When all their children were accounted for, they set out for lunch.
Jane managed the highway interchange with-
out even getting lost or in the wrong lane and felt very smug. But Shelley wouldn't let her park on the outer fringes of the parking lot this time. "I'm much too hungry to walk half a mile," she told Jane firmly.
The restaurant lived up to its reputation. They ordered one sandwich to share and hit the salad bar, which was every bit as good as they'd heard. You could select between ready-made Caesar salads with croutons and capers instead of anchovies, and butter-lettuce ones with big chunks of blue cheese. Or you could build your own salad on a generous plate with a selection of interesting pastas, flavored rice mixes, veggies cut very fine, eggs, and real crumbled bacon instead of the kind that came out of a bottle. There were a multitude of croutons, nuts of every kind, six salad dressings, and eight kinds of thinly sliced cheeses, including Jane's favorite, Gorgonzola. Cottage cheese, crackers, and other mysterious crunchy things were grouped together.
"I'm sorry we even ordered the sandwich now," Jane said, her plate as full as it could be.
So was Shelley's plate. "I can see that we're going to have to come here often," Shelley said. "You could do this ten times without duplicating what you'd had before."
When they returned to their table, their toasted ham and cheese sandwich was divided neatly between two plates, with parsley artfully adorning the rest of each plate.
"You're not going to eat your parsley in a nice place like this, are you?" Shelley asked.
"I certainly am," Jane replied. "I know it's meant to be decorative, but I love the taste. I'm going to grow a lot of it in my garden this year so I can munch on it anytime I want."
"I've already planted a big pot of basil, the red and green kind," Shelley replied, taking a bite of the sandwich and smiling. "I can bring it in the house or garage if a late freeze threatens."
"What a good idea. I'll buy my parsley and big pot Monday when we're back home. I think I'll try the flat leaf kind, too. I hear it tastes even better. I may purchase enough to chop it up and freeze it in little ice cubes so it lasts through the winter."
They fell to trying to finish their sandwiches and salads, and neither could polish off everything they'd chosen so generously. It was nice to talk about ordinary day-to-day household matters instead of books and plagiarism and advances and viewpoints.
"I'm so glad we came here," Jane said, pushing her plates away and stifling a burp. "Do we really have to go back to the conference? Couldn't we just pack up and hit a garden place?"
"There's always time for garden shopping. But we've paid for this and I'm forcing you to stay to the bitter end. I understand there's a final party that ought to be fun tomorrow morning and a breakfast buffet that ought to be good. Then the out-of-towners can catch a lunch flight home."
"This conference is at least one day too long," Jane said again, as the waiter took away their plates and left the bill. "Shelley, let me pay this bill since it was my idea."
Shelley didn't object for once. "I'm so glad we parked so close. I'm not sure I can even waddle that far."
When they returned to the hotel, the lobby was full of frantically talking conference participants. Shelley spotted Felicity trying to edge away from someone who had her cornered, and they went to the rescue. "Oh, there you are," Shelley said to her. "I was afraid we were late for our appointment with you."
"Just on time," Felicity said, glancing at her watch. "I'm sorry," she said to her captor, "I have to leave now."
Walking quickly and followed by Jane and Shelley, she headed for the elevators. They had one all to themselves. "Come up to the suite and take those high heels off," Shelley said.
"Thanks," Felicity said when they were safely alone.
Shelley started pouring them drinks, this time wine. "What's going on down there in the lobby?" she asked as she handed out the glasses.
"All hell has broken loose, a wildfire of gossip is spreading about Vernetta. They're saying she plagiarized at least half her book from an old one of Zac's."
"It's true," Jane said.
"Vernetta's been stomping around accosting anyone she can find, vehemently denying it."
"What's the costume this time?" Jane asked.
"None. Bulging old jeans and a sweatshirt with the name of a singer who does songs for little kids on the front of the shirt. Is it really true about her?"
"Yes," Shelley said. "But I wonder how it circulated."
"Shelley was the one who discovered it," Jane said.
"How?"
"With a copy of that page that was in Zac's hand when he was found," Shelley said. "I found Vernetta's book on the Internet and did a search for a distinctive phrase from the page."
"So you two started this wildfire?"
"We tried not to," Jane said. "We only told one person who'd helped us. And she promised she wouldn't say anything about it to anyone else. I don't believe she did."
"I'd like to know who did. I'll bet it was that woman I think is Miss Mystery. It's exactly the kind of thing she'd love to pass around."
"But where would she have found the information?" Shelley asked.
"Probably eavesdropping on you," Felicity said. "Where were you when you told the one person?"
Shelley and Jane looked at each other in horror. Jane said, "In the food court in the tunnel."
"Was that woman I pointed out to you there?"
"We didn't even notice who else was there," Shelley said. "I'm afraid we may have stupidly started this. We certainly didn't mean to. Oh, we considered shooting off our mouths about it, but decided it wasn't a nice thing to do. We'd have seemed to be the worst gossips in the world if we did."
Felicity took another sip of her drink and said, "You're really not to blame. It would have come out somehow. Who else knew this?"
Jane ticked off the names. "Vernetta and Gaylord, Sophie Smith, Zac, and Corwin. They were all determined to keep it quiet for stupid reasons of their own. All of them were only thinking about the money and their reputations instead of concentrating on the perp of Sophie's sudden, unexplained illness and the attack on Zac."
"Of course they were," Felicity said. "All but Vernetta and Gaylord are pros in the business. That's their priority, however blind that kind of thinking is. What was Vernetta's reaction when she was told she'd been caught out?"
"Complete denial. She claimed it was from a book she knew to be out of print so she was entitled to use it," Shelley replied.
"That's crazy," Felicity said.
"We know. But she didn't. Still, it proves she's not entirely blockheaded. She apparently believed being out of print for a long time made copying it okay," Shelley explained. "It wasn't entirely convincing."
"But when Sophie accused Vernetta of poisoning the chocolates she had given her and attacking Zac, the denial sounded slightly more sincere," Jane explained.
"Sophie hit her with all that? All at once? Good for the old broad. I guess you two heard it all? Were you convinced she really wasn't responsible for anything but the plagiarism?"
"At first I was," Jane said. "But Shelley steered me out of being that dopey."
"How did this confrontation come to take place?" Felicity asked. "Spill the beans."
Shelley and Jane walked her through the whole thing, and Felicity was delighted to hear the details.
"May I share some of this with my close writing pals? Without using your names, of course. The basic premise of the plagiarizing won't be a secret in the business for long. I give it until Monday to be all anyone talks about in publishing circles. But I'd like to share the news that friends of mine ferreted it out all by themselves."
Twenty-three
After Felicity departed, Jane and Shelley halfheartedly started to pack for the trip home the next day. Shelley had two pillowcases. One for the clothes that needed dry cleaning, one for the clothes that could be laundered at home. Jane stuffed all her dirty laundry into one pil
lowcase. They loaded up their book bags, saving only two books each so they could choose between which one to read at bedtime. This would be the last night at the hotel and they wanted to be ready to make their departure as early and easily as possible.
When they descended to the lobby, it was as frantic with gossip as it had been the day when Sophie collapsed right in front of everyone. And the rumors were just as wild and varied.
"What does the sign say in the conference registration place?" Shelley asked.
"I'll wait to find out until I unload this disgusting pillowcase and the books in my car," Jane said. "I suggest you do so, too. We look as if we're sneaking out on our bill, piece by piece."
"We are. Except that there won't be a bill except for room service and our tip for the maid."
They managed to escape without much notice and returned with only their schedules in their book bags, and their purses.
As they crossed the crowded lobby to see what the sign said, they heard all sorts of weird snips of conversations.
"No, it wasn't Vernetta who plagiarized Zac. It was the other way around," a woman with pieces of her cheap red wig shedding on her shoulders claimed.
"Vernetta is so enthusiastic about being published, I'm certain she wouldn't have taken that risk," a terminally nice older man said.
"It isn't Vernetta, it's someone else and I've forgotten the name," a woman barely out of her teens said, then blushed.
"What does plagiarism mean?" a male voice piped up.
"The same as copyright infringement," an unseen woman replied.
"What's that?" the same male voice asked.
A tall woman wearing a short-skirted black suit said to a small group, "I'm a lawyer and what Vernetta has done is illegal. She'll be in big trouble when this gets around."
Jane whispered to Shelley, as they forged their way through the crowd, "She's nearly the only one who has it right."
Shelley, walking a few paces ahead of Jane,stopped in her tracks, causing Jane to run into her, and said, "We're not talking to anyone about this."
"No, we certainly aren't. We're acting as if we've never heard it," Jane agreed. "We don't want to blow our cover. Someone else can take the blame for this discovery."
By the time they reached the conference check-in area, the big bulletin board that usually had scraps of papers asking where so-and-so was meeting her, and where was the nearest hairdressing salon, was bare except for a large notice saying, "The rumors about plagiarism are rampant. We hope the participants of this conference can put it aside and not discuss it until all the relevant facts are known. It will make the end of this conference more pleasant for everyone."
Underneath this notice, someone had scrawled in green ink, "And keep you from being sued for slander."
"Another good reason to keep quiet," Jane said under her breath to Shelley.
"What's going on next?" Jane went on to say, fishing out her conference booklet from her book bag. "Let's see. Only two seminars. One is random questions that attendees have forgotten to ask so far. That might be interesting."
"Not very," Shelley said. "If they haven't thought of it yet, it's probably not worth discussing."
"There's another quiz sort of thing," Jane said. "I think I'll go to that one."
"I don't like quizzes. I'm going shopping," Shelley said.
Shelley was a first-class shopper. Jane wasn't. Jane only did so when she had a long enough list of things she really needed to make the trip worthwhile.
"Oh, the next session has something even you would like, Shelley. It's described as 'Let your hair down and fess up about the worst book reviews you've ever read.' "
"Now, that might be fun. And possibly good fodder for letters of complaint," Shelley said with a grin. "I'll meet you in the lobby for that one."
Jane was slightly disappointed by the quiz program. It was too much like one of those she'd seen on television where the moderator makes nasty remarks about contestants who give the wrong answers. Jane felt this trend promoted very bad manners as entertainment and wouldn't even let Katie or Todd watch them. And many of the questions really didn't have anything to do with mystery books.
She stuck it out as long as she could, then wandered back to the lobby. It had pretty much cleared out when the sessions began. She went up to the suite briefly to retrieve one of the two books she'd kept there and went back to the lobby to dip into it while she waited for Shelley to turn up for the next session.
A woman came and took the chair next to her. Jane was already caught up in her book and didn't even look up to see who it was. People with good manners didn't interrupt people who were reading.
But this woman did. Good manners weren't her forte.
"Excuse me, but I don't think we've met. I'm Lucille Weirather."
"I'm glad to meet you," Jane said with barely concealed horror, and pretended to go back to reading. It was the woman Felicity and Shelley had pointed out as the probable Miss Mystery. Jane oozed slightly to the right and turned her name tag over so the woman couldn't read it.
"What is your name?" the woman persisted.
"Why do you want to know?" Jane said, knowing she was sounding like Shelley did when she was approached by a stranger she'd taken a dislike to. Over the years, she'd learned a lot about self-protection from Shelley.
"I overheard you and your friend speaking to Ms. Jones in the food court, and you never called each other by name. I wondered if you could tell me more about the plagiarism."
Jane turned and pointed out the sign at the registration desk. "Have you read that? And I'm afraid you've mistaken me for someone else. I know nothing about it and don't even want to. I don't even know what you mean about a 'food court.' "
The woman stood up and said with a wicked grin, "Sorry to have bothered you, dearie."
Not as sorry as I am, Jane wanted to shout after her.
Jane tried to go back into the book and calm down, but the woman had spoiled it for her. She closed the book and glanced at her watch. Shelley ought to be turning up pretty soon if she meant to attend the next session.
A moment later Shelley appeared, walking noisily on her heels and flopped down angrily in the chair across from her. "I'm so angry. That awful woman that Felicity and I think is Miss Mystery cornered me as I was stopping at the drinking fountain."
"She caught up to you, too?"
"What do you mean? Has she been harassing you as well? What did she ask you?"
"She wanted to know my name and all about the plagiarism thing."
"You didn't tell her either, did you?"
"Of course not. I turned over my tag and told her she'd mistaken me for someone else, and I didn't even know what she meant by food court much less plagiarism and didn't want to know."
"Good for you!" Shelley exclaimed. "Almost word for word what I told her. Except I wasn't wearing my tag in the shopping area."
"She obviously wanted to name the two of us as her source." Jane paused, then exclaimed, "Oh,no! We have to find LaLane and tell her what the woman is doing."
Shelley leaped up as if her chair had exploded. "You're right! Do you know where she is or her room number?"
Jane remembered the room number and they called her from the nearest house phone.
"LaLane," Jane said when she answered, "this is Jane Jeffry." She went on to explain what had happened and begged LaLane not to give Miss Mystery their names. "She claimed her name was Lucille Weirather. That's probably not her real name either. So just don't tell our names to anyone who asks you, if you don't mind."
"My lips are sealed. And I assure you I wasn't the one who let the information out."
"We never doubted that," Jane said.
"We never doubted what?" Shelley asked when Jane hung up.
"That she'd spilled the beans."
"I suspected her briefly," Shelley admitted. "But you convinced me it wasn't her."
Twenty-four
"Who else knows us by name?" Shelley asked.
; Jane smiled. "I've introduced myself to several dozen people after taking your advice to mingle. None of them remembered my name. Only Felicity. And she wouldn't tell Miss Mystery."
"No, but she might slip up and tell someone else sent in by Miss Mystery," Shelley warned.
"I guess we should catch up with Felicity. Wonder where she'd be. Want me to call her room?"
Jane didn't have to.
"Do I hear my name being taken in vain?" Felicity said from behind them and sat down in the third chair.
"Not in vain," Jane said. "The woman you think is Miss Mystery has gone after both of us to find out our names so she can blame us for telling the plagiarism story. I turned my name tag over, Shelley wasn't wearing hers, and we refused. You were right that she was eavesdrop-
ping. We only wanted to remind you not to tell her either."
"I already told her," Felicity said.
"No!" Shelley and Jane both yelped.
Felicity was smiling. "Shelley, I told her that your name is Enid Potts and Jane's name is Olga Strange. You are cousins who live in a home in Alaska so remote that you don't even have electricity and you light your cabin with oil lamps and heat it with wood. There isn't even a road to the cabin. You flew clear to Chicago on your private plane. You keep it in the nearest town, which is fifty miles away and which you drove to in your matching yellow Humvees."
Jane and Shelley were both laughing so hard they were almost falling out of their chairs.
But Shelley finally pulled herself together well enough to say, "I'd rather have been Olga than Enid. It's more glamorous."
"Did she buy that story?" Jane asked.
"She did," Felicity replied. "But she didn't like it. After today she can't possibly find you to try to pump you again. Obviously you don't have Internet access if you don't have electricity"
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