"I don't think this is a good idea," Shelley said in a slightly shaky voice.
"We're in no danger. I have the upper hand," Jane replied.
Corwin returned with his suitcase and was stunned to see them. "What are you two doing here? Get out!"
"You have a choice to make. Let me have my say or I'll follow you down and ask you a few questions in Sophie Smith's presence," Jane said. "Which will it be?"
Corwin slammed down the suitcase on a chair and said, "Then proceed with it. Sophie's waiting for me."
Jane asked in a bland voice, "When we were allin this room, and Sophie told you to call the Strausmanns and tell them to come up here, you asked them on the phone if they remembered the room number."
"Did I? So what?"
"Had they been here before?"
"Only briefly. The morning Ms. Smith came back from the hospital," he said.
"Shelley, would you go downstairs and ask Ms. Smith if that's true, if you wouldn't mind?"
"No!" Corwin said, turning pale. "Sophie had invited them to come up for a drink after the dessert party, and, of course, Sophie was in the hospital by that time. They caught up with me at the party and begged to come up for a drink anyway. I didn't see any harm in it."
"I understand," Jane said, still in a calm but firm voice. "It was a good way to confront them with the fact that they'd stolen Sophie's copy of Zac's book, right?"
"It never crossed my mind to say that. I have no idea where the book went. Ms. Smith probably just threw it away."
"Shelley, I think that's another thing you might want to ask Ms. Smith."
"No!" Corwin said in an angrier voice than last time. "Get out of here, you nosy bitches." He picked his suitcase back up and headed for Sophie's room to fetch her luggage.
Jane didn't move. She said, barely loud enough for him to hear from the next room, "I'll tell you
what really happened. Or I'll follow you down and tell you in front of Sophie Smith if that's what you prefer."
Corwin strolled back into the room, having regained his wits. "What happens next if I agree to listen?"
"Absolutely nothing," Jane said with what she hoped was a cheerful smile. "You'll leave this room with the luggage and cope with what you've done all by yourself. And my guess is that you didn't invite them up after the dessert party. You invited them while Ms. Smith was out shopping that first morning to set up both the poisoned chocolates and the theft of Zac's book."
He thought a moment, then slumped into the sofa opposite them, rubbing his eyes. When he looked up, he said, "I despise Sophie. She treats me like a dog on a leash and won't let go of me."
"We know that," Shelley put in, since it finally seemed to be going well for Jane.
"I received Vernetta's manuscript and it was so awful I couldn't believe it found its way past the first reader," Corwin said. "But something about the early part caught my attention. Way back when I was a lowly copy editor, I'd been forced to edit Zac's book, and a couple of especially bad phrases seemed familiar."
"That's how I found it, too, sort of," Shelley said.
Jane nudged her slightly so as to give her the hint to not interrupt Corwin's train of thought now that he'd decided to confess.
He went on, "I thought it was a way to escape from Sophie without her being able to convince anyone else in the business that I was a horrible employee. That's what she'd have done to me for certain if I'd quit."
Both Jane and Shelley nodded agreement.
"The stroke of luck was that Sophie didn't read it. She said it was too long and she was too busy," Corwin went on. "She glanced through it for about two minutes and suggested I ask the guy who owns the publishing company how he felt about it. She thought he'd be flattered that the great Sophie Smith asked his opinion. And he was flattered. Of course, he'd probably never read anything except corporate reports, so he didn't read it either, simply approved the huge advance I'd told Sophie she'd have to pay to gain the publicity to make a bestseller of it."
He stood up and said, "I need a drink of water," then left the room for a moment.
When he returned a moment later, he went on, "I thought I was home free until Zac handed Sophie a copy of his book. As soon as she went to the hospital, I threw it in the trash bin outside the front of the hotel and buried it under some newspapers.
"When Sophie called later and wanted me to bring it over to her at the hospital, I said I couldn't find it, and thought I'd dodged the bullet. Until she told me to tell Zac to find her another copy. God knows why she wanted it. She
knows Zac is a terrible writer. I didn't hear, however, what he said to her to convince her she needed to read it."
"So you had to attack Zac when he brought back another copy?" Jane said mildly, even though the very words revolted her.
His face grew very red instantly and he nearly shouted, "I did not attack him. I'd seen where he parked his van and knew how far away he lived and waited for him to come back to the same spot, which was in sort of a secret parking area most people didn't know about. As he parked, I walked up to the van, but then suddenly he ducked down and disappeared. This alarmed me, and I jerked open the door. He was apparently leaning way over and holding on to the handle to keep his balance and he fell out of the van."
"Is this really true?" Jane asked.
"I'd swear to it on anything you want me to. That's how it happened. It was a stupid accident. I leaned over him and took his pulse, pushed back his eyelids to see if his pupils were both the same. His breathing was regular. He didn't appear to even be bleeding anywhere."
"So why didn't you call the police and report it?" Jane asked.
"I didn't have my cell phone with me and as I headed in the back door of the hotel to find a phone, a couple came out with their luggage. I stood there for a few seconds while they discovered him. The man immediately pulled out hiscell phone and called 911. Call me a coward. I was. I was terrified. But I knew the call had been made and I didn't need to stick around."
As he said this, the phone in the suite rang. He picked it up automatically and all of them could hear Sophie yelling at him to move his slow ass and the luggage down right now or they'd miss their plane.
He hung up without a word and looked at Jane. "So?" he asked.
"Take down the luggage," Jane said. She even opened the door for him and said while he struggled with it, "I hope that you, Sophie, Vernetta, and the stupid owner of the publishing company all receive exactly what you deserve." Then Jane put her hand on his arm and said, "Only one more question. Was it you or Vernetta who poisoned the candy?"
"Me. And it wasn't poison. It was a liquid laxative. I'm a diabetic and I have to give myself shots every day. It was easy. And Sophie enjoyed having a delicate digestive system and talking about it in her usual vulgar way all the time. I didn't expect such a small amount to do any real harm. Just keep her in the bathroom until the conference was over. I had no idea she'd eat them all at one time."
"Have you realized yet that you could have killed both Sophie and Zac and be in jail now for a double murder?"
His face paled, and he said in a shaking voice,
"I've thought of nothing else. I'm horrified by what I nearly did."
Jane removed her hand from his arm. He looked at her and asked, "Are you going to tell anyone else about this?"
"We'll decide that later," Jane said.
She closed the door on him and sat back down on Sophie's sofa, exhausted by the confrontation. She finally said, "I did well, didn't I?"
"You certainly did. I'm so proud of you. I believed him. Did you?"
"Of course. He's as dull as Zac, and a timid, browbeaten man. He was telling the truth and loving himself for getting it off his chest."
"Are you absolutely certain of this?" Shelley asked.
"I don't care. It's really and truly, cross my heart and hope to die, over as far as I care."
"Then let's go home," Shelley said, opening the door. They walked down the hall to remove the
last few of their belongings remaining in the suite and to leave a good tip for the maid. Shelley said, "Make me one promise."
"What is it?" Jane said, looking around one more time for anything she might have left behind.
"Promise you'll let me read what your publishing magazine says in the next issue."
"Just think, Shelley. Probably no one else will ever know what you and I know about this."
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Bell, Book, and Scandal jj-14 Page 15