Jill Churchill - Bell, Book, and Scandal

"I was thinking the same thing. I mean thinking what you told them about their safety, which appears to be the truth."

"So you believed me?"

"I always believe you. Except when you criticize my driving," Shelley said.

"I don't criticize your driving."

"Not in words, usually. You just sit petrified, shaking, putting your hands over your eyes, and periodically hitting your imaginary brake pedal."

Shelley's driving was the last thing she wanted to think about.

"I really think Vernetta hadn't the faintest idea what plagiarism meant," Jane said. "She couldn't even pronounce it correctly. All she knew was that she thought Sophie was being all het up about nothing. But it scared her when Sophie threatened to withdraw the money she was expecting."

"I agree," Shelley said. "But she couldn't have not realized it was looking bad for her. She's probably already spent whatever she's been paid on the architect who produced the plans for her teaching mansion."

"And do you also agree that she at least sounded sincere about having nothing to do with what Sophie and Zac suffered?"

"She did sound sincere," Shelley admitted. "But maybe she has a secret gift for sounding sincere when she isn't. We don't really know her, Jane. We just know enough to dislike her enormously. And after all, who else would have had a motive to put Sophie out of the conference by any means at hand, and injure Zac, to keep them from knowing she was a plagiarist?"

"But that doesn't work, Shelley. Even you must admit she didn't know what it meant. Who else could want to injure or kill both Sophie and Zac? Who else had a reason to hate them enough to possibly murder them?"

"Who knows?" Shelley said, still calm. "Jane,

we've both learned a lot this week about the business of publishing. And this must have to do with publishing, right?"

"It must."

"But we don't know about the other hundred and fifty people at this conference. Just the surface descriptions of the main speakers in the brochure. There could be any number of creeps in this group."

"We know Felicity pretty well," Jane said.

"You're right. I believe she's absolutely innocent of everything. She speaks her mind bluntly. Sometimes too bluntly for her own good."

Jane speculated. "Maybe Chester Griffith or this mysterious Miss Mystery have a long and horrible history with both Sophie and Zac. We had no idea that Zac and Sophie had a friendship. And I still don't believe it. Come to think of it, Zac may have stayed behind to negotiate his own financial settlement with Sophie. Or blackmail her into reprinting his old books."

"What a horrible thought," Shelley said. "But Mr. Griffith and Miss Mystery are both involved heavily in the book business and have probably been around both of them many times. Even your LaLane Jones might have had some serious tiff with them."

"I doubt LaLane had anything to do with it. She only came here, I think, to win the contest," Jane said.

"But she's rather strange, still. Keeping allthose notebooks you told me about and even having a special case to carry them around with her."

"That is a bit strange, I'll admit. We both have obsessions nearly as strange as hers, come to think of it. You're obsessed with the IRS and I'm currently obsessed about my new car. But how was LaLane a threat to Sophie or Zac?"

"She was certainly a threat to Sophie with the records she'd kept and her phenomenal memory. In fact, if she hadn't been here, you'd never have guessed that page you had copied was Zac's work."

"But Shelley, she didn't really know," Jane reminded her. "And I was the one who initiated the question to her about whether it might be Zac's work. If she were the perp, she would have told me it was probably someone other than Zac to cover her tracks."

"I'll buy that," Shelley said after thinking over this convoluted reasoning. "But I still think we don't know nearly enough about at least ninety-eight percent of the people who are here. And I can't quite believe Vernetta and Gaylord are as stupid as they behave."

"Zac said that, too," Jane said. "That Vernetta had the common sense to look up his book to see if it was out of print. Not that it matters. But she thought it did. Maybe I was wrong to say anything about plagiarism and then get my knickers in a twist for speaking up."

They were both quiet and thoughtful for a few

minutes. Then Jane said, "But don't you wish we did know for sure?"

"We may never know."

"Don't say so. I want to know. If not now, someday. I invested a lot of mental energy in this and even made Mel seriously annoyed with me about my effort to sort it out."

"It's not your responsibility to sort it out, Jane. Nor are we obligated to keep what we know a secret."

"That's true. Why should we? It might be that the other author who was plagiarized is also here. If word leaked out, she might check out Vernetta's web page and find her own work there. Wouldn't that stir the stew?"

"Wouldn't it make us look gossipy and nasty, though?"

"You have a point. But I did promise LaLane to report on what I found out. I have to keep that promise. Let's go look for her."

They finally found her in the food court in the underground shopping area, eating a turkey sandwich. "May we sit down with you, Ms. Jones?" Jane asked. "This my friend and roommate. We have something to tell you."

LaLane's face lit up. "Please do."

"It was Zac who wrote that page," Jane said. Shelley said, "And I'm the one who discovered that Vernetta plagiarized his work."

"Vernetta? Who's that?"

"The big noisy woman who's always wearing acostume. She e-pubbed a book that Sophie Smith contracted her to publish for real."

"That's horrible. Stealing someone else's work is the most unethical thing a writer can do. And it's illegal."

"We know that."

"But does Sophie Smith know it yet?"

"We made sure she did," Jane said. "And so did Zac after he recognized that the page I showed you was from a book of his."

"I've never liked Zac's writing or his reviews, nor his attitude about women mystery writers, but I feel a little bit sorry for him," LaLane said.

"I don't think you need to be," Shelley said. "Zac knows how to take care of himself." She indicated Jane and said, "She had promised to tell you what we learned, and neither of us wanted to break that promise. That's why we told you this."

"I'm glad you did. I'd have hated never knowing."

"Me, too," Jane said. "And now we'll leave you to finish your lunch. But I wanted to thank you for helping us figure this out."

"Please let me know if you learn any more about this," LaLane said. "And I promise I won't tell anyone."

"We will keep in touch if we learn anything else, but we, too, aren't blabbing it elsewhere," Jane assured her.

As they walked back down the hallway toward

the hotel, Jane said, "I'm glad this worked out this way. Our consciences can be clear."

The thing that none of the three women noticed was the woman at the next table to them, sitting with her back to the threesome, and taking copious notes on every word they'd said.

Twenty-two

"Watching LaLane eat her lunch has made me hungry," Jane said. "Let's follow her example and have an early lunch."

"Good idea. Where?"

"Not in the hotel. That mall across the highway is supposed to have a nice restaurant with a spectacular salad bar. Have you been there yet?" Jane asked.

"No, but I've been told the same thing. It would be good to leave here. But I don't want to walk on that overpass between here and there. Would you mind driving us over there?" Shelley asked.

"Okay, but I think we should both check on what our kids are up to before we leave. I don't like using the cell phone in a restaurant. For some weird reason I feel as if it's like using it in church."