Chelsea Chelsea Bang Bang (5 page)

Anyone who has seen Brad on the show knows how ridiculous-looking he is, but to see him when his face turns bright red and he is unable to control his heart-attack-like fits of hysteria is worth playing any practical joke on anyone. He immediately starts contorting his body and grabbing his head, and his face turns into the exact color of his ridiculous orange hair. Basically the same way a person would react during an earthquake, minus the laughter. "How can he believe you?" he bellowed as he started writhing on the couch. "How can he believe anything you say anymore? A dog autopsy?! Who the hell gets a dog autopsy?!"

While Brad was going into what anyone walking by the office would perceive to be seizures, Tom was as cool as a cucumber.

"This is excellent work, Chelsea. I like what you've done here."

"You have to call him on speakerphone and let us listen!" Brad sobbed.

"Cool your heels, Tinker Bell," Tom told him. "This has to be thought out very carefully. You need to call all the other people that were there last night and tell them the deal. There's a lot of potential here. What's your weekend looking like?"

"Wide open."

"Well, why don't we stage a little dog funeral somewhere and have our little producer, Mr. Johnny Kansas, film the whole episode. You're on
Leno
Tuesday night. You know how much Ted likes to be on television."

This was true. As much as he pretends he hates it, Ted loves to be talked about or displayed on television.

"Johnny!" Tom yelled.

Johnny walked in, and Tom asked him what his plans were for this weekend.

"I've got a christening on Sunday," he told us. "I'm free Saturday."

"Then Saturday it is. Where can we have the funeral?" Tom asked me.

"Well, it would have to be somewhere on our side of town, because there's no way I'm going to drive forty-five minutes for a fake funeral. How about the Santa Monica Pier? We can say we're spreading Dudley's ashes because he wanted to be cremated."

"The Santa Monica Pier!" Brad was now slamming his head on the arm of the sofa. "I can't take it! I can't take it! Dog ashes at the Santa Monica Pier!"

"Brad, pull yourself together, you fucking idiot. This is business," Tom told him.

"Okay, okay, okay, wait! You have to do the funeral after five so I can come."

"No, you can't come. You'll give it away before he even finds out," I admonished him.

"No! I have to be there."

"Brad is not coming," Johnny said, looking at him in disgust. "He'll ruin everything."

"Brad, you're not coming," I told him again. "But I will call Ted on speakerphone to tell him about the funeral, and you can listen."

"Not on my watch," Johnny said as he walked out. "I will not be a party to this other than videotaping the funeral."

"Hi, sweetie," Ted said in his very melodramatic way when he picked up the phone.

"They're having a funeral on Saturday at the Santa Monica Pier."

Brad jumped off the sofa and buried himself under Tom's desk, which had been vacated when Tom stood to shut the door.

"A funeral? I just got off with John, and he didn't say anything about a funeral."

"You just got off with John?" I asked, thinking I was screwed because I hadn't even spoken to John yet. "And?"

"And he sounded awful. I don't think he suspects anything. He just sounded terrible."

I looked over at Tom, who was standing by the door rubbing his goatee, and his eyes widened.

"Well, did he say anything about what might have caused it?"

"No, he says they just had open-heart surgery on the dog a few months ago, so he doesn't understand what happened."

The amount of fluid that you could hear coming out of Brad's body was unsettling. Luckily, the desk muffled his fits of laughter enough for Ted not to hear. I walked behind the desk and kicked him.

"He didn't say anything about a funeral, Chelsea. I don't think we have to go."

"No, his assistant is e-mailing everyone at the party. They want everyone who was there when he left the world to be there when he enters the ocean."

That was the only line I actually had trouble delivering with a straight face, and I fumbled a little but made a quick recovery. "It's Saturday."

"Saturday?"

"Yeah."

"Oh, my God. I have to go to a dog funeral on a Saturday?"

"It's at the Santa Monica Pier."

"Well, at least that's not too far."

This was just like Ted, to have a problem with the event as a whole but not take issue with the idea that the dog's ashes were basically being spread off a circus fairground into the Pacific Ocean.

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."