Bell, Book, and Scandal (18 page)

Twenty-six

In the rush to
have the
pictures done of Miss Mystery, Jane and Shelley didn't fail to enjoy their late-night dessert. They both ordered hot fudge sundaes and regretted this choice all night long. They each got up twice during the night to take antacids.

"The real cure for this is bland food," Shelley said. "We're supposed to meet Felicity for breakfast. We can enjoy watching what she eats while we stick with very slightly buttered toast."

When they reached the lobby shortly after eight in the morning, the whole place was awash in black-and-white copies of Miss Mystery's picture. The woman claiming to be Lucille Weirather was frantically rushing around the lobby and meeting rooms, trying to find and destroy them. But new ones kept reappearing as if by magic.

Felicity had asked them to meet her at the door of the restaurant and they joined her, laughing like loons.

"How did you do that?" Jane asked.

"I gave out the color copies to several writing friends who had access to copiers. They distributed them everywhere at about six this morning. The one we put on the registration bulletin board has disappeared, as we expected. We've done the entire world of mystery writers an enormous favor. She won't ever again get away with this eavesdropping at conferences. Her cover's been blown."

"We've annoyed the planners," Shelley said with a hint of regret. "But it pays them back for posting a notice telling us which subjects we weren't supposed to talk about."

"They'll recover from it," Felicity said. "Often somebody commits an outrage at these conferences. I once went to one where a woman was carrying around a live chicken. Vernetta's offense was a worse one than ours."

"I'm still wondering about who originally wrote the parts from the woman's viewpoint in Vernetta's book," Jane said. "Writers who are concerned should download the e-pubbed version before it's taken off the Internet."

"Most of us who might have been her victims already did so the minute the story got out," Felicity assured them. "Orla put it on a computer disk and made copies for those of our friends who aren't here. At least it's not something of mine. I couldn't have been that boring, even when I was much younger.""I envy you your circle of friends," Jane said.

"You have me. And Felicity. We're all you need," Shelley said, patting Jane's arm.

"Shelley's right," Felicity said. "One really good friend who understands is worth ten who don't."

Shifting mental gears back to writing, Felicity went on, "What I really find most unbelievable about this is that Sophie ever bought it. It's really a horrible book. Putting aside all the typos and misspellings, it has virtually nothing to recommend it. The characters are cardboard, always whining to themselves about why they're obsessing about this person in their dreams and doing nothing about it. It's far too long and tedious. There's no sense of time or place. No good phrases that make you think 'I wish I'd written that.' "

"Maybe she never read it?" Jane speculated. She'd learned through the publishing magazine she'd subscribed to that there were lowly first readers who cleared out the worst of the manuscripts that arrived by the hundreds every week at publishing houses.

"I doubt it," Felicity said. "Sophie's really choosy about who she thinks should be paid that kind of money."

"What if someone else, say someone higher up than her, had loved it? One of those Harvard Business School people who've never read good fiction and thought it was 'Literature' with a capital L?" Jane asked.

Felicity thought this over for a moment. "I still doubt it. It is possible, though. Publishing has changed a lot in the last few years with all these conglomerates who made their money selling toilet tissue or safe-deposit boxes. Corporate executives who think publishers are ripe plums to be picked at random to raise their profile as intellectuals. People who are nearly illiterate are making important and catastrophic decisions. It's certainly food for thought."

"If that is what happened, isn't Sophie powerful enough to go after whoever did it to her with hammer and tongs?"

"Probably not, if Felicity's right," Shelley said. "Sophie's exalted position might be in danger as well."

"That's a happy thought," Felicity said with a grin. "She'd never be able to derail any new writer's budding career again."

"There are plenty of new young people coming up to do that, judging by my own experience here at the conference," Jane said. "Two of them totally rejected me without even reading my material. Not that I'm even at the budding stage yet. More like a feeble little seed."

"You can't ever let yourself think that way again," Felicity said fiercely. "Now let's order a nice big breakfast before the waiter throws us out."

Jane and Shelley were still feeling a bit rocky from their chocolate overload the night before and or-

dered unbuttered toast and glasses of watered-down orange juice.

"You two make me look like a pig," Felicity said, tucking into a spicy Spanish omelette to which she'd added hot sauce and lots of pepper.

In spite of her strong resolution to forget all about Vernetta, Sophie, and Zac, a tiny bell at the back of Jane's mind kept tinkling, as if saying "Remember, remember."

Somebody had said something revealing in the meeting in Sophie's suite. Her subconscious was sure of it, whether Jane cared or not. She wished she could muffle the thought and enjoy the last day of the conference.

Just as they were finishing breakfast, a friend of Felicity's dropped by their table with a huge wad of copies of Miss Mystery's picture. "Do any of you need more of these?"

Felicity introduced her to Jane and Shelley, but didn't give their names. "No, thanks, Sudie. There are hundreds of them floating around already, and she can't possibly find all of them."

Sudie said, "Then I'll just follow her and replace what she's picked up."

When she was gone, Felicity said, "She's not even a writer. She's a fan and means well. She always goes overboard though. I really need to finish my packing so I can have everything waiting at the concierge desk when the final activity is over. May I just leave my bill and tip and let you pay the waiter and give me a copy

of the bill later on? I'm a fanatic about keeping receipts."

"Of course it's okay," Jane said. "I'll protect it with my life."

When Felicity had gone, Jane asked, "What shall we do until this noon thing?"

"Shopping?" Shelley asked faintly, knowing Jane would object.

"Nope. I'm shopped out. I might make one last trip to the book room if the booksellers haven't already started packing up."

"It's still shopping, isn't it? I'll come along."

Each of them managed to snatch up one last book from a bookseller to take upstairs. Shelley picked one out of a box that had been filled but not yet sealed. As they passed the front desk on the way to the elevator, Sophie was chewing out someone at the front desk about her bill. Corwin was standing with his back to her, pretending he wasn't with her.

Sophie said, "I have the receipt in my purse. Corwin, I left it in the room. Go find it."

Jane glanced at Corwin and was astonished at the look on his face. It was purest example of sheer hatred she'd ever seen.

How interesting,
Jane thought, frowning, as Shelley pulled her along to the elevator.

The elevators
were mobbed
with
conference
participants who were going down to the lobby to check out. There were also families checking out, dealing with tired, overwrought children, luggage, shopping bags, and backpacks, all of which had to be removed before anyone could enter the elevator to go up.

Shelley and Jane found themselves nearly cheek by jowl with Corwin and the rest of the people who had waited impatiently. All three of the conference attendees made a successful effort not to acknowledge each other.

Jane and Shelley were silent all the way to the suite. When Shelley closed the door behind her, she laughed and said, "If looks really could kill, that look Corwin gave Sophie would have vaporized her into a small pile of ash."

"I didn't realize that you saw that, too. He really despises her," Jane said. "And no wonder. Treating a grown man like that. Not even a 'please.' "

'A 'please' would have made it marginally less offensive," Shelley agreed.

"You don't think…" Jane began.

Shelley stopped her. "No, we're not thinking about Corwin. We've done all we could or should have done. We've stepped out of this and slammed the door behind us."

"But wouldn't you like to know if Corwin or someone other than Vernetta poisoned the chocolates that made Sophie so sick?"

"If someone else found out and told me, yes. That would be mildly interesting."

"And why she or he attacked Zac?"

"That doesn't seem to matter to Zac. Why should it matter to us? What possible reason would Corwin have for doing that?"

Jane knew from that remark that Shelley hadn't entirely shut the door of her own mind to the events.

"Look, Shelley, we assumed that Corwin probably didn't like this job with Sophie, just because nobody possibly could. I suppose our impression was that he was probably well enough paid to tolerate her while looking for a better job and more congenial boss."

"I never gave Corwin much thought. I guess you're right though. So what?"

"Now that we've seen how he really feels, doesn't that alter your view even a little bit? He could have poisoned Sophie, actually trying to kill her so the dreadful Vernetta would be the obvious suspect. That way he could be free to seek another job in publishing without Sophie sabotaging him. As she would. She has no idea of how much contempt he has for her. We do. And she's mean enough to say anything to ruin his chances if he dared to escape from her."

"I'll accept that reasoning. Marginally. But where does Zac come into it?"

"Maybe he doesn't. These might be entirely unrelated events," Jane claimed, knowing as she spoke she wasn't on firm ground.

"Jane, you know that's absurd. It was all about Zac's book and Vernetta's plagiarizing. Vernetta is responsible for that. Now she's on her way back to her trailer house or wherever they live, and it's someone else's problem to bring her to justice."

"You're right about the book being at the center of it. But there must be some connection we're just not seeing clearly."

Shelley dropped wearily onto a sofa. "We don't have to! All we have to do is go to this last ceremony or game or whatever the closing event is, and then go home and return to our own lives."

Jane sat down across from her. "So you don't care if we ever know the truth?"

"I do care. I just don't want us to be the ones who waste our time and effort hunting it down. Unless the part of your brain that produced Frederic Remington comes up with something new. We put two and two together, you working on

Zac and me working at the computer, and found out that Vernetta had plagiarized Zac, and let the proper people know about it. We've done a good job there."

She went on, "With Felicity's help, we've put that awful Miss Mystery in her place. We don't have to unravel something else that we don't truly need to care about."

Jane was hard-pressed to argue any of these points. Shelley was right. They hadn't truly needed to do any of these things. They'd come here to have a good time and learn interesting information that would be valuable to Jane.

Eventually someone else would have pointed out that the book was plagiarized. Felicity had already half believed she knew who Miss Mystery was and would have described the woman and warned her friends if Shelley hadn't taken that picture of her.

What's more, Jane had annoyed Mel by making him find the page Zac had been holding. Just when their romance was going so well. She didn't dare alienate Shelley as well.

Jane sighed, smiled, and said, "You're absolutely right. Let's forget it and survive the rest of the conference and put it out of our minds. I'm feeling better and a bit hungry. May I raid some of those snacks in the cabinet in the mini-kitchen?"

Shelley hauled herself off the couch and said, "You've come to your senses. Let's see what goodies are in there."

They found lots of good things in the cabinet. Fancy little bags of chips, many tiny bottles of excellent booze, pretzels the shape of stars, itsybitsy peanut butter sandwiches. They stayed away from the many chocolates stashed in there, but Jane suggested they each have a bottle of brandy with their snack.

"We don't want to be tiddly for the final event, Jane."

"The bottles hold hardly more than a tablespoon. We can't become drunk on them."

Shelley agreed but said, "We could if we drank all of them." And they sat down at the big table with their snacks, sharing little packets. Both women knew they'd been dangerously close to making each other seriously angry for the first time in their long, satisfying friendship, and put all thoughts of plagiarism, publishing, writing, mingling, and the other participants' problems out of their minds.

Before the conference's final activities,
Jane called
home again for the umpteenth time, this time to ask Katie to keep the washer and dryer free because she had so much clothing to wash when she came home.

"Oh, Mom, can't it wait a while? I'm washing all of Todd's bedding already. He's been eating in his bed and it's full of crumbs. And yes, I've already vacuumed his room, if that's your next question."

Jane was astonished at this display of domesticity, and agreed that her clothing could wait until the next day. "I'll be there before two."