Ellipsis (14 page)

Lucy Bardwell's stentorian voice didn't soften or subside. “
Childish Ways
is about a woman who discovers that her child is being abused at the day care center she chose to place her in.”

Chandelier fidgeted uneasily. “What is your question? If you've finished the book, I suggest you send it to one of the agents I've listed in my article in the October issue of
The Writer
magazine.”

“Two years after I took your class,” the woman persisted gravely, “you wrote a book called
Infamy of Infants
.”

Chandelier nodded as if pleased to be able to agree with the woman. “Yes. That's one of mine. It's on a similar subject, as a matter of fact. I hope it was helpful to you.”

Lucy Bardwell thrust out her jaw and crossed her arms. “I think it's the other way around, Ms. Wells.”

Chandelier smiled condescendingly. “I'm afraid I don't understand.”

“
Infamy of Infants
was also about abuse in a day care center.”

Chandelier turned the color of Hawaiian Punch. “What is your point, young lady? I hope you're not seriously suggesting that I stole your
idea
. Among other things, ideas are not copyrightable. Only the
expression
of an idea has copyright protection. So even if I
did
borrow your idea, which of course I did not, you don't own
that
subject or any
other
subject.” Chandelier looked across the room as if for a friendly face. “Can we move on now, please?”

Lucy Bardwell stayed standing. “I'd like to read a paragraph from my book if I could.”

Chandelier leaned across the podium. “This is
my
reading, if I'm not mistaken,” she proclaimed with lethal sarcasm. “I believe
most
of these good people are here to see
me
.”

“I'd like you to let me read, please,” Lucy Bardwell persisted, her expression as fixed as a museum guard's. “It won't take long to make my point.”

“Is this a
published
book by any chance, Ms. Bardwell?” Chandelier asked meanly.

“No. But I mailed a copy to myself after I finished it so I could prove from the postmark when it was written, in case anyone ever—”

“Mailing a copy to yourself proves nothing, as any reputable intellectual-property lawyer can tell you. So we don't know
where
this little paragraph came from, do we, audience?”

The audience was immobile.

“This paragraph is one of many that was contained in the portions of the manuscript of
Childish Ways
that I submitted to you in class,” the young woman plunged on. “And this among many other paragraphs turned up in
Infamy of Infants
in almost the exact same words.”

Chandelier's tone turned arch and dismissive. “Have you consulted an attorney about this, Ms. Bardwell?”

“Yes, I have.”

“Since you haven't sued me, I assume he told you that you didn't have a case.”

“Quite the contrary. He said I had a solid case for infringement, but he also said I didn't have enough of a damage claim to make suing you worthwhile. In other words, he said you definitely hurt me, Ms. Wells, but not
badly
enough.” Lucy Bardwell offered a rueful smile to the room. “If that lawyer had ever tried to get a book published in this day and age, he'd have a better idea of how badly I've been hurt,” she added almost as an afterthought, accompanied by a drip of tears.

Chandelier seemed to double in size and triple in density. “Let me tell you something, young lady. With every bestselling book, every hit movie, and every hit song that comes along, some vultures like you comes out of the woods and claims they had the idea first. They make a big stink and the media hop aboard and repeat the charge and the reputation of the writer gets tarnished indelibly. But you know what, Ms. Bardwell? The vultures always lose. Sure, they may gouge a nuisance settlement out of the artist once in a while, but if the case goes to trial, the vulture
always loses
. The problem is, the media never cover
that
part of the story, do they? They've moved on to some
other
spurious allegation in an effort to get more readers or higher ratings, leaving the artist whose reputation they've raped trying futilely to regain her good name.”

Lucy Bardwell stood her ground. “I'm not asking for money, Ms. Wells.”

“What
are
you asking for?”

“An apology. And some help.”

“I have no reason to—”

“I'm not claiming you stole my idea, I'm claiming you stole my words. Since I can prove that's the case, I want to know what you're going to do to see that my work gets published just as yours has been. Especially since
you
obviously thought it was publishable.”

Before Chandelier could answer the question, there was a commotion from the other side of the room. Lark McLaren and Amber Adams were standing on either side of a third woman, who was wearing a floor-length black coat and a black hat in the shape of a floppy beret looking like something out of a silent movie featuring Gloria Swanson. The woman was clearly attempting to join the fray, and Lark and Amber were clearly trying to restrain her.

I stood up and put my hand on my weapon and walked toward the trio of women. When I got there, I recognized the woman in the beret as Viveca Dane.

“She did the same thing to me!” Viveca called out suddenly, even as Lark and Amber clutched at her arms. “Chandelier stole my character, my plot, my milieu, and my persona. She took everything I had, even my readership. Thank you for speaking up, young lady. Because someone has to
stop
her.”

I closed to where I could prevent Viveca from using any weapon more potent than vitriol. For her part, Chandelier was cursing under her breath and gathering her things, preparing to vacate the premises.

“But you haven't signed books,” Kelly the assistant manager squealed as Chandelier threw on her cape and grabbed for her briefcase, then fumbled with something below the podium and emerged with a small cassette tape that she shoved in her purse.

“You should screen your audiences more carefully, my dear,” Chandelier said snidely as she strode across the room. “I don't come to these things to be insulted.” She shouldered her way toward the door, then turned back. “I should have known something like this would happen in this town. If any of you still want signed books, they'll be available at Baubles, Bangles & Books over in the city. Where most of the populace is still sane.”

With that final promotional plug, Chandelier was out the door, leaving a maelstrom of disappointment in her wake. I went outside, watched her stride to her majestic Lincoln, waited for her to get inside, gave a wave to Jed Filson, then returned to the store.

Viveca Dane and Lucy Bardwell were huddling near the podium, no doubt comparing causes of action against Chandelier. Kelly the assistant manager was trying to mollify customers who had already bought books by offering them a coupon good for a signed Sue Grafton as soon as the books came in. Lark and Amber and Sally were displaying various degrees of consternation, no doubt wondering whether the contretemps about plagiarism would put a crimp in their principal's soaring career.

And then the bomb went off, blowing in the front windows and showering us all with flying glass.

Chapter 14

Lark McLaren was the first person out the door, and it was her incessant screaming as much as the shards of glass or the reverberations of the explosion that made me dash out after her.

When I spotted her, what I saw was a woman twirling frantically to and fro, not sure what to do or how to do it, sobbing and pointing and searching desperately for assistance as her voice splashed the day with terror. Beyond her was a sheet of orange flame lapping hungrily at the sky from within a cloud of roiling smoke that rose from the middle of the street. At the base of the flames was a crumpled lump of steel and glass that behind the aftereffects of the blast had become almost unrecognizable as the handsome old Lincoln.

By the time I reached her, Lark was standing so close to the wreckage she had to shield her face with her forearm to ward off the heat from the blaze. I stepped between her and the conflagration and turned her gently toward the sidewalk. Tears streamed down her cheeks, streaking them with makeup, and in the spotty light of the flames her eyes seemed ablaze themselves, matching meteorites burning toward the center of her skull.

“Help her,” she burbled between convulsive sobs. “You have to
help
her.”

Overwhelmed by likelihoods, Lark had become insensate by the time Amber and Sally rushed forward to help pull her away from the danger. When the three of them were safely on the curb, I turned back toward the car. Shielding myself as ineffectively as Lark had done, I moved as close to the blaze as I could, until my skin began to prickle and my eyes began to sting and my clothing became an analgesic compress that brought forth sweat and stink.

As flames pranced before me like amateur Rockettes and smoke swirled this way and that on random gusts of wind, I could see glimpses of my goal through brief chinks in the wall of flame. The bomb had been so powerful it had severed the front half of Chandelier's car from the back, in the vicinity of the front seat. The forward portion—engine and front compartment—was scorched and twisted beyond recognition as anything other than scrap. It was impossible that Jed Filson was any longer alive, unless he had been part of the plan and had triggered the explosion from a position of safety. I disliked that thought so much I waited till it vanished.

Incredibly, the rear portion of the car, especially the rear seat compartment, seemed structurally intact. If there was hope to be had, it was there, deep within the soup of smoke and fire.

As I inched closer to the wreckage, someone tugged at my coat. When I turned, Kelly, the assistant manager, thrust a fire extinguisher at me. “Maybe this will help.”

“Maybe,” I said dubiously, regarding what looked more like a toy than a deterrent to anything as terrible as the burning vehicle. I took the small red cylinder from her, pulled the pin, detached the small hose from its bracket, and turned back toward the car, feeling far more foolish than heroic.

“She's alive!” Lark McLaren screamed at my back. “See? That's her
hand
! She's
moving
! Somebody
help
her, for God's sake. Please!”

Canister in one hand and hose in the other, I took aim at the car and squeezed the trigger, producing a miniature cloud of dry white retardant that was so meager as to be whimsical. From behind my flimsy shield, I advanced toward the rear of the car.

The smells were of fuels and plastics and burning rubber. The noise was of approaching sirens and urgent warnings. I ignored as many of my senses as I could and moved ahead, energized by feelings of guilt and incompetence that warred with electric jolts of fear.

Heat greeted me, seduced me, then slapped at me. My scalp seemed to be peeling away from my skull; my hands seemed to be boiling in oil; my face seemed to be bubbling and cracking like cheap paint. I kept going, the retardant thankfully blinding me to the fix I was getting myself into. If I had stopped to think, I would have run the other way.

When the heat seemed impenetrable and the extinguisher too hot to hold, I stopped spraying and looked. Five yards in front of me, the rear portion of the car was on its side, perhaps from a secondary explosion in the gas tank. What I was looking at was the top of the car, not the side, which meant the only way I could extract Chandelier would be to lean over the roof and pull her out through the window hole. As I was trying to summon the courage to do just that, I wrapped the extinguisher with my handkerchief to make it bearable to hold. It was then I saw what Lark had seen—a hand rising out of the gap in the steaming shell of sheet metal. Chandelier was reaching for help, which meant she was reaching for me.

I took three steps toward the car. Flame taunted me from all sides, impervious to the dregs from the extinguisher, seeming even to feast on them. Tossing the canister aside, I leaned forward to see if I could see Chandelier, extending my hand to where I thought I had last seen hers. My arm draped over the fire like beef on a spit; my face could have served as a griddle. The gases erupting from the wreckage seared enough of my inner and outer tissue that I was coughing and choking and crying simultaneously, rendering myself effectively blind.

Just then, like when the film breaks at the movies, everything went black. As I felt myself sag to the ground, helpless to do otherwise, I was engulfed in a thundercloud that seemed to fall on me from all sides, as if the bomb had brought forth a volcano from the inner earth. My reflexes told me to curl in a ball for protection, which is what I was doing when two gloved hands grabbed me under my arms and began to drag me away from the blaze. I struggled inanely for a moment, reluctant to surrender, then let him do his duty, which was to handle me like a baby.

When I was back to the curb, he put me down. From flat on my back, I looked up at the masked man in red helmet and black respirator and tried to thank him. My voice croaked like a bullfrog.

The fireman nodded and reached behind him as though he had an itch he needed to scratch, then produced a more formidable nozzle than the one I had carried.

“There's a woman alive in the backseat,” I shouted, loudly enough for him to hear me over the wail of several sirens.

His helmet nodded in understanding, then he advanced on the Lincoln once more, this time with chemical spray shooting out of the hose from a canister three times the size of mine. Quickly, he was joined by others. Together, they looked like
Star Wars
extras. I watched them approach the flames with a mix of envy and relief, then lay back on the concrete to let it cool me.

Dumb with fatigue and rigid with pain, I rolled to a sitting position and watched the firemen do their work. Two of them were dousing the fire with chemicals, one was attacking with hose and water, and two more were reaching through the rear window to haul forth a form that was unrecognizable as Chandelier or as anyone else. When she saw the charred clothing and smoking hair, Sally Rinehart began to scream. Lark McLaren hurried to comfort her, and Amber Adams started to swear a blue streak. When an EMT got out of an ambulance and came over to ask if I was okay, I lied and said I was.