Shelley returned a few minutes later. John was in a meeting and couldn't be disturbed, she reported.
The lobby was filling up with writers and fans, all speculating about what had happened. Some said, sounding knowledgeable, "She's had a heart attack."
Others stuck with the theory of her just fainting. Or falling off whatever she might have been standing on.
One suggested that the wiring was bad and as she touched the microphone she'd been electrocuted. This was hooted down. "The woman who ended up reading the speaker's introduction
touched it, too, and nothing happened to her," someone said.
"This is driving me mad," Jane said. "Nobody knows what they're talking about. Let's go somewhere else. We have half an hour before the next seminars."
Shelley picked up her purse. "There are some nice shops in a tunnel under the hotel. Let's go shopping for therapy."
"I'd rather go to the book room again," Jane said.
"No, you wouldn't. It would be full of other attendees saying the same things. Come with me. Last time I was in the tunnel shops, I saw a lapel pin I thought you'd like, and now that I see you in this sweater, I know it would be perfect. Let's see if it's still there."
The last seminars of the day both seemed exceedingly boring, so Shelley and Jane went upstairs and finished the salads they'd put in the tiny fridge. Jane checked in with Todd and Katie again on their new cell phones. Katie said the omelettes were almost ready and she couldn't talk right now. Apparently this overrode the thrill of receiving a call on her new phone.
Shelley and Jane arrived five minutes after the dessert party started. It was already crowded. Shelley had been right. The desserts were all about one and a half inches square, set in little paper baskets. Jane picked up a plate and selected only three. She didn't want to look greedy. Andshe could always dispose of the plate and go back, pretending it was her first trip.
Both Jane and Shelley were keeping a wary eye out for Vernetta and Gaylord Strausmann. They didn't want to be taken unawares again.
"I'd have thought a big hefty woman like that would be the first through the line," Shelley commented as she forked up a sliver of cherry cobbler.
"I'd have thought so, too," Jane said around her mouthful of a bread pudding square liberally iced with sugar and brandy. "Oh, there's Felicity surrounded by fans, while we're nobodies who have our own table so we can stuff ourselves without being noticed."
At that moment Vernetta and Gaylord entered the room. As she did in the restaurant, she shouted, "Howdy, y'all. I'm Vernetta Strausmann and this is my hubby, Gaylord."
The pair had abandoned their country-western look and gone for pure June and Ward Cleaver. Vernetta was in a patterned shirtwaist with the buttons straining at the bodice. A little fifties hat, high heels, and even white gloves, a bit grubby at the fingertips. Gaylord was in a gray suit and wore a fedora and shiny black shoes. The outfit would have looked more authentic if the trousers hadn't been a bit short and his black-and-redstriped socks hadn't been showing.
"Do they think this is a costume party or Halloween?" Shelley said. "Where did they find that stuff? At a secondhand store?"
Most of the people in the room were staring at the couple, but nobody approached them. Vernetta looked over at the crowd surrounding Felicity and glowered. Gaylord took her arm in a firm grip and whispered something to her. She nodded and smiled hungrily at the other partygoers.
"Gather round, y'all. Lookee-loo at the plans for our mansion."
She took over the largest table, forcing two women who were eating there to find other seats, and unfurled a couple of large blueprints. Gaylord found some canned drinks to hold down the corners. "Come on, y'all. Don't be shy," Vernetta bellowed.
A few obedient people eased their way toward the table.
"See? Here's the second floor," Vernetta said. "Ten bedrooms. The biggest for Gaylord and I, and one for each of the three kids. And six more for guests."
"Gaylord and me," Shelley muttered, turning her back on the scene Vernetta was making. "Just imagine the absolutely spine-chilling horror of being their guests!"
Jane scooted her chair so she wouldn't have to watch, though they were forced to listen.
"This here room on the ground floor is a ballroom," Vernetta went on. "But we're gettin' lots of tables and chairs for when I set up giving writing lessons."
Jane was hard-pressed not to put her face in her plate and weep.
"Finish your desserts and we'll replace our plates and round up some of the stragglers to sit at our table and mingle," Shelley said. "Maybe we can talk loudly enough to drown her out."
Corwin, Sophie Smith's assistant, came into the dessert room, picked up two little pieces of bread pudding, and sat down at a corner table, first putting the other three chairs against the table as if he was saving them for someone else.
Vernetta dragged Gaylord across the room and grabbed two chairs, setting them upright and settling in. "How swell of you to have kept chairs for Gaylord and I."
Gaylord grabbed her arm again and whispered. Vernetta lowered her voice to his command, leaning forward and resting her enormous breasts on her crossed arms on the table while chatting to Corwin, asking him pointed questions about how Sophie was doing. In a few moments Corwin rose and leaned over Vernetta and said something to her.
Vernetta and Gaylord rose and left the table. The young man tilted the chairs back toward the table to finish his desserts. "Toodle-loo, Corwin!" Vernetta said in a little girl voice as they drifted away.
"I wonder what he told them?" Shelley said. "They don't look angry about being dismissed." Jane said, "He probably said they could talk
with her editor later in private, or some such tactful remark. I'm amazed it sunk into the Strausmanns' brains — such as they are."
The two minglers Shelley and Jane had hijacked were trying to convince Shelley to buy a book by their favorite author. He apparently wrote very blunt and hard-boiled police novels, a type of literature Shelley didn't like.
Their new tablemates finally rose and left, giving one last order that Shelley buy the book they liked. As they departed, Jane looked around the room and realized the crowd was thinning a little. She and Shelley went for their third course of desserts, but there wasn't anything left that they hadn't already tried. They went back to the booksellers' room. Unfortunately, it was shut down for the night, so they had no choice but to either keep mingling in the lobby or go upstairs to the suite.
"I'm mingled out," Jane said. "And I want to have a good night's sleep so I don't look half dead in the morning. My first appointment is at nine o'clock."
Eight
Sophie Smith had endured what were probably the three worst hours of her life. She'd had her stomach pumped because the first resident to see her thought she'd been poisoned. The full-fledged doctor who saw her next put it down to a virus and took blood samples. Between and after these ministrations, Sophie had spent two and a half disgusting hours in the hospital room bathroom. She was afraid of leaving the tiny tiled room for fear of disgracing herself.
By seven o'clock in the evening, she was finally able to crawl into the extremely uncomfortable bed.
She rang the hotel and gave her own room number. "Corwin?"
"Yes?" her assistant said. "Who's calling?" "It's Sophie, you ass."
"Sorry. You don't sound like yourself."
"Of course I don't, Corwin. I've been through a wringer."
"I've called the hospital three times and nobody
would tell me anything about your condition," Corwin complained.
"They're insisting on keeping me in here overnight for observation. No point, really. I'm feeling better already."
"Do they know what was wrong?"
"They have half a dozen theories. But I'm tempted to find where they've hidden my clothes and make a break for it. Whatever it was, I'm nearly over it."
"Sophie, you must stay there. What if you have a relapse of whatever it was?"