Bell, Book, and Scandal jj-14

by Jill Churchill

  Bell, Book, and Scandal

  ( Jane Jeffry - 14 )

  Jill Churchill

  You can't judge a book by its cover. To look at her, one would never think suburbanite homemaker Jane Jeffry would be interested in murder and mayhem. But after all the corpses she's come across — and killers she's unmasked — she's practically an expert on the subject. Which is why, with best buddy Shelley Nowack in tow, Jane's booking down to a nearby mystery writers' convention to mingle with the brightest lights of literary crime. . and maybe drum up some interest in her own recently completed manuscript. However, what would a mystery convention be without a mystery? It seems fairly certain that at least one real-life murderer is stalking the proceedings. But who is he/she/them? The dirt-dishing, pseudonymous Internet gossip monger "Ms. Mystery," who's lurking around there somewhere? The local bookseller who dearly loves "Modern Golden Age" women writers? The avid reader who seems to know a bit too much about the personal lives of the famous attendees? Jane and Shelley are on the case, ready to snoop, eavesdrop, and gossip their way to a solution. But the killer they seek is no open book. . and may turn out to be harder — and deadlier — to read than they initially imagined.

  Jill Churchill

  Bell, Book, and Scandal

  One

  On a surprisingly mild day late in February, Jane sat out on her kitchen porch waiting for her next-door neighbor and best friend Shelley Nowack to come home. When Shelley's minivan turned into the Nowacks' driveway at about fifty miles per hour and screamed to a violent halt, Jane strolled over.

  "Look what I got in today's mail," Jane said, shoving a brochure through the window of the minivan.

  "Help me unload the groceries first. I have a car that's full of stuff that needs to go in the freezer," Shelley said, handing the brochure back without looking at it.

  When the food was stashed away, they sat down at Shelley's kitchen table with the brochure. "A mystery conference right here in town. Cool. Are you going?"

  "I want to," Jane said. "The book I'm writing isn't exactly a mystery, but I think all good novels are mysteries. At least, they need the elements of

  secrets that need to be unraveled, even if there isn't a crime. Will she give the guy a second chance to straighten up his act or won't she? Is there a chance he'll be named in his rich grandfather's will? Will the child recover?"

  "I never thought about it that way. You're right," Shelley agreed. "And the conference is at that fabulous hotel near that new mall we've never been to."

  "I wasn't planning to stay at the hotel," Jane said. "What's the point when it's so close to home?"

  "There are two points, Jane. For one thing, you learn more from people if you're staying at the hotel at conferences. Other attendees usually have drinks at the bar at night, and that's when they reveal a lot more inside poop to friends and eavesdroppers.

  "The other point," Shelley went on, "is that Paul has invested in this hotel and, as such, always has a suite on hold for his use. We could stay in it for free."

  Jane had often wondered just how rich the Nowacks were, but hadn't asked and never would ask Shelley. Paul's investment must have been a substantial one, however, to rate a full-time suite. But the Nowacks lived almost as modestly as Jane did. Their house was the same size as Jane's. Their children went to the same public schools as Jane's did. Their wallpaper and carpets were only slightly more expensivethan Jane's, in spite of the Nowacks' obviously being far more affluent. Shelley's husband owned an enormous chain of Greek fast-food restaurants.

  "We? Would you really be interested in going with me?"

  "Of course I would. I like knowing the inside poop about nearly any business. I don't think I'd go to an accountants' conference, but this one would be interesting." Looking over the brochure, she added, "I see by the schedule that there are usually two or even three tracks of speeches. You could go to one and I'd go to another and take notes for you. And late April is such a good time for a perk."

  "I'll sign us both up," Jane said. "This will be really fun, I hope. Some of my favorite mystery writers are on the list of attendees. I'd love to meet them or least see and hear them in person."

  "Let me jot the date down and tell Paul we need the suite that weekend if it's not already booked."

  Three days later, Detective Mel VanDyne, Jane's longtime lover, dropped in after dinner and said, "I have a day off tomorrow. I've got more laundry than most armies accumulate in a week, the floors are dirty, and I'm buried in paperwork, most of which needs to be thrown away. Any way you could help me out?"

  "Sure. Have you had dinner? There's leftover pot roast, gravy, and peas."

  "Yes, please," he said pathetically. "All I had in the fridge was disgusting cottage cheese."

  When he'd finished the leftovers, Jane said, "I have something interesting to tell you…."

  "Could it wait until tomorrow? I have to go home and get a start so you won't know how sloppy my apartment really is."

  "It'll hold," Jane said.

  When she arrived the next morning, the cottage cheese was gone. Most of the paperwork was gone and Mel had started the first load of laundry.

  Jane took charge. "Get me the vacuum and the attachments."

  "Attachments?"

  "All those little gadgets that came with it. You start cleaning from the top down. There are cobwebs on the ceiling. There's a tube that sucks them up, and the same tube gets the dust off the blinds. Then you do the carpet. I'll start in the front bedroom. You finish throwing trash away and put your first load of washing in the dryer."

  It took three hours before almost everything was clean. When Mel started making the bed, Jane realized he didn't even know the right way to tuck the top sheet in tightly at the bottom. "Mel, stop. Don't you know how to do a nurse's corner? Watch this and do the other corner like I do this one."

  He was surprised. "My mother failed to teach me that. In fact, I don't know if she knew this. She always had a maid to do things like this."

  Jane sat down on the bed when they were finished. "Don't you want to hear my good news?"

  "I'd rather we made good use of this bed first."

  Jane smiled, slipping off her shoes while saying "Me, too."

  Later, while Mel went for carryout Chinese for their lunch, Jane took a look in the fridge and decided he'd have to deal with it himself. But she'd tell him all about the writers' conference over the egg drop soup.

  As time went on, Jane and Shelley received updates on activities and speakers. Jane became more excited every time she perused one of the bulletins.

  "You sound as if you know who these people are," Shelley said when Jane rhapsodized about one of the additional speakers — a woman named Taylor Kensington, who wrote superb romantic suspense.

  "Not to say 'know' for real. I admit I've been subscribing to a publishing magazine ever since I started this novel. I've kept track of names and reputations."

  "How so?"

  "There are columns about big sales of manuscripts every week or two. The magazine sometimes knows, and tells, the amount of advance paid. They always name the publisher, the author, and the agent who sold the work. Lots are nonfiction, of course."

  "Advance? You mean they give a writer money before the book even comes out in the bookstores?"

  "Of course. Sometimes they give advances without anything but a concept that hasn't even been written yet."

  "You're kidding! I've got a lot to learn about this, I guess."

  "The terms of the contracts are often interesting, too. I wouldn't let you see one, however. Nor would I show it to an ordinary attorney for fear he or she would have a stroke."

  "Why is that?"

  "It's something they'd
know nothing about and think was indentured servitude, I understand. That's why writers need agents who are used to the weirdness of publishing contracts. I hope there will be some seminars on contracts."

  "You will show me the contract!" Shelley exclaimed.

  "Not until I understand the rules well enough to explain them. Oh, Shelley, I may not ever see one at all, you know."

  The conference was to start on Thursday, and the Monday before, Jane set out for the grocery store early with a long list of things her two remaining children living at home could eat while she was gone. Shelley was just coming home from some errands.

  "You're not letting your mother-in-law take care of them this time?" Shelley asked.

  BELL, BOOK, AND SCANDAL 7

  "Thelma's got a conflict. She's going to her younger sister's house in Saratoga because the sister's husband is having very serious surgery and wants someone from the family with her in the waiting room. Besides, Katie and Todd are, I hate to admit, fairly responsible and should be able to take care of themselves."

  "Right. But you're going to be calling them to check every five minutes, aren't you?"

  Jane grabbed her purse and pulled out a cell phone. "I finally caved to technology," she said. "Isn't it darling? So very tiny."

  "You didn't invite me to help you shop for it," Shelley complained. "I could have advised you."

  "It was on sale for twenty-two dollars at the department store, and I'd seen another just like it for a hundred. How could I go wrong?"

  "Twenty-two dollars!" Shelley almost screamed.

  It was the same kind of cell phone Shelley had, and her reaction led Jane to suspect that Shelley had paid the full hundred for hers.

  "I've made the kids memorize my number. They're to call me or leave a message every time they step foot out of the house."

  "So much for you trusting them," Shelley said. "Did you buy them their own phones at this sale?"

  "I regret to say I did. I figured they'd be a whole lot happier about the rules if they had their own phones. But I made sure that they can't call long distance on them, and when their free min-

  utes run out, the phone doesn't work anymore until the next billing month starts."

  "Good Lord! I didn't know you could do that! I've been afraid to let my kids have one for fear they'd run up huge bills. You remember when Denise stupidly called that psychic hot line and I got a bill for a hundred and seventy-five dollars?"

  "Of course I remember. You tore through the phone company like Sherman through Atlanta to remove the charge. Anyway, I'll see how well the kids respond to the plan. And I'll hunt down any suspicious numbers when I receive the bills."

  When Jane got into her ancient, disreputable old brown station wagon to go to the grocery store, it wouldn't start. She called Triple A and they sent a guy out right away.

  "I'm sorry to say, Mrs. Jeffry, that this is beyond fixing unless you want to put thousands of dollars into it to get it running again. Where do you want it towed?"

  Jane was crushed to have lost her old familiar wheels. On the other hand, it was a relief. She'd driven the big wallowing station wagon for too many years already. It embarrassed her to be seen in it. It had once been brown but had faded to a motley tan. The carpets were stained with Kool-Aid. There'd been a crack creeping across the windshield for the last several months. She'd known for a long time that she ought to rid herself of it while it still got her around.

  "I certainly don't want to put money into the poor thing. And I have no idea where to tow it

  to," she said.

  "May I make a suggestion?"

  "Suggest away, please!"

  "There are lots of charities that will take a car off your hands and you receive a tax break for the donation at the blue-book rate."

  "It's certainly not worth the blue-book rate. And it doesn't even run. How would I deliver it to them even if they were foolish enough to want it?"

  "They'd have it towed at their own expense," he said with a big grin.

  "What charities?" she asked.

  "I'm not sure. I'd guess the Salvation Army. But it's a guess. I had a customer who donated a dead clunker that was worse than this one to the Kidney Foundation. Got a computer? Look on the Internet for places that take them."

  Two

  Jane gave up on shopping and cruised the Internet. At noon, she heard a truck fall into the hole at the end of her driveway. She apologized to the driver of the tow truck.

  "Never mind. I should have seen it and straddled it," he said. "Is this the car we're taking away?" He said this as if it were among the worst he'd hauled off for a long time.

  "Poor old car," Jane said. "It's gotten me through becoming a widow, driving the car pools for a hundred years, hauling birdseed, groceries, and assorted misbehaving children. I'm afraid of what its fate will be. It's served me well."

  The tow truck driver looked at her as if she were slightly mad.

  Shelley, having heard the noise, came to her kitchen door in her jeans with an apron over a T-shirt. She looked out for a second, then disappeared.

  By the time the station wagon was gone, Shelley had reappeared looking as if she'd just come

  from a beauty shop and stopped off at a very expensive dress shop.

  "Why are you dressed so well?" Jane asked. "Because this is what I wore last night to one of Paul's dinners for his employees. It was the clos-

  est thing at hand. Where's your car going? What's wrong with it now?"

  "Nearly everything's wrong with it. I'm donating it to a charity"

  "What? Somebody wants that car?"

  Jane felt herself very nearly tearing up. "I think

  they're probably having it gutted and crushed. So they can sell the metal as scrap."

  "Jane, it's a vehicle. Not a person."

  "I know that, Shelley. I'm also having a new

  driveway put in and acquiring a new friend." "A new friend?"

  'A Jeep. You're too dressed up to go with me. Change your clothes to 'business casual' as they're calling it in the ads on television. We have an appointment to buy the car this afternoon at

  two-thirty. Would you drive me? I have no wheels of my own."

  "A Jeep? Good idea. One of those really big ones, right?"

  "No. It's a new, smaller one called a Liberty." "How did you find out about it?" Shelley asked

  as Jane trailed along while Shelley headed for her own kitchen door.

  "I looked it up on the Internet. Called Mike after he got out of his nine o'clock class at college andasked him a few questions about what I needed for choices. Boys in their twenties always know this stuff and love showing off about how much they know. Then I called several dealerships to find out if they had what I wanted. Fortunately, the closest one to our neighborhood did."

  "Start us a pot of coffee while I change, please,"

  Shelley said.

  The coffee was poured and Jane had found some stale vanilla wafers to snack on.

  "What color are you choosing?" Shelley asked when she came back in black silk trousers, low-heeled gray patent heels, and a white linen blouse with a gorgeous scarf draped to perfection.

  "Red. But only if I like it when I see it. Maybe taupe. They have both options with what I want on the lot."

  "What did Mike say?"

  "After he screamed 'Whoopee!' you mean?" Jane replied. "He told me to pick a certain kind of brakes. I've got it all marked out on the sheet I printed out. Heated leather seats. A sunroof. Fancy tires. A CD player and tape player both. The best that they've got at the dealership."

  "Jane, you amaze me!"

  "Why?"

  "Because you've always been so stingy with yourself. First that big television set in your bedroom, now an expensive new car. I can hardly believe it. Good for you."

  "For one thing, it isn't as expensive as you're

  imagining. Not even close to the cost of a Humvee, which I almost considered until I found out the price. I would look so good driving a Hu
mvee.

  "Secondly," Jane went on, "it would have cost several thousand to fix up the old station wagon, and it wouldn't add anything to its trade-in value. I donated because I can take the book value off my taxes, and that's a lot more than it would be worth if I turned it in. And I'd be deeply embarrassed to let a car dealer even see it."

  "How did you learn all about this?"

  "I have my sources," Jane said smugly. "You're turning into me, you know."

  "That's a good thing," Jane said. "But I'll never spend what you do on your wardrobe, I can promise that," she added with a smile. She glanced at her watch. "It's only twelve-fifteen. My appointment to buy the car isn't until two-thirty. I have to go to the bank first to buy a certified check. What else can we do to kill time?"

  "We can go look at your list and check the site on the Internet for color choices. Wouldn't you rather have a nice bright green or maybe a white one? Or even that cobalt blue color you like?"

  "White would glare in the sun and always look dirtier than it really is. They don't have a bright green. Only a dark green."

  "Go for the red then. Taupe is only good for clothing. But you'll have to see it in person to de-cide. I sort of liked that shiny blue one. But colors on the Internet aren't all that reliable."

  "As long as I wouldn't have to wait for it, I might buy the blue," Jane said. "I don't want to waste a month or six weeks to special order and drive a rental. Let's go have lunch before we go to the bank. Those soggy wafers aren't enough to fortify me for such a big decision."

  Later, fortified by a sandwich and caffeine, Jane had her check in her purse, and when they arrived at the car dealership a full twenty-five minutes early, Jane began dragging Shelley around the entire lot looking for her choices. She was reading the sales slip on the window of a metallic blue car when Shelley said, "I see your car, I think. Come this way."