“They should know, Beau.”
“Nice rhyme,” he says through his chewing. I’m coming to understand that this man doesn’t take much seriously.
“Do you really want to be a full-time cop here?” I ask.
He fiddles with the brown paper around his sandwich. “Yeah. I do. I know that must be hard for you to believe, but I love this island. I’ll be here for the rest of my life. Or, I want to be, at least. Hard to do without a decent salary.”
“Could you work for your parents? Find a different way to pay the bills?”
“I could,” he says. “But I love what I do.”
“So, you want to have your cake and eat it too.”
“Absolutely. What’s the point of having cake if you’re not going to eat it?”
“Fair point,” I grant. I take another bite and spend a few seconds chewing. “You know what you need?”
“I’m scared to ask.”
“A good PR campaign.”
His brows hitch up. “Oh yeah?”
“Yeah. I mean, I don’tactuallyknow much about what you do. Maybe you spend your part-time hours on the job eating donuts and using your radar gun to track the speed of tortoises and squirrels.”
“Target practice with my squirt gun takes the bulk of my time, but go on.” He takes the last bite of his sandwich.
“Most people don’t understand the value of well-managed public relations.”
He grabs a bottle of Coke Zero out of his backpack and unscrews the lid. “Whereas you do?” He tips his head back and pours the soda into his mouth, never letting the bottle touch his lips. It’s more effective than any soda commercial I’ve seen.
“Of course,” I say, forcing my gaze to his eyes as he looks at me again. “It’s my job. I work for a PR firm.”
He hands me the Coke Zero. “I made sure not to get cooties on it.”
“Gee, thanks.” I have little confidence in my ability to pour it into my mouth without spilling all over my mom’s shirt. “If the city council is rejecting your request to make your position full-time, it’s because they don’t understand your value, which is another way of saying…”
“Bad PR.”
I nod. “I had a client earlier this year—super-smart, with a really revolutionary tech product built by a small startup. They couldn’t get any investors to back it because no one could understand its power—it was presented in a complicated way. So, they hired us. We put together a campaign to simplify and demonstrate the potential of the product and get people excited about it. And guess what?”
“It failed miserably.”
I elbow him. “They got twice the funding they were looking for. PR is powerful.”
“Are you offering your services?”
I snort. “You couldn’t afford me—not on a public servant’s salary.”
“Part-time public servant,” he corrects.
“Right. All I’m saying is if youreallywant to stay on SunsetHarbor for the rest of your life—which is completely crazy, for the record—and you also want to be a cop, and this is the only way to have that crazy-cake and eat it too…you need to work on your image. You don’t need to hire a PR firm to do that—never tell my boss I said that, please—but make your case. Present the evidence.”
He searches my face. “You mean a PowerPoint presentation or something?”
“I don’t know, Beau, is this 2001?”
He tries to suppress a smile, turning his gaze away. “Whatever the method of delivery, I don’t want to toot my own horn or…orchestrate photo ops or whatever a good PR campaign would entail.”
