Celia Wakefield was not a woman to be trusted.

*   *   *

Annajane’s cell phone rang, startling her badly. She groped on her desk to find and answer it.

“Hello,” she whispered.

“Hey, Annajane,” it was Mason, sounding … awkward.

“Hi,” she said, already feeling guilty about eavesdropping on Celia.

“I’m over at the hospital, and Sophie’s awake, and asking for you,” Mason said. “I told her you’re pretty busy what with the move and all, but…”

“I was just wrapping up some work, and then I’ll be over,” Annajane said hurriedly. “How’s she feeling?”

“She’s kinda pitiful,” Mason admitted. “She’s trying to be brave, poor kid, but she can’t understand why it still hurts. I thought maybe you could take her mind off it.”

“I’ll stop on the way over and pick up a video we can watch together,” Annajane said. “I’ve got her copy of Milo and Otis at my place. She never gets tired of seeing that.”

“Great idea,” Mason said, sounding relieved. “Should have thought of that myself.”

Yes, Annajane thought to herself. You should have. Or your fiancée should have—if she weren’t so busy plotting something nefarious.

Annajane got up from her desk and looked around the room with a sigh. She really should make a start on clearing out some of this old junk before leaving for the hospital. That wooden bookshelf nearest the door, for example. The bottom shelf held a row of dusty cardboard filing boxes that had been sitting there since she’d moved into the office eight years ago. As far as she knew, the boxes hadn’t been touched for decades before that.

She grabbed the hand truck she’d borrowed from the plant and stacked three of the boxes on it. The cartons were unexpectedly heavy. A plume of dust arose as she lifted the lid of the carton on top, and she sneezed repeatedly. Inside the carton were stacks of age-browned file folders with fading but neatly typed labels. The top file was labeled CORRESPONDENCE, 1972. Clearly, the boxes contained nothing anybody had needed or wanted in the past forty or so years.

Annajane maneuvered the unwieldy load of file cartons through the plant and out to the loading dock, where a large Dumpster was located. She grunted as she hefted the first box into the empty Dumpster. But when she bent to unload the second box, which had been somewhat crushed from the weight of the top box, its sides collapsed, spilling the contents onto the concrete surface of the loading dock.

“Dammit,” she muttered, scooping up a load of papers.

Her mood changed when she saw the contents of the box. They were slick, full-color mechanicals of vintage Quixie advertisements.

The top ad had a vividly rendered illustration of Dixie, the Quixie Pixie, perched on the top of a Christmas tree, winking impishly and offering a bottle of Quixie to two pajama-clad children peeking around the corner of a living room that could have come straight out of a 1950s movie.

GO AHEAD, the ad’s headline urged. SANTA WON’T MIND.

C ELEBRATE C HRISTMAS WITH Q UIXIE C HERRY C OLA!

“Oh, wow,” she breathed, looking closer. A notation on the bottom of the mechanical indicated that the ad had run in the December 1957 issue of Look magazine. The illustration was signed, in the corner, with familiar block lettering. She blinked and looked again, but the signature was still there. Norman Rockwell.

She had no idea the company had once hired the country’s most famous illustrator for its ad campaigns.

Annajane looked at another mechanical. This one was for the June 1961 issue of Saturday Evening Post and showed Dixie again. The illustration had the mascot water-skiing behind a sleek speedboat driven by a pair of windswept but gorgeous bathing-suit-clad teenage girls. Both the girls held bottles of Quixie in their raised hands.

THE WATER’S FINE, the ad’s headline said. BUT QUIXIE IS EVEN BETTER.

She fanned through the rest of the files. There were more mechanicals for Quixie ads over the ages, artists’ sketches, and even memos about upcoming promotions.

One of the promotional pieces was a recipe booklet titled Entertaining Ideas with Delicious and Nutritious Quixie.

Delicious, yes, Annajane thought, but what demented marketer had dared to suggest that Quixie was actually healthy?

And yet, the booklet, which Annajane surmised was ’60s-era, offered more than a dozen recipes with accompanying color photographs for Quixie-inspired dishes, ranging from a Quixie-glazed Easter ham to an elaborate three-layer molded Quixie JELL-O “salad” to a Quixie-based fruit punch featuring a festive cherry and lime sherbet-accented frozen ice ring.

The recipe for Quixie baked beans was illustrated with a color photo of an immaculately coiffed housewife offering the gooey-looking brown concoction to a trio of eager children. The woman in the photo was definitely a dewy-eyed, probably not more than nineteen-year-old Sallie Bayless, although the children were young models, since Sallie’s own children weren’t even born yet.

“Mrs. Glendenning M. Bayless proudly serves her family healthful dishes from her personal recipe files,” the photo’s caption proclaimed.

That one gave Annajane a laugh. She’d eaten countless meals at her former mother-in-law’s house, and never once had Sallie served anything as pedestrian as baked beans. Sallie Bayless would have slit her own throat before following a recipe that called for combining canned baked beans, bacon, Vienna sausages, pineapple tidbits, and, yes, a twelve-ounce bottle of Quixie.

Still, the box was a miniature treasure trove of the company’s marketing history. She shuddered now to think how close she’d come to trashing all of it.

Annajane slid the ruined box off the hand truck and lifted the lid on the bottom box. So this was why her load had been so heavy! Inside she found a dozen old glass Quixie soda bottles, each of them different. Of course she’d glimpsed some of the same bottles in the glass display case in the company foyer, but they’d been there so long, she’d really never taken the time to examine them.

Most of the old bottles were either clear or the same pale green tint that was used in the current Quixie bottle. But the shape and silhouette and labels varied. One in particular drew her attention. She lifted it out and held it up to the sunlight.

The bottle was short and squat, an eight-ounce size, and its base bore concentric rings. On the label, the winking face of Dixie leaned out from the Q in the company name.

“Adorable,” Annajane breathed, turning the bottle this way and that. At the same time she was admiring it, she realized that she was thirsty, parched, dying, actually, for an icy-cold glass of delicious, even nutritious Quixie cherry cola. Talk about a subliminal message.

Suddenly, she heard the loading dock door open behind her and the familiar tap of heels and that overly loud voice.

“Well, hey,” she heard Celia say. “What on earth are you doing, Annajane?”

Reflexively, Annajane shoved the top on the file box.

“Just cleaning out my office,” she said, struggling to her feet.

“I’m so glad you’re doing that!” Celia exclaimed. “I promised Tracey we’d get the office spiffed up before she moves in, but the last time I peeked in there, I realized we’ll have a lot of work to do before the painters can come.” She favored Annajane with one of her twinkly smiles. “I realize you’ve still got another week to work, but that’s really just a technicality. I was hoping you’d get the place emptied out a little early. I know Davis wouldn’t mind if you quit a few days earlier.”