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I SWITCHED MY CELL phone back on when I returned to my office, and saw I had missed two calls from Donnie, and several from my real estate agent. I called Leilani Zelenko back. She picked up right away.
“Hi Leilani. I’m glad you called. Listen, did Melanie ever express interest in buying the Brewster House?”
There was a brief pause.
“I am sorry Maw-ly. This information I do not share. What you tell me, it is sealed. What another tells me, it is sealed. This is my reputation, why I am top agent. I keep your secret. I blabber to you, you think I blabber about you.”
“Yeah. I see your point.”
Leilani’s reaction told me all I needed to know. She wouldn’t have been so defensive unless Melanie really had been in contact with her. Maybe Melanie had left the Garden Society meeting to poke around inside and had blundered into something she wasn’t supposed to. I imagined an ancient wooden box, covered with mysterious, intricate carvings. Perhaps it had lain unopened for a hundred years. But that afternoon Melanie found it, irreverently pried it open, and suddenly—
“Maw-ly, you are listen?”
“Oh. Sorry. The signal’s kind of uneven in my office.”
“There is another house, I think you like. Beautiful view.”
“It’s an older house?” I asked.
“No, new. Brand new.”
“Do you have the address?”
“I take you there,” she said. “When we drive around.”
“Oh, right. Okay.” I had forgotten I’d agreed to let Leilani give me a tour of some of the other available properties around Mahina. Maybe it wouldn’t be such a bad thing to look at some alternatives. My passion for the Brewster House wasn’t burning quite as brightly as it had been.
I plugged my phone in to charge, sank down onto my yoga ball, and started up my computer. I saw Betty Jackson had already replied to my email with her own revisions to our conference paper. Before I could finish reading her message, my phone started to hum on my desk. Donnie was calling again.
Might as well answer it, although I couldn’t imagine what he and I could possibly have to talk about now. Not after seeing Sherry Di Napoli strolling around his house in her bathrobe. Oh no, even better. It couldn’t have been Sherry’s bathrobe. It must have Donnie’s. It had been so big on her she practically had it wrapped around her twice. I would never have guessed Donnie owned a tacky black satin bathrobe. You think you know someone.
“I found the key,” Donnie said. “On the side table.”
“You found it. Good.”
“So, you and I signed up for the Business Boosters volunteer dinner. Um. Are we still going?”
“I don’t know, Donnie. Maybe Sherry wants to go with you.”
“Who?”
“Sherrine Di Napoli? Your ex-wife?”
“Sherrine—Molly, what are you talking about?”
Did he think I was stupid or something?
“When I went to your house to drop off the key, Donnie? I happened to run into your ex-wife. In your house. She really seemed to know her way around, by the way.”
“Molly, what you’re saying is impossible. I haven’t seen Sherry in years. I don’t even think she’s in the state. She definitely was not in my house.”
“Donnie, I saw her. In the hallway leading from the master bedroom. Medium height, pretty face, big cloud of kinky dark brown hair.”
I didn’t mention Sherry’s skinniness; I didn’t want to remind Donnie how much fatter I was by comparison.
Donnie neither admitted nor denied his indiscretion. He simply laughed.
“Molly, you just described yourself.”
“What?”
“You must have seen your reflection in the hallway mirror.”
Oh, boy. He really did think I was stupid.
“Oh sure, Donnie, that must have been it. And then my reflection, which unlike me was wearing a shiny black bathrobe, invited me into your kitchen and made me a cup of tea. Yeah, nice try.”
There was a long pause, and I thought Donnie had hung up on me.
Then he said, “Molly, I know you’re under a lot of stress right now. Maybe I could—”
“Could what? Maybe you could recommend a good shrink? Listen, you don’t have to answer to me anymore, and what you do in the privacy of your home is your business. But don’t you try to gaslight me!”
I punched the disconnect button on my phone much harder than necessary.
I was too distracted and upset to work on my conference paper. I really should have started reading Melanie’s files. But I couldn’t bear to slog through Melanie’s writing. (It would have been like traveling through the “jaw” of Hell, as it were). But maybe I could look at Melanie’s other campus accounts, as Atticus had suggested. I couldn’t imagine there would be much there, as classes weren’t due to start for several weeks, but it would be good to check. Just to be thorough.
I logged on to Melanie’s Learning Management System account, wondering whether Atticus could see my activities in real time, or if he just looked at some kind of log at the end of the day. Either way, I told myself, it was fine. He’d already said he didn’t mind my poking around, right?
It didn’t look like Melanie had done anything on the LMS. All of the settings were at default, and no files or assignments had been added to the course shells. I was about to log out when I saw a separate tab for the plagiarism checker. That was new; the two modules used to have two separate logins. After years of professors complaining about the inconvenience of our setup, someone had finally integrated the two into one system. I would have to figure out how the new interface worked before the start of fall semester. I might as well have a look now.
Melanie, or someone, had added a course to the plagiarism checker. Under the course tab was a single folder labeled Papers. It seemed very unlike Melanie to prepare for her classes so far in advance of the start of her semester. But she had been working on something.
I clicked the folder open.
The files were named with two letters and a number. The results of the plagiarism check would be indicated with different colored flags next to them, showing the percentage of non-original content. A green flag meant very little of the paper’s content was found elsewhere, either on the internet or in the company’s repository of student papers. Yellow might mean the paper relied too heavily on direct quotations. A red flag signaled a problem. It meant most of the paper’s content was identical to something else.
My eye caught a folder called MB1. For Molly Barda? I clicked to open it.
Melanie had uploaded a paper I had published last year, apparently to check whether I had plagiarized. I hadn’t, of course. My little flag was green. I backed out, looked down the complete list, and scrolled to the bottom.
I clicked on the entry labeled SN1.
The author was Scott Nixon. Chair of the English department, official advisor (and unofficial heartthrob) of the Jane Austen Club, Nicole Nixon’s husband. And, according to what I was seeing, a red-flagged plagiarist.