CHAPTER ONE
STACKED IN YOUR FAVOR, LLC
KATE MCKENZIE, CEO (Chief Executive Organizer)
MEG BERMAN, VIP (Very Indispensable Partner)
BUSINESS PLANNER FOR MAJOR JOB # 3
DATE Monday, July 15th
9:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. – Meet with Liz Tillman, business calendar author, on her Vermont animal rescue farm located near the New Hampshire border. Hired by her publisher to facilitate photoshoot for upcoming calendar release. From what publisher’s assistant said, author may not be as organized as her calendars imply. Will reserve judgment until more info is known. Besides calendar, Tillman runs a full-time rescue and is married with children, so need to show small business & family organization too. At present, no more specifics known.
* * *
Kate McKenzie pulled her van onto the rutted driveway and the view changed from rural country road to picturesque farm with white railed fences and a weathered red and gray barn. A quintet of horses, each a different shade of brown, grazed quietly in the pasture that ran along the left side, the majestic animals taking turns raising their heads to watch the van pick its way among the dips and ruts in the graveled road. As they neared the white frame house snugged under a couple of hundred-year-old oaks, a long-eared red hound and a chocolate Labrador retriever loped into sight. They neared the turnaround in front of the broad single story house and each dog let out several deep woofs to announce the van’s arrival.
“Isn’t this a pretty setting?” Kate asked her friend and co-worker, Meg Berman.
“Almost worth the long drive out here,” Meg replied. “We’re nearly in New Hampshire.”
Kate owned Stacked in Your Favor, an organization business she’d started in their Hazelton, Vermont hometown. Meg, her next door neighbor, had become her go-to person to help with any extra work. When Kate was hired to organize the home office of recent New York Times bestselling calendar author, Liz Tillman, to ready everything for a photo shoot, Meg jumped at the chance to ride along. So, Kate knew her line about the drive was not really a complaint.
“Besides, someone needs to watch your back,” her neighbor added. “And keep you out of trouble.”
There it was. An unspoken reference to the partners-in-crime nickname her family and Meg’s had recently given to the women. It was all teasing, she knew, but Stacked in Your Favor was barely a name on letterhead before people were more often talking about the murder investigations the two had become involved in than about the new business.
“Getting everything done for the photo shoot will keep us too busy to stumble onto anything else,” Kate replied.
Tillman’s publisher set everything up, though the women’s schedules had been difficult to bring together. This was the first date everyone could successfully meet at the author’s place, a fifty-acre farm north and east of Kate’s Hazelton, Vermont home. The photo shoot was only a week away and the organizer was feeling the pressure.
“Do we need to worry about the dogs?” Kate asked. Her family had only recently acquired a pet, a large loveable cat who was rather lazy most of the time. While she was getting used to the lively pair of dogs at Meg’s house, Kate wasn’t particularly adept yet at knowing which canine breeds were more aggressive than others.
Meg shook her head and her red curls danced. “Nah, the hound doesn’t look threatening, and Labs are mostly known for their ability to lick a person to death.”
“I’ll trust you on this,” Kate turned off the engine and pushed her sunglasses up to hold her blonde bob away from her face.
The women climbed from the van and the dogs took turns sniffing their shoes and pant legs. At the same time, a tall woman rounded the back corner of the squat farmhouse and strode toward them, her short dark hair half-hidden by a hat. As she walked she finished rolling one denim sleeve to her right elbow, then brushed both hands on the sides of her jeans. “Hi, I’m Liz. I hope you’re Kate and Meg.”
Kate stepped forward and extended a hand, “I’m Kate. It’s nice to finally meet you in person.”
Liz took a second to look at her right palm. “They’re mostly clean. Sorry. I’m babying a sick colt in the barn. The place is filled with straw and dust.”
“If you need to go back—”
“No, all done for now.” Liz shook Kate’s hand, then Meg’s. She directed them toward the back door. “Hope you don’t mind the back entrance. I have coffee inside, tea, water. My middle son made cookies last night, too.” She smiled and led the way. “He’s quite the baker. Here, this way. We’ll go through the mudroom.”
The sun hit them full on when they turned to the back of the house, and lovely dark pink roses climbed the wall beside a dark green Dutch door. Before Liz opened the door, she stopped with her hand on the knob, holding it rather than turning. “Guess I’d better start apologizing now. My house is a ‘lived in’ home. I have three boys and a husband, a lot of rescue animals, and I’m not the type to get up each morning and think ‘what can I clean first?’ I don’t know what my publisher told you, but I’m not a little-Susie-homemaker type.”
“Your publisher just told us we needed to get your office set up so it would photograph well for your next calendar. That they want to put a shot on next year’s cover and spaced throughout the pages,” Kate explained. She smiled. “Don’t worry, we’re not here to judge you. Only to help.”
“I hope part of that help includes actually finding me an office. Due to the needs of running this animal refuge, I kind of work all over the place,” Liz said, waving everyone inside. A gray tabby took that as an invitation as well, and streaked in ahead of the women, disappearing down the hallway like a flash of fur.
“That’s Chester,” Liz said. “He’s headed for one of my sons’ rooms, probably to grab a snack. Every time I need dishes I tell my boys to go clean their rooms. Only the two youngest still live at home, but you would not believe the food bills.”
A long bench faced them as they entered, hooks above holding all kinds of ropes, tools and gadgets apparently used around the place. Strewn beneath were several sizes of athletic shoes, boots, hats, and…a bowling pin. Liz grabbed the pin. “My youngest is the worst packrat in our family, but he gets it naturally. You don’t want to go into my middle son’s room. Trust me.”
Glancing through to the living room, Kate saw an overstuffed reading chair and couch upholstered in coordinating blue patterns. The coffee table supported a month’s worth of books and animal magazines, and the pictures on the walls were a mix of framed family and animal photos. On the front window ledge, an orange cat and a black kitten slept in the sun.
They followed into a bright farmhouse kitchen, lots of white, big sinks, long counter tops. A bill paying workstation was set up under one cabinet and a large planner on the wall offered a half-dozen different colors. Kate realized Liz used individual colors for family members, exactly like she did for her husband, Keith and twin eight-year-old daughters, Samantha and Suzanne.
“Your boys are green, blue and purple,” Kate remarked. “I can tell by the activities.”
Liz nodded. “Correct. I’m red, my husband is black, and our animal intern is brown. Not that she keeps to the schedule though. Having the colors saves space and time since I don’t have to add the names each time.”
“What do your guys think about the photo shoot?” Kate asked.
“That they needed to get out of Dodge.” Liz laughed. “No, actually this week and the next were already planned as a group wilderness adventure trip for my husband and two youngest sons. They set out this morning at dawn to meet up with the rest of the mini-survivalists. My oldest son is away at college in Massachusetts, so he lives an hour or so away. That’s why purple isn’t as prevalent on the calendar as the other colors.”
“Kate has bins for her family to use in their colors, too,” Meg said. “The practice has helped me get my boys to put their stuff away, as long as I gather everything up from all the rooms and put it into the right bins first.”
“I’m not a natural organizer.” Liz waved her hand around a kitchen that was clean and a little cluttered. “My personal design style is ‘comfortable.’ But I keep so many balls in the air at one time I absolutely have to keep my schedule on-track.”
“And that led you to create your bestselling calendars?” Kate asked.
The author walked over to one of the cabinets and pulled open the door, removing a lidded box marked EXPENSES and the current year. Liz set the box on the counter top and slid back the lid. “Money is the reason for my calendars. The farm here had been surviving on small grants and donations. Well, more like struggling and barely surviving. I designed my calendar to handle the scheduling for an active family, a small family business, and reminders to make sure a woman cares for her own self-interests. Hoped it would make a little money to add to reserves. Needless to say, I was surprised by the outcome.”
The outcome, Kate knew from her research was bestseller status for the author and a growing sales base of loyal fans. However, the better outcome, the one she was sure the author was more proud of, was enough money after the first two calendars to allow Liz to create a foundation to help other rescue groups with small emergency grants to tide them over when needed.
“I like what you just said about a woman taking care of her own self-interests,” Meg said, smiling as she leaned against the beige Formica counter and crossed her arms. “We all get so wrapped up in our to-do lists, we tend to give everyone extra credit over ourselves.”
A half-grin crept onto Liz’s face, and Kate realized her client wasn’t yet a total convert herself. Always a work in progress. She knew the feeling. There was always something else that needed to be done before she could take a break.
Liz didn’t respond to what Meg said, but changed the subject, saying, “Coffee is probably burnt by now.” She opened a stainless steel refrigerator door practically covered in a white board and notes held by magnetic clips. “But I have fairly fresh lemonade and iced tea. Oh, and bottled water. The lemonade would go good with the cookies I mentioned a minute ago.”
“Anything is fine with me,” Kate said.
“I’ll take lemonade.” Meg turned to the cabinet near the sink. “Are the glasses up here?”
“Yes, right,” Liz said, withdrawing the lemonade pitcher and a plate of cookies, while Meg pulled down three tumblers. Kate passed around napkins from a holder made from three black-painted horseshoes welded together.
A moment later, cookies were the only things on anyone’s mind.
“Oh, I haven’t had ranger cookies in years,” Meg said. “I’d forgotten how much I loved good ones.”
Liz nodded. “You’re right there. A good ranger cookie is a real treat, but a meh one isn’t even worth looking cross-ways at.”
“This is definitely a good one.” Kate brushed crumbs from the corners of her mouth. “I think I have a new favorite cookie. Does your son take orders?”
“Maybe he’ll make us a couple of big batches of dough that we can keep in our freezer,” Meg suggested. She turned to Liz, “My partner here has converted me to the practice of freezing cookie dough in the freezer, making small balls and freezing them on a cookie flat. Then I can just pull out what I want to bake each time without doing a full batch.”
“Don’t the dough balls stick together?” Liz asked.
“That’s why they’re frozen on a flat sheet first,” Kate explained. “Place the individual balls onto an aluminum or plastic cookie sheet or platter, cover them well with several layers of plastic, then let them freeze. Once the balls are frozen, you can dump everything into freezer bags and they won’t all stick together into one big cookie lump.”
“Good to know,” Liz said.
“Best of all, it keeps people like me from having huge batches of cookies sitting around to tempt my willpower.” Meg grabbed another cookie and gave it the evil eye. “Since I have absolutely no willpower when it comes to cookies.”
In the next second the sudden roar of speed coming from the front driveway, followed with a squeal of brakes and a loud skid of displaced gravel, sent them hurrying to the front window. Both dogs barked in a steady loud bass, and the cats fled to hiding places under the couch. Before Kate could ask what was happening, Liz raced out the backdoor and could be seen through the windows circling the house.
“Come on,” Meg said.
Kate nodded and followed as her neighbor traced the author’s path. When they reached the front of the house, it looked like Liz was trying to calm a shorter, red-faced brunette woman. Dust was still settling in the driveway after the wild way the beat up pickup had stormed into the yard.
Liz tried unsuccessfully to shush the dogs, then said to the woman, “Bren, please, st—”
“Don’t think you can get away with this,” Bren said, using her left index finger to poke Liz’s sternum bone. “Your publisher may have a few things to say when I call and tell what they don’t already know.”
Kate and Meg looked at each other and nodded. As they walked closer, Meg used her pinkie fingers to create a high-pitched whistle that she usually used to break up a fight between her boys. It worked with crazily over-charged women too. It even made the dogs stop their howling. Bren halted her rant in mid-poke, and Kate walked over and pulled Liz away so she could stand between them.
“Huh, didn’t know you had your own army now to protect you, but I should have guessed,” Bren said and crossed her arms.
“We’re not—” Kate began.
“Don’t bother trying to explain,” Liz put a hand on her shoulder. “Bren has her own idea of reality, and nothing you can say will change it.”
Bren shoved Kate aside to get back into Liz’s personal space. “How dare you act so high and mighty!”
“That’s enough.” Meg stepped forward and got between Bren and the other two women. “I don’t know what your beef is, lady, but you don’t go around shoving people and poking them. That’s called assault. And unless Liz asks you to stay, you’d better head out immediately, or I’m calling the cops.”
“You wouldn’t dare.”
“Try me.” Meg pulled her phone from her back jeans pocket. “Liz, it’s up to you. Does she stay or does she go?”
“I don’t tolerate bullies of any kind,” Liz said to Bren. She pointed toward the road. “Go.”
Bren hustled closer again. “I’m not—”
“Calling 9-1-1,” Meg said, raising the phone to dial. Bren tried to slap it from her hand, but Meg held on tighter, and said, “Lovely, now you’re three-for-three for assault. And this last one came even after you’d been warned.”
“I didn’t assault you.”
“Try convincing the judge of that. Maybe I need to start taking video, too.”
Bren let out a guttural noise. “Forget it…just… I’m leaving! Satisfied?” She moved around Meg, keeping a wide space between them, and climbed back into the beat-up, faded red and putty-colored pickup she’d arrived in. The truck tires spewed gravel as the truck bed fishtailed wildly enough it almost clipped one section of the white board fence. The Lab kept watch on the truck, to make sure it didn’t return, but the dog didn’t follow.
Liz apologized. “I’ve tried to reason with her, but she just shows up and screams like a harpy. I don’t know what to do anymore.”
“Is she dangerous?” Kate asked, watching as the truck finally straightened up and shot down the driveway.
“Bren is—” Liz started, then shook her head and said, “Bren thinks she should be getting half of what I make on the calendars, and she simply can’t understand she’s not entitled to it.”
“Why would she think otherwise?” Meg asked, reaching down to scratch the ears on the now quiet hound. Kate smiled, thinking the animal and her neighbor had almost the same hair color.
Liz sighed and picked up a fist-sized red rubber ball, tossing it toward the side of the house for the Lab to chase. Then she rubbed the back of her neck and said, “She used to work here at the rescue. Well, she was here. Her idea of work followed a routine of doing what she wanted. But Bren loved the animals and they loved her, so we kept her on. Mostly, she stood around with a cat in her hand, or rubbing one of the dog’s heads, or patting one of the horses, and while she did all that she watched me work. She saw me update all the schedules and juggle all the bills and cut coupons and write grants. She told me several times I needed to turn the marketing over to her. How marketing was her strength. I asked her, ‘What do you mean marketing?’ And she always laughed and called me shortsighted. One day, she remarked I should try to sell a calendar that helps people who do all the things I do. I told her it would never sell because no one is crazy enough to do all the things I do.”
“When did you decide to write the calendar anyway?” Meg asked.
The author looked at her watch and said, “Can we walk while we talk? I have someone coming by with a family of goats to leave with me, and I need to double check the pen I’m putting them into. Make a final lookover to be sure they won’t get out.”
“Sure, we’ll follow and help if we can,” Kate said, but inside she worried that Liz was putting off her explanation. Her contract in no way promoted the woman’s calendar business, however, if there was some ethical problem she might need to distance herself from the connection.
But she needn’t have worried, as they walked toward the barn on the west side of the house, Liz continued talking, “I didn’t actually decide to do a calendar. At least, I didn’t pursue the publication on my own. I was Skyping one day with an author who volunteers to write grants for organizations helping in animal issues, and she’d been given my name. Since she’s halfway across the country, we did a virtual meeting with our computers. One of the local high school boys had to get me all set up, but it was one of the best things that ever happened to our animal refuge.”
“Computers truly have changed the way we communicate,” Meg said.
Liz stopped the processional when they came to a weathered, wooden gate with crossed ties. She unhooked a wire used to keep the latch closed. With a hand signal she told the dogs to stay back and invited Kate and Meg to come through. “The dogs are better out of our way. They don’t bother anything inside, but they tend to bump into things.”
Kate watched the Lab’s tail wagging rate go from ecstatic to something around exuberant, and finally flagging sadly as the gate’s latch snapped shut.
“As you can see,” Liz said, holding up the wire she fed through a couple of holes in the latch to keep it closed. “We operate using every shoestring method available. Being able to talk long distance for free—and show the author some of my receipts and the reports I try to keep up with each month—made a big difference.”
“The grant writer must have seen your personal planner, too. Right?” Kate said, picking her way into the lot. She had become used to the one-eyed scruffy rescue cat her family adopted, but she felt her anxiety increasing as she noticed more animals. She put her hands behind her back and snapped the green rubber band on her left wrist, telling herself to focus on the client. “Um, how many animals are in there?” She pointed at the barn.
Liz waved a hand. “Just a couple inside that we’re nursing at the moment. Don’t worry. All the big animals are in the pasture. We’ve been lucky about finding forever homes and fosters lately for most of the smaller animals, so we’re not running near capacity. A couple of weeks ago we were up another six cats and eight puppies. Hoping to get something set up for the incoming goats, too, but we’ll keep them as long as needed.”
Kate picked her way through the lot, while the other two women walked unperturbed toward the narrow walking-door set into the side of the barn. A second later, they were all inside, and Liz led the way down a dark hall to corrals, introducing them to the different animals as they went along. Beyond the young buckskin colored horse recuperating in one stall, a small black and white calf laid on straw in the next one. A pen held a sleeping pig that had been rescued after being kept in the basement of a house in town its entire life. The animal needed a program of vitamins and medication before it could go into an outside pen. Across the hallway and down from the pig was a family of dogs that had been starved almost to death and were still weak. Liz quickly checked that each animal was comfortable and had fresh water. The dogs roused a little, then settled back down to nap some more. Kate felt her heart squeeze.
At the end of the hallway and near the front of the barn, Liz pushed open a small door and light spilled in from several windows. “This is a tack room I’ve kind of sublet as one of my offices,” she said, waving a hand to encompass bits, bridles, and lead ropes hanging on wall hooks. A couple of saddles sat in one corner and first aid supplies were neatly placed on shelves running along one wall. The shelves also held an assortment of brushes, towels, blankets, and soaps. Another corner held a half-dozen empty plastic buckets stacked inside each other, with a remaining white bucket turned upside down and placed near a drop-down table at the single window. “I like having the natural light.”
“Quite a few emergency items there.” Kate pointed to the first aid supplies.
“Too many of our animals come in already in a hurt or fragile state,” Liz said. “We have to be prepared to take care of them from day one. A local vet comes out to help us when we need and only charges for items at cost, but for the things we can handle ourselves it’s best we keep ready access to necessities.”
She turned and pointed to the overturned bucket. “That’s my desk chair about forty percent of the time. I bring the laptop when I’m tending sick ones, and I can get a lot of work done since this spot is near enough to the house to catch the wi-fi signal. I do have a phone out here, so that can be a distraction, but I can get a lot done just the same.”
A windup alarm clock sat on the window sill, its scratched black paint showing age and the longtime use of the item. Kate nodded toward it. “I haven’t seen a clock like that in years.”
“That’s because we don’t get rid of anything until it can’t be fixed anymore.” Liz walked over and lifted the clock, placing it face down in one hand so she could turn the key in the back. “I try to keep it wound every day, but it’s really here to keep me on schedule when I’m giving out medicine. You wouldn’t believe the racket this thing can make. Perfect for when I’m deep into a computer file and lose track of time.”
“You could use an alarm app on your laptop,” Meg suggested.
“But I’m used to Tin Lizzy here,” Liz said, pulling out the pin before returning the clock to the sill. She gave the bell a pat. “I’m as much a creature of habit as my animals are. That’s one of the reasons I balked at first when the grant writer suggested I do some kind of publishable scheduling calendar.”
“So, it was the grant writer’s suggestion instead of Bren’s?” Kate asked. She walked over to the stack of buckets and pulled out two, then separated them and placed one near the other, so she and Meg had places to sit. She pulled a notepad from her pocket.
Liz moved toward the door. “Oh, gosh, I’m sorry. Should have found some chairs, I—”
Kate and Meg spoke at the same time.
“This is fine.”
“Buckets are okay.”
“Sit, sit.” Kate pointed with the pad. “This will give us a base to work from. We don’t need more yet.”
As everyone sat down, Liz continued, “Well, thank goodness the grant writer saw my living room instead of this room, or she would have likely thought we were worse off than we are.” She laughed. “I did the Skyping in there so I not only had wireless, but also easy access to the receipts and schedule archives I keep in the kitchen. I knew I’d need to check back on paperwork when she asked her questions for the grant information.”
“But Bren decided it was all due to her mentioning it,” Meg crossed her arms. “People can be amazingly clueless.”
“To be fair, Bren Mitchell has had a pretty difficult life. But she’s also, unfortunately, always expecting people to disappoint her. And I suppose she thinks I did as well. But me doing the first project was really due to the grant writer, who’d met my publisher months before at a conference for nonfiction authors. That grant writer was like a miracle worker for our rescue. She not only wrote an award-winning grant, but followed up on the calendar side and did all the prep work to get the project considered by the publisher, and she helped me get started planning my time to meet publishing schedules and complete the first calendar once my proposal was accepted. Her thinking was we could always try for more grants, but if I could use my own experiences to not only generate a yearly project that brought a spotlight on all rescue groups, but also offered ideas and small business insights to anyone needing something for their own careers and families, I could have a steady revenue stream to help free me from constantly looking for new money. Long way to say all of that, I know, but she was exactly right.”
Liz’s expression lightened as she continued, “We’re not millionaires or anything, and we still operate as frugally as we can, but we’re not just scraping by anymore. And we’re able to help other rescues who contact us for emergency funds with the ‘Shot in the Arm’ foundation grant program we’ve managed to set up.”
“You’re totally self-sufficient now?” Kate asked.
“Hardly,” Liz laughed. “But we’re getting there. We have some dedicated funders who’ve been instrumental in keeping us going all these years, and they continue sending yearly donations. And for big problems, I can still go to them with my hand out. But we try to stay away from pursuing grants that other rescues need for their funding.”
Kate looked around the Spartan room and the aged board walls. “I got the impression from your publisher they wanted you to look like the public’s idea of a bestselling author, but given what you’ve just said, an idea like that may not be the best thing for you and your rescue.”
“Yeah, my editor has been trying to modify opinions circulating around the publishing house office, trying to help get my point across,” Liz said, frowning. “But the marketing people have really been pushing.”
