Con Job

by Laura VanArendonk Baugh

  Greg laughed, shook hands, and opened the cardboard box to give them each a promotional postcard. “I can’t say anything now, but there’s going to be a Madhouse announcement next month. Keep your ears open.”

  “You bet!”

  The first two passengers were watching now, aware they were in the presence of a celebrity but unwilling to show ignorance by asking about him. The girls got off, and on the second floor Jacob and Greg exited and started for the autograph area.

  “So, I don’t know what you’ve heard so far,” Jacob began, feeling awkward, “but — there’s no good way to say this — two people have died at the con. Poisoning in something they ate, but not food poisoning, if you follow. So police are investigating and you’ll see them around, but we’re not supposed to be shutting down or panicking or anything. If that makes sense.” The Academy probably had whole classes on how to say this sort of thing, only Jacob hadn’t taken them yet.

  Greg hadn’t heard. “Oh, no! Attendees?”

  “One attendee, and one industry person. You probably didn’t know Valerie Kimberton, with MEGAN!ME?”

  “Yes, but only distantly. MEGAN!ME is actually making a bid to co-produce How to Die with a Japanese company as an anime. It’s in negotiations, but that’s less to do with me personally.” Greg shook his head. “They have any ideas on what happened? Accident in the food court or something?”

  “No one else seems to be getting sick,” Jacob said. “This way, we can get in the back.”

  The autograph table was at the end of a line of stanchions and ropes which folded upon itself in a long zig-zag, already full of waiting fans. They clapped and cheered as Greg appeared from behind the ubiquitous convention center curtains. There were several chairs at the table, as sometimes several guests shared the table at once, but Greg Hammer had it all to himself.

  He waved in a friendly manner, opened the box to sort promotional postcards and bookmarks across the table, and dropped a handful of markers in different colors and metallics on the table, ready to take on any surface he was asked to sign. Then he settled himself into the chair and beckoned the first attendee toward him. “Come on over! What do you have there?”

  Jacob put himself at the end of the table, not quite between the head of the line and Greg Hammer, but he didn’t expect to be anything more than an obligatory figure. Con Job’s attendees were generally well-behaved and polite. Most geek cons were like that, actually. Grabbing at clothes and ripping off souvenirs was for rock concerts, not conventions.

  Fans had brought mostly issues of graphic novels or compilation volumes to be signed, though some had t-shirts or figurines. One had brought a DVD with a poorly-colored cover, which made Greg howl with laughter. “Oh, where did you ever find this? Did you actually buy it? Are you the one?”

  Jacob shifted to look at the table. He hadn’t known about a DVD.

  Greg held up the disc package and spoke to the fans around him. “This is a 1997 straight-to-video monstrosity of Road Trip, and there’s a very good reason you’ve never heard of it. I thought it would destroy my career — only I was lucky enough that it failed so hard no one ever heard of it.” He signed the cover with a flourish and handed it back to the grinning fan. “Keep it secret, keep it safe. And for Cthulu’s sake, keep it out of reach of small children or the easily influenced.”

  Jacob drew out his phone and texted Sam. I’m at the autograph table, don’t see you. You coming?

  I’m about two-thirds of the way back, behind Naruto and River Song. Who are together, in fact. No, silly, I didn’t forget you!

  Jacob sent her a smiley face.

  About forty-five minutes before the scheduled end of Greg Hammer’s autograph session, Jacob went to the rear of the line and closed off the opening in the stanchions so no one else could join. They should wrap up on time.

  Sam was indeed in line behind a Naruto (Shippuden version) and a Dr. River Song. She gave him a smile and wave as he passed.

  When she reached the front of the line, drawing Jacob’s copy of How to Die in Five Easy Steps from her messenger bag, Jacob stepped forward. “And, this one is actually mine,” he said with a smile. “I’d be really honored if you signed it.”

  “Wow, a first edition.” Greg turned it over. “And great condition. Can I sign the title page? The cover’s still too gorgeous, I hate to screw it up with my messy scrawl.”

  He checked Jacob’s badge — “With a c or a k?” — and then wrote out a short message and signed the page. Then he handed it back to Sam. “I’ll let you hang on to that for him. Hey, is that a Savage Air costume?”

  “Right on,” she said. “Barnstorming Betty, the Junior Ace!”

  “Highly under-appreciated series,” he said. “Love it.”

  Sam and Jacob thanked him, and then Jacob stepped to the side with her as the next fan approached. “I’ll leave this in the room,” she said. “I have to hurry, ‘cuz there’s a gathering for Savage Air I just heard about, and I want to join. Laser is shooting it, so it’ll be awesome.”

  “Let me know how it goes.”

  It was early afternoon when Jacob returned Greg to his room to pack, and he went back to Con Ops. As promised, there was a new schedule on the wall, showing staffers’ names and interview times. Some already had check marks beside them. “Anyone seen the reporters?”

  “They’re out in the wild,” Paul answered, tapping at the computer. “But I think Vince was being a little paranoid about that. We have media all the time, and aside from the occasional SOB, most of them write up human interest angles or even artsy stuff about the films and costumes. I wouldn’t worry about it.”

  Jacob nodded. Paul was probably right.

  “Do you think we’ll get a lot of kickback if we push the Magic: The Gathering tournament back an hour? Gamers like late nights, right?”

  Rita leaned over the pass-through. “Where’s Vince?”

  “I dunno. What’s up?”

  “Hotel staff is stripping the con suite. All the food, gone. They’re taking everything.”

  Chapter Eleven

  Paul radioed for Vince, who arrived at the con suite, surveyed the carnage of empty serving tables, and disappeared again in the direction of the hotel’s hospitality offices. He wasn’t gone long.

  “Our liaison was looking for me,” he said. “But they weren’t going to wait until they talked to us.”

  “What’s going on?” Rita asked.

  “One of the hotel kitchen staff found a zipper bag of white powder stashed on the bottom of a catering cart. Management called police, thinking it was maybe drugs. Initial word is it’s probably not cocaine, but it could be something bad — and since we’ve had two poisoning victims in less than twenty-four hours, they’re pulling everything.”

  “Everything?”

  “Staff suite, the hotel restaurants, the cash sandwich buffet, all of it. The food court is still open, because each of those franchises has its own kitchen, but they’re being told to check over everything and there’s a chance they’ll be closed, too.”

  Paul gaped. “But we have thousands of people here. And a lot of these are kids without transportation or people who took shuttles in; they can’t drive out to get food.”

  “The food court is still open for the time being. And there are the food trucks outside, though they were just to pick up overflow and were never intended to handle the whole con. Still, it’s something, until we hear more.”

  “We can ask the hotel to waive in-and-out parking fees,” Rita said, “so those with cars can get off-site. They should be reasonable about that, since it’s their kitchen where the stuff was found.”

  “That’s still going to leave a lot of people stuck if the food court goes down.”

  Vince nodded. “I’m working on it. Meanwhile, let’s keep on keeping on. Jacob, what’s your next move?”

  Jacob glanced at the shift schedule on the wall. “Um, I’m going on lunch.” He smiled grimly.

  “Right.” Vince grimaced.
“You’d better hurry.”

  Jacob had to weave through an entire tribe of Water Benders to reach the Star Trek photo gathering at the far end of the conservatory. Below the glassy wall, a mob of red shirts held various frozen poses of clutching throats, pressing hands to imaginary chest wounds, or folding onto the ground in awkward positions as onlookers laughed and dozens of cameras and phone cameras snapped.

  Jacob looked around until he found Jessica, dressed as an Enterprise-era Vulcan. “Hey, are you busy?”

  She gestured to the red shirts. “Middle of a photo gathering, but I can talk until Vulcans are called. What’s up?”

  “You knew about arsenic having a garlic smell.”

  She nodded. “I read a lot of old cozy mysteries, even though some of them have a really skewed and outdated view on classism—”

  “Yeah, but what I need to know is, how does one get arsenic poisoning?”

  “In old cozy days? It was everywhere, used as a pesticide. Anybody could buy it. Nowadays it’s harder to come by. Because, you know, it’s toxic.”

  The red shirts released their poses and moved to join the onlookers. Someone called directions, and several Captain Kirks, Mr. Spocks, two Uhuras, three Mr. Sulus, and a Dr. McCoy assembled and stood at attention.

  “Hang on,” Jessica said, “lemme grab a shot of this.” She aligned the crew in her phone’s screen and snapped a couple of pics.

  The conservatory featured lots of smaller gathering areas beneath one angled roof, incompletely separated by planters and couches in the ubiquitous sour colors of convention center furniture. The greenery did not adequately screen the next group photoshoot, featuring dozens of colorfully anthropomorphic ponies and interpretations.

  “No idea on how someone would get it?” Jacob pressed. “Arsenic?”

  “I presume you can get it somewhere, of course. Chemical supply companies, chemistry labs, really old warehouses full of illegal pesticides? Other than that, no, I’ve got nothing.”

  A photographer, squatting and looking into his bulky camera, shook his head. “We’ve got to change angles; it’s like the Enterprise command is getting stalked by My Little Ponies. Everyone shift to your right.”

  The cosplayers obediently shifted to one side, laughing as they glanced back at the faux ponies.

  Jacob shook his head. “Okay, thanks anyway.”

  He left Jessica with the Star Trek crowd and started for the food court. It was more than a little unnerving to enter the ring of fast food options — and was it his imagination, or did the court seem less over-crowded than usual? — but his stomach was growling and he had long hours yet ahead of him; he’d never make it without eating.

  He looked around the food court and thought of Dead-Laura’s fallen, twisted body and garlicky odor.

  Vince had mentioned food trucks, and those were wholly separate from the hotel. And they wouldn’t have been on site yet when Valerie ingested a fatal dose of arsenic this morning, so she couldn’t have gotten it from any of them.

  He consulted the mobile app and found the specified side street outside the convention space. He turned and headed for the doors.

  A row of parked food trucks stretched outside the hotel, hawking everything from barbecue sandwiches to cupcakes to vegan stuffed potatoes. Jacob got in line at a pasta truck, perusing the blackboard menu. Someone had been having some fun tailoring the truck’s offerings for the weekend crowd: The Full-Melty Alchemist. The Trouble with Dribbles Minestrone. Second Breakfast Egg Sandwich. Witch Hunter Ramen. Arroz Khan Pollo. To Serve Manicotti. Spaghetti and Spaceballs. Dalek-table Chocolate Brownie.

  Behind him, a young man in full elven armor got in line. Jacob turned and gave him a nod. “Nice! First movie?”

  “Helm’s Deep, actually.”

  “Looks good.”

  “Looks stupid,” said a man behind him. “What are you supposed to be, some sort of dress-up warrior? Why are you in a skirt?” He frowned. “Are these things feathers or leaves or what?” He plucked at the armor on the elf’s shoulders.

  “Please don’t,” said the elven archer, politely but shortly, as he stepped toward Jacob.

  “What? I wasn’t doing nothing.” But he sneered as he shifted his weight forward.

  There wasn’t much room for Jacob to advance in the line, and he edged sideways to give the elf room to move. The man was facing them both, waiting in line but somehow more intent, and beside him stood a grinning friend. Both were wearing NFL jerseys, and both were a head taller than Jacob.

  “So what is this freak show, anyway?” asked the one who hadn’t spoken yet. “I thought if we came in the day before the game we’d beat the crowds.”

  “It’s a convention,” Jacob said. “For fans.”

  “Fans?” echoed the man with a sneer. “Fans tailgate. Fans cheer and support the team. Fans don’t play dress-up.”

  “That’s funny, coming from you,” said a slender woman with a dark pixie cut from behind him. She had a yoga figure beneath her jeans and fitted green t-shirt, and her casual posture emphasized every curve. “Or are you both really pro football players?”

  They turned to the new woman in line. “Are you with this con thing?”

  “Hm? Oh, no. No badge, see? I’m here for lunch, same as you.”

  “Yeah.” His eyes ran over her, resting on the emerald curves. “You need someone to walk you around, maybe keep the freaks back?” He jerked his head to indicate the lines of costumed attendees on either side of them. “Sometimes people can get a little — well, anyone who dresses like that. Kind of runs up a flag, you know.”

  “Oh, I do,” she said. “But it’s pretty easy to pick out the scary ones, if you keep your eyes open.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Oh, yeah, you just look at what they dress as. For example—” she pointed at the elf — “that’s one of Haldir’s archers. He came to defend a bunch of trapped innocents and fight to certain death, just because it was the right thing to do for a former ally.” She pointed further ahead in line, where others were starting to notice the conversation. “That guy in the plaid shirt and vest, next to the redhead? He waited two thousand years for her to wake up and remember him, protecting her all that time.” She turned to the next line, where Tony Stark was paying for a Ham Solo sandwich. “That guy carried a nuke through a rift, thinking it was a one-way trip, to save his friends. In the cine-verse, anyway.”

  “What?”

  “See the group over there? The tall one, he gave up his elite medical career and cushy privileged lifestyle to rescue his abused sister and hide her on the ragged frontier of space.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  She turned back to face them. “And you’re dressed like a man charged with real-life murder. And you, you’re wearing the number of a man convicted of felony assault against a police officer.” She crossed her arms. “So yeah, some people can really send a message.”

  The men squinted at her. “What are you saying?”

  “Me? I’m not saying anything in particular, just pointing out who people are dressing up like.”

  “Why can’t I wear this? I’m a fan!”

  “Hey, I think people can wear just about anything they want. And this guy chose to dress as a selfless hero.” She met the elf’s eyes and smiled.

  “Bitch,” said one of the men.

  Her eyes didn’t flicker. “I was right, wasn’t I? Helm’s Deep?”

  The elf hadn’t expected her to speak to him. “Uh, yeah. Yeah, you were right.”

  “I thought the color was right.”

  “Are you a costumer?”

  “No, but I do have some figures. I’m sort of an uncommitted collector.”

  “Forget this,” snapped one of the jersey men. “This line’s too long anyway.”

  “Bitch,” repeated the other one, following.

  The woman rolled her eyes and glanced at Jacob. “Sorry, didn’t mean to jump in. I’m sure you guys had it all sorted until he started eyeballing me
.”

  “Don’t pretend you didn’t enjoy pulling both fandom and football on him, just a little bit,” Jacob said. “And by the way, hi, Aunt Lydia.”

  She grinned. “Maybe just a little. What’s for lunch?”

  Chapter Twelve

  Jacob ordered an Expecto Pastrami, and Lydia got the Howl’s Moving Casserole. The elven warrior insisted on buying her a Game of Scones dessert as well before leaving them. “You didn’t have to come,” Jacob said as they started toward the hotel doors.

  “I know.”

  Jacob hesitated and then said, “But I appreciate the thought.”

  “I really don’t mean to step on your toes. It’s not that I didn’t think you could handle it. It’s just, sometimes it’s easier if you don’t have to be distracted and think through all the legal stuff on your own.”

  Jacob threw her a sideways look. “And you wanted to look for that FFVII figure.”

  “The fully-poseable Cloud Strife with the intricately-detailed scale Hardy Daytona motorbike? Possibly.” She took a bite of her pasta.

  Lydia was only fifteen years older than Jacob, but she was his aunt and legal guardian. She was also at least two points cooler than any attorney had the right to be, even according to his friends, but most of them didn’t know how grateful Jacob was to her. If not for Lydia’s willingness to take on the family tooth and nail, Jacob would be living a very different life. Instead, he had a normal school career and a good chance at his detective dream, not to mention a moderately healthy trust fund for emergencies.

  If Lydia worried at all over him, it was only because of how fiercely they had fought to make this life, and she wouldn’t let it slip away from him. He could hardly fault her for that — and she usually stayed out of the way even while she kept her eye on things.