sent it off to everyone who was waiting to hear, with a caption that read "Ted on his way to Dudley's funeral."

  I was texting furiously with Johnny Kansas, and he was telling me to stay on Ted's right when we got to the end of the pier. The sign we had made would be set up there on a railing. In order to capture Ted's reaction, we needed to choreograph our arrival perfectly. I realized then that I had forgotten to get flowers and texted Johnny, "We have no flowers."

  "Get churros," he replied.

  There are churro stands about every two hundred feet at the Santa Monica Pier, so it felt totally natural to yell, "Ted, that's why Dudley liked the pier. The churros. He loved churros