Lost and Found (Growing Pains #1)(69)

“Okay, let’s go over where we are. As you know, the client we have is happy with the art mock-ups, and is going ahead with that. Judy has handled that side of things marvelously.

“As far as we know, their company has been approached with a buy-out, but details are still being worked out. It is looking good, though, so that means the work we do now will set us up effectively. If we do a thorough enough job now, it will greatly minimize the work to come. It will also put us in position for immediate campaign ideas. To that end, I would like to benchmark where we all are now, and provide notes. Then we’ll talk about the next steps. Judy, why don’t you lead us off?”

Judy passed around printed images of art featuring jewelry and sapphires. As they reached Krista, she had the distinct feeling of déjà vu. While these pictures weren’t in her material, she was sure she’d seen them before. It took her a second to realize it had been from Marcus’s desk, which meant either Judy had furnished these to him, or they’d come from the same company catalog of art and marketing information.

As Judy talked about the various pictures and what she was going for, Krista noticed Sean glancing at her. He was obviously wondering where these had come from. He was looking at her because it had been one of the items she had yet to get to!

The claw of fear did another pass. It didn’t help that the air conditioning was too low and her body was on a personal mission to sweat through her blouse.

Judy’s pictures done, Sean said a few words about good work, as always, and moved on to Marcus. Marcus started talking about marketing crap that made about as much sense as fog in summer in California. A bunch of hogwash, Krista was sure.

To illustrate his points, he passed around some art Judy helped him with. It was the same type of thing Judy had passed around already. These two were trying to create new ideas from old crap, and obviously working together so they could share the load.

Krista wondered if perhaps cataloging all the old stuff wasn’t a hindrance more than a help. She also wondered how Sean hoped to land a high-profile account with this type of information to work off of. Krista couldn’t imagine it was near good enough, and it was a shame, because Marcus seemed to have some pretty good ideas. Even Ben thought so, and he didn’t know anything about nothing.

“Great,” Sean said, turning to Krista. He held her eyes for a moment before saying, “You’re up. What have you done with a month?”

Krista nearly threw up. She’d had a whole month and she’d only done the first two numbers. Sean was obviously bracing himself for bad news.

“Relax,” Marcus said from across the table in his caterpillar voice.

Krista jumped, looked at Marcus with panicked eyes, then turned and grabbed the first book off her stack.

“Um. Okay. Well,” Krista cleared her throat and looked at Judy, who was looking back with a reassuring smile. Krista plunged on, “Sean gave me a list of things he was looking for. The list ranged from a general, broad history of the whole genre, to a narrowed scope of just sapphires. I then broke that down further into sapphires within the piece and type of jewelry. Then he wanted that information across the country, also the world, various markets, niches, regions, you name it, he wanted it.”

Krista stood and passed around the first couple books. Each book was well executed, probably half the size of a textbook, and had plentiful graphs and images in it. Once Krista had given them out, she sat back down. This section, which was Sean’s item number one, yielded three books. Judy, thinking that Krista had made a book for each person, presentation-style, looked at Krista to see why she didn’t get one.

“Oh, ahhh, each of those is part of the whole. There was too much information for everyone to get their own. So there are three parts. Ray has the first, Sean the second, and Marcus the third. I would have done one book, or two, but I didn’t really know how to work the machine and couldn’t get it to bind any more than that at a time. Plus, we really only need one set. I have everything saved electronically.”

Sean’s eyes snapped up from the information in front of him. He looked from his book to the others. When his eyes hit Krista’s they were wide with disbelief.

Judy, not caring about quantity, scooted over to Marcus to look over his shoulder. He immediately passed it to her, who scanned a few pages and gave up. They probably didn’t know what the hell any of it meant.

It was Krista’s turn to confuse the art people. Hah! She would remember to throw that in Marcus’ face.

If she didn’t get fired first.

“This is really good work, Krista,” Ray said to no one in particular, bringing her back to Earth. He was herding her focus like a sheep dog. He probably had a teenager. “Where did you get all this info?”

“Well, I looked at historical information first and got some broad stuff there. There was a lot there, but selective, you know? So I took to the library and pulled the rest.” She knew Ray knew what Sean knew, even if Sean said he wouldn’t tell anyone. Krista was not so naïve to think it was an honest secret. She also wanted to get across to Sean the type of information the others had, and how it ranked in the grand scheme of things.

“You have a library card?” Judy said with a chuckle.

“Geek Girl,” Marcus said with a smile, passing his book to Ray.

“Cheap books,” Krista retorted. “As in free. I have a lot of time to read on Muni, especially when I am trapped in a tunnel.”