Bell, Book, and Scandal

'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.'

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.